We Ate the Road Like Vultures

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  ‘That is the most stupid fucking coffee machine I have ever seen,’ I said. ‘Absolutely, I’ll have some.’

  ‘It was in a shop down in the town. I don’t know how the fuck it got there, it is some sort of designer Italian thing, but I was in town one day and saw it in the window of the chemist where we get our weed, and I knew he’d never fucking sell it and it would sit there for a decade till it was dead from sun and sadness, so I bought the thing and spent the next two years figuring out how to use it. No instruction books in Mexico.’

  He fiddled with various knobs and levers, added some water through a spout up the top, and it started to hiss and bubble and then smell like heaven with wafts of caffeine steam that revived me instantly. Finally a thin stream of the brew tumbled into one of the rugged pottery mugs he put underneath it and he handed it to me ceremoniously. I opened the spaceship fridge and found a jug of thick milk. ‘From some sort of buffalo,’ he told me, and sloshed it in.

  It was magnificent in a way that went beyond my need for it, and it was thick with cream and fat droplets, and I loved it. I was licking the drop that ran down the side of my cup when Adolf walked in and caused me to spill it.

  ‘Good morning Lulu and Mr Carousel. It is a beautiful and blessed day. Can I have some of that coffee?’

  Carousel raised an eyebrow and found some way to get more out of the machine. Adolf looked at me and smiled so sincerely that I had to smile back a bit, and the smiling silence quickly got ridiculous so I nodded and left for the other room. That time I took the donkey chair—he could have the mule—and drank my coffee as Chicco snored.

  ‘I was thinking you might want to come with me to see the shrine today?’ Adolf asked, as he followed me in.

  ‘Ah.’ I certainly didn’t, but had nothing else to do and no real reason not to. ‘I guess so. Are you sure you know where it is?’

  ‘Not really, my directions led me here and since your grandfather is not familiar with the shrine I will have to go back to town and ask for more help. It’s not too far, maybe a one hour walk.’ He sipped his coffee delicately.

  ‘I know, I walked it yesterday.’

  I wondered when he would ask why I was here. It hadn’t occurred to him that I had made up the grandfather bit, but I had the feeling he thought everyone in the world was sterling silver, and it made me feel guilty. I knew I would confess soon, but it sure wouldn’t be in front of Carousel who would find it funny, and then I had another thought. Was I allowed to stay another night or was I to be kicked out? I hadn’t really talked to Carousel at all, or resolved why he was hiding out in Mexico and if I could ever convince him to come clean to the world. I had originally planned to call the New York Times and out him—that sounded like the biggest paper in the US and it’s the one you always hear about in Australia. I thought the world deserved to know the truth—that the greatest writer who ever died actually hadn’t, and if his muse was just as alive, then the world should know that, too. But all that philosophy said, I didn’t want to ruin their lives and, while they lived in a bizarre cocktail of squalor and opulence, far be it from me to say they weren’t happy. They seemed very content to be alone out there with only themselves and a few neurotic circus animals and some protective Mexicans to keep them company.

  I was at a loss as to what to do next, given that I had been right all the time and I’d made the trip all the way out there. It seemed a waste to just say, ‘Hi, I liked your books, and I hope you have a nice retirement, bye.’ I watched Carousel sitting there drinking another coffee, and Chicco struggling to wake up, opening one eye, then the other, and then closing both again and snorting his big nose with its hairs and sun spots. Carousel seemed thoughtful and I wondered if he was thinking about how he could get rid of me with the least amount of fuss—hoping it wasn’t to blow me up, moose-like, or bury me in shallow sand to become a modern mummy with only my ripped cliché shirt to tell people who I was.

  But all he said was, in a sarcastic way, ‘You kids have fun now.’ And took a deep long sip of coffee. ‘I guess we’ll see you later. I’ll get Maria to make up that bed with cleaner sheets.’

  I sagged into my donkey chair with relief. I wasn’t kicked out on my arse yet. All I had to do was walk in the footsteps of Jesus and pretend I was Carousel Kerouac’s granddaughter. Easy fucking day.

  Adolf seemed perfectly accepting of the idea that things were falling into place. I guess the son of such freaks must have found the rest of the world an easy place to live in—everyone so generally nice and accommodating. We each packed up a little bag—I had to borrow a hessian sack from Carousel since my backpack was torn up. I took a couple of bottles of water from the fridge and I packed my sunscreen and wallet. That’s all I figured I’d need searching for Jesus in the desert—water, food, cash and a good SPF. I hid my passport under the mattress and it took so much effort to lift the feather tick just enough to slide it under that I knew it was safe from just about anyone, especially oldsters.

  We waved a strange sort of goodbye to my ‘grandpa’ and wandered off down the road I had walked on the day before. Adolf had his shirt off by the time we reached the front fence and was down to a sarong within a further hundred metres of that. For every item he took off I put one on, like some game of strip poker—hat, sunglasses, his long-sleeved T-shirt. As he turned even more golden I slathered sunscreen on my ears and the backs of my hands, and shared a sermon from my own religion with Adolf.

  ‘You’ll get skin cancer, you know.’ I hate to be a doomsdayer but I’m Australian and from birth we are told two things—‘Punish anyone who is successful’ and, ‘You are going to die from skin cancer one day’, so we wear clothes and sunscreen and fake tan that smells like tomcat urine and mock anyone who lies on the beach for more than twelve minutes.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he smiled.

  ‘Ah, yes you will. You want some sunscreen?’ I handed him my industrial-sized Mexico tube, already half empty after a week.

  ‘No, I won’t, and no thank you. I do not die of cancer, I will die when I am eighty-seven in my bed in my house.’

  Without asking he took my backpack and carried it for me, making me more annoyed than thankful cos it wasn’t heavy and I didn’t need the help, and now I couldn’t fiddle with the straps as I walked which was one of life’s simple pleasures. But to say something like that makes you a petty misanthrope so I thanked him and tried to continue a conversation I no longer had any interest in. As soon as he descended into the weirdness again he lost me.

  ‘You die in your bed? Did you have a vision about that or something?’

  ‘Sort of—I dream about the future sometimes and Jesus tells me what will happen. I dreamed about you.’ He turned to me. ‘I recognised you at the door.’

  What do you say to that sort of thing anyway? Jesus giving someone a message about me seemed unlikely given the fact that I have never prayed to him and only mentioned his name as part of some sort of curse, but just in case, I jumped in. ‘I don’t want to know when I die or even when you think I will die. In fact I don’t want to know anything of that nature whatsoever. No future stuff. Talk about something else okay?’

  He stopped walking to look at me. I kept walking and heard him laugh as he stepped up to catch me.

  ‘Okay, no future for you, eh?’

  I hoped that was a mistake in translation rather than a prophecy and I tried to think of a change of conversation. I didn’t have to as he began asking me all the same sorts of questions the old guys had and I found myself telling him about my travels and my farm and finally about the real reason I was there.

  ‘I’m not really his granddaughter you know?’

  ‘Yeah. I know that. You are too young.’

  He didn’t ask any more than that so I continued. ‘He’s actually a very famous writer.’

  He smiled and nodded, more at me than the information, and kept up his muscled stride as though what I said was peripheral to the need to get closer to Jesus, and it made me persistent in a
teenage way I hate but can’t help.

  ‘He’s Jack Kerouac. On the Road. You know?’ He still smiled but added a slight shrug that used a variety of muscles I was unaware of.

  ‘It’s the defining beat generation novel, Adolf. It changed literature.’

  He paused and looked at me and I had to take two steps back to look up at him.

  ‘I don’t mean to seem uninterested, Lulu, I just haven’t read it or heard of it or ever heard his name. My parents had a huge library and if you ever want a specific quote from Mein Kampf I can name the page. I have read the personal letters of Czar Nicholas II. I had never read a novel until I left home, and since then I have read only Jewish writers and the Bible.’

  He looked suddenly sad and filled with regret, or maybe it was anger at his insane parents, and I felt sorry for my own stupid sense of superiority, which I hadn’t even known I had until that moment. My friend Dale from home, another cattle farmer, but one who supplemented his income with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of organic marijuana, tried to read some of my favourite books and told me they were pretentious to the point of being flammable, and we argued so long and hard that we were barely friends again before I left. He told me I was stuck in a time warp of people who thought themselves better for doing nothing at all and having no money and calling it art. I was so angry I smashed into the doorframe on my way out of his house and dislocated my shoulder and I didn’t say anything to him about it, even though I spent the night in emergency waiting for a doctor to pop it back in and give me exactly the same sort of painkillers Dale had growing under his three-storey treehouse.

  And finally there I was in the heat and the desert with a supermodel, and thinking myself better than him for having read a couple of books, not even having written them, just turned the pages and sighed over someone else’s thoughts and adventures and ideas. I hung my head for a moment.

  ‘Sorry. I can take it all a bit seriously sometimes.’ I wasn’t very good at apologising and I’m the first to admit, though probably only to myself, that I really do believe I’m usually right about things, and my father assures me it’s only cos I’m sixteen and by forty I will be sure I know nothing, but the truth is I only enter into conversations about stuff I have read and thought about and prepared for and that I know my way around. Okay, so I was wrong about Bruce Lee, but honestly, I was more interested in uncovering the truth than finding him alive, and I found out enough to satisfy my curiosity and allow my thoughts of him to rest in respectful peace.

  ‘I haven’t actually read Mein Kampf. And it’s probably more famous than anything Kerouac ever wrote. Isn’t it?’

  He smiled. ‘It’s hardly required reading for a good life. If you will lend me Carousel’s book I will read it. I would like to read it.’ He turned and started to walk and held out his hand towards me as he did. I wondered for a moment if he wanted to hold my hand, and I blushed again. All the rapid blood flow around my body was going to kill me.

  ‘I will have some of that sunscreen after all please, Lulu. I don’t want to be eighty-seven with chunks cut out of my face.’

  I laughed and passed it to him. ‘It doesn’t matter much at eighty-seven anyway—my grandfather had a cancer the size of a walnut cut out of his nose, and by that age most of your face is overgrown to the point that you can lose a few centimetres of ear or nose and no one will notice. He looked just the same.’

  A few minutes later a big shiny truck pulled over next to us, a rare sight in that part of the world where trucks go to die. This one had four tyres the same size, both headlights and a huge almost-clean tray on the back with only two Mexican men sitting in there. It was the fourth or fifth vehicle we had seen that morning and most had a small village of people and chickens in the back so I had a moment of hope when it stopped and I tried to gesture that we’d really like a ride to town. The driver, a man with a truly Texan amount of oil in his hair and a flowing moustache, grinned gold teeth at me. He didn’t have to decipher my hand signals cos Adolf, ever the surprising one, rattled off a few sentences in fluent Spanish and got a round of cheers and grins from the whole gang. Evidently they would give us a lift in the back but had to stop and do a couple of errands before they could drop us at the Catholic church on the other side of town, which was Adolf’s first port of call when finding the shrine of the saviour. How, in exact words, the Mexicans in the car actually said, ‘a couple of errands’, will forever perplex me but I didn’t think much of it until we were loaded in the bouncing tray and listening to one of them sing something haunting, and quite possibly dirty, to a battered guitar he was carrying. As I was listening my eyes wandered, I looked out over the desert that didn’t change much and at the town as it came into view so far down the flat road I knew it was still a few minutes’ drive, and then I saw the object on the floor behind the guitar player. It was a semi-automatic. Once again my grandfather’s love of weapons came in handy and though there was nothing antique about this shiny thing I knew what it was and that it wasn’t for protection against snakes or that general need Mexicans have to carry a beat-up rifle over their shoulders. And I knew we had to get off the truck, now. I leaned closer to Adolf and told him about the gun, but over the racket of the music and the road and the roaring old truck, he just smiled, humming his own tune to the music. I tried to gesture at the thing but pointing is a fairly universal language and soon both Mexicans were grinning as they realised I had spotted the weapon.

  The musician’s friend, a similar looking cliché of Mexican madness, pulled his own from the side of the tray—much smaller and more compact with a huge magazine clipped into the bottom of it. Adolf had the grace to appear concerned. He said something in Spanish and gestured that they could let us out there—there at that dry, empty piece of sand, as if it was exactly where we were going. They laughed heartily and one even slapped Adolf’s shoulder. The truck didn’t slow and we drove right on into the town and, in one of those moments where you imagine the worst and watch it playing out in front of you, the truck pulled up slowly in front of the Bank of Mexico and the two guys leapt over the sides and ran inside. Thinking this had to be our chance to escape, I began to hoist myself over the side only to be catapulted back in by the force of the truck racing onwards around the block. They did not intend to wait out front like the criminals in my mind, but rather drive around for a few minutes and then pick up the loot. Adolf had our bags at hand and was squatting beside me trying to figure the best spot to leap out, and how slow the truck had to be going before we could jump without breaking our necks.

  The people of the small town were now watching the truck go by, having rarely seen such a new vehicle and quite possibly recognising the bandits from some sort of wanted poster. Or they might have simply been amused by the stupid white people trying to leap from the back. We were too slow, too indecisive and too fucking scared, cos it was a matter of about a minute before we drove past the bank again and heard shots and whoops and screams, and the guitarist and his friends came flying back into the truck with the traditional bags of cash and coins. I was so surprised by all this that I didn’t even crouch down for any sort of protection, but Adolf had his wits about him and pulled my head to the bottom of the tray so that when the bank security guard came out firing a pistol, and the bullets slammed into the side of the truck with a zing, I was at least partially protected. We roared off and sprayed dust at the townspeople who were not surprised at it all, but several of whom cussed and gave the finger to the truck as we went by. I had a terrible feeling they weren’t going to stop at the church to let us off after all, and this was confirmed as we flew past it, the cross blurring and causing a rare frown to appear on Adolf’s face. He banged on the cab window and was greeted by the driver firing his gun rapidly into the air, a gesture that seemed like it might have been meant to be cheeky and funny but was actually scary for regular Joes who were only used to cattle stampedes and racist protests.

  Chickens scattered as we rounded the market and I hoped we wou
ld have to slow enough at some point to be able to get out, cos by this time I was ready to leave Adolf if he didn’t follow me. I’d had enough of the crazy grins and cocked guns of the men in the back with me.

  The truck was gaining speed every second and I knew we were done trying to escape, we would have to ride it out until they stopped, and hope they didn’t kill us or rape us or worse, and then run like hell. I settled back against the side of the truck and glanced at Adolf who reached down and held my hand. I imagine it was supposed to make me feel better or safer, but even amidst a bank robbery I was still girl enough to get all hot and bothered, and then my hand sweated and in the end I pulled it away on the pretence of looking behind us for help of some kind. I admit I didn’t expect any so when I saw another truck bearing down on us I had a moment of hope followed by a moment of fear that extended into terror. It was the police. I had already seen the Mexican police at work on a town a few days back. Some guy was in the market and they came in, guns literally blazing, hunting him. Maybe he was a notorious paedophile or perhaps he had tried to assassinate the president, but I doubted he had done anything to deserve the arse-kicking he got right there in front of kids and women and hanging sacks of vegetables. When he was unconscious and unrecognisable they finally picked him up and dragged him to the police truck where they tossed him in the tray and left a trail of blood dripping through the market. I had a feeling we were fucked. This became certain knowledge when the first bullets hit the back of the tray. They didn’t penetrate but then the police were still a couple of hundred metres behind us. We threw ourselves to the floor and lay as flat and as far back as we could. Well, three of us did. Guitar player lay there with us, loot in his grimy hands, but the other bandit stood up and, swaying back and forth with the motion of the truck, he sprayed a steady stream of bullets at the police. I wasn’t sure who to barrack for—the bandits who had kidnapped us or the police who were both our hope of rescue and potential death.