Travels with Lizbeth

by Lars Eighner

  I have never had a more somber birthday.

  My dog was on death row. I was homeless. And that day I turned forty.

  * * *

  I SLEPT VERY little while Lizbeth was in the pound and not at all the night before the first of December.

  I gathered my things from the camp at the Triangle. I packed the bedroll and the daypack. I no longer had much more than I could carry except for extra bedding I had found, which I stashed under Sue’s. I was at the pew at Ramblin’ Red’s very soon after dawn.

  The proprietor of Red’s arrived early in his van and offered to take me at once to the pound. But the pound was not open and I did not have the money yet. Again I had the impression that he would save Lizbeth if something went wrong at The Grackle.

  It was a very long morning.

  I went around to The Grackle building at 10:00 A.M., which was the agreed hour. The new issue of The Grackle arrived. Indeed they had printed the two little pieces the editor had discussed with me. This was The Grackle’s homeless issue. The Grackle always ran a slogan, in very tiny type in its banner, which varied from week to week. I folded the paper and put it in the backpack. Only two years later did I look at the issue closely enough to notice the slogan: FREE LIZBETH.

  The editor seemed to be tied up in one meeting after another. Late in the afternoon he was ready to go to the pound and I was beside myself by then.

  He drove to a convenience store and extracted some money from a cash machine. He left me at the pound with a hundred dollars. Of course I would not mind walking uptown with Lizbeth once she was freed, but I felt queasy about being left at the pound before the matter was settled. The Humane Society might not accept the written note from the vet’s receptionist or they might discover some additional fee at the last minute.

  They did not take me to Lizbeth until all of the paperwork had been done and they had given me a license tag for her collar. The Humane Society’s representative remarked on Lizbeth’s medication, saying many more well-to-do dogs did not get it.

  At last I was led to Lizbeth, who was in the same cold cell where I had last seen her. She began jumping vertically into the air and it was just as well all of my business with the pound had been concluded. As soon as I had Lizbeth’s leash on her she made for the door.

  The pound was surrounded by a grassy field and the moment we were out of the office, Lizbeth wanted to run and to jump and to roll in the grass and to play Piranha Fish, which I suppose did not enhance her reputation with the Humane Society workers if any of them witnessed it.

  Lizbeth’s celebration was somewhat subdued by the kennel cough she had acquired at the pound. She ran a fever for several days and had coughing fits whenever she got excited. Concern over this rather dampened my enjoyment of the reunion.

  FIFTEEN

  To Hollywood Again

  My first thought once I had Lizbeth again was to get out of Austin as soon as possible.

  By the time we reached the pew at Ramblin’ Red’s, the proprietor had gone for the day, but he had left a sack for Lizbeth containing several cans of dog food and a large rawhide bone.

  Billy came to Sue’s to drive me to his friend’s place at the lake. He had to fortify himself with a couple of cocktails before we left, and when we got to the lake he had difficulty recalling the way to his friend’s cabin. Because of the darkness, Billy was not sure at first he had found the right place. The friend was not there. I was very uneasy about not having met my host. But it was the first of the month and Billy was eager to get to the bars. He told me one of the back doors was missing a panel and I was supposed to let myself in that way.

  Billy took off.

  I decided not to attempt breaking and entering until the morning. I laid out our bedroll on the porch. It was the first good night’s sleep I had since Lizbeth had been seized.

  The first thing in the morning Lizbeth buried the rawhide bone. We were not so far from civilization as I had wished. The cabin was set on a lot of, perhaps, a half an acre, and all around were similar lots, many with nicer houses. Nonetheless I let Lizbeth off her leash. I was determined to enjoy whatever more time she and I would have together and to resist the impulse to keep her in a bell jar. I watched her bury the rawhide bone, thinking I could find it later.

  Lizbeth’s attitude toward rawhide bones has been marred by an unfortunate puppyhood experience. She had the largest rawhide bone I could find, which she kept, between chews, in a bucket near the back steps. We had about a week of rain. When Lizbeth looked for her bone again it was nothing more than a little scum; the bucket had filled with rainwater and the bone had dissolved.

  Perhaps she thought it had been stolen.

  After that she never played with a rawhide bone again, hiding them as soon as she could. They were, I gather, much too valuable to play with and liable to be stolen if not carefully concealed. At the cabin she concealed the bone too well and neither of us ever saw it again.

  After a couple of days, our host arrived at last. He was not prepared to see us at his cabin, but Billy had not overstated our invitation. C.K. was happy to have me use the cabin because I had once written a piece that he had admired and because there was a cloud on his title to the property. C.K.’s family was trying to sell the property—or they had sold it, I could not make out which. He said the sheriff had a proven policy of neutrality regarding the conflicting claims; I would not have to confront lawmen bearing writs. But I could not rely on the law if the other claimants arrived, which C.K. said would not happen unless the property were obviously unoccupied for a long time. As he was going to Austin for some time and possibly then to California for a longer time, our presence to secure his possession of the property was especially welcome. I hardly found this reassuring.

  C.K. said he would return for his things before he left for California. But as he left he took almost everything in the place.

  We weathered an ice storm in the cabin, but after two or three days the storm broke. In the first sunshine a well-dressed woman came to the cabin and called me out—or rather she called for Charles Krebbs Brookshire, which I supposed was C.K.’s name—and I responded. My story was essentially the truth—that I was a writer who had hoped to get some work done and C.K.’s cabin seemed to be the ideal place to do that.

  The woman’s complaint was that she owned several of the adjacent properties, including the one that was the source of C.K.’s water, and that C.K. had not made any arrangement with her for the water, but had helped himself as he had often done in the past. She was about to disconnect the hose that C.K. had rigged up, and if she found it installed again she would summon the sheriff without further discussion.

  I feigned surprise, but I had seen C.K.’s arrangement for charging his water lines from the standpipe of the house on the adjacent property and I had suspected something was amiss. I did learn one horrifying fact from the woman—the water was just pumped up from the lake and was not treated. After the woman left I bundled up our things and led Lizbeth to the park known as Hippie Hollow—although it now has another official name—where there was a public phone. I reached Billy and learned from him that C.K. had left for California. Billy was surprisingly agreeable to coming to rescue Lizbeth and me again.

  * * *

  WE REMAINED IN Austin ten weeks more.

  At first we camped again in the Triangle. Once the students left for Christmas, the Dumpster finds were few and far between. I had intestinal disturbances from just before Christmas until after New Year’s.

  Fortunately the season was mild by Austin standards. Although the foliage that gave us cover dropped, our place in the Triangle remained inconspicuous. When it was dry, and when my bowels did not require otherwise, we could remain in our bedding, amid the limbs of a fallen oak, until the sun was high and the morning chill dispelled. When the ice storms moved through, we sat on the pew, wrapped in a sleeping bag, day and night for the two or three days the storms remained.

  After New Year’s we were evicted from the T
riangle by the park patrol. This time we had not been singled out, for I had watched the work progressing slowly toward us from the south. Evidently city crews were clearing brush all along Shoal Creek and Lamar Boulevard, and in the process they removed the homeless, discovering a number of camps, some rather fancy—at least one was neatly framed with two-by-fours and walled with plastic sheeting.

  Across a side street from the Triangle was a large grassy area with a stand of bamboo on the far side. I had thought of moving my camp there, but through the Christmas season the Optimist’s Club had occupied the lot with their Christmas-tree stand and blocked the way to the bamboo. After we were evicted from the Triangle, Lizbeth and I began to sleep there. I thought it very likely that the bamboo would be cleared too and so I did not really establish a camp in it. I kept most of our things under Sue’s.

  The proprietor at Ramblin’ Red’s thought the bamboo would remain. He and his spouse owned some rental property on the east side of the bamboo. He recalled that the issue of removing the bamboo had occurred before and it had remained to serve as a barrier to the traffic noise from Lamar Boulevard. I was unsure. For the most part we went to the bamboo after dark and left it at dawn. In this Lizbeth was very useful for it was often too dark for me to find our place in the bamboo by my own senses.

  I received a very little fan mail. One of the fan letters was from Jack Walden, who was having some success writing and illustrating. When he learned of my situation he suggested that I send him a story in longhand, which he would type and submit. I wrote out the story and sent it to him. He also wrote that if Lizbeth and I were to find ourselves in Los Angeles we could stay with him while I got some work out. This last seemed so agreeable a solution that I could hardly contain my excitement. I wrote again to be sure that his was a serious offer. In response I received a letter from Carl. Apparently Carl had some kind of rooming house in Hollywood in which Jack Walden lived, and they were agreed that I might have one of the vacant rooms there while I attempted to put a career together.

  When I understood this I had difficulty restraining myself from hitting the road at once. Since Lizbeth had been seized I had wanted to get as far away from Austin as I could. But the memory of my first hitchhiking trip to California helped me to restrain my first impulse.

  At last I heard that the story I sent to Jack Walden had sold; I could expect payment soon after I reached Hollywood, if I were to come. Some months before I had taken on a student who had a lucrative career but who wished to learn to write for publication. He was so happy to be published that he sent the proceeds of his first story to me. When I had that money in hand, I could see no reason to delay our departure.

  One Sunday late in February, at dawn, Lizbeth and I walked to Pease Park so I could wash up in the men’s room. As we returned I let Lizbeth off her leash to chase the pigeons. The pigeons of course evaded her quite easily and swooped in low spirals just ahead of her. She seemed to enjoy the chase. It made a pretty picture.

  When we returned to the bamboo I thought I might have a bit more sleep before I called Billy. But I discovered my small bankroll was missing. As soon as I was sure it had not slipped out of my pocket in the bedding, I could only think it had dropped out of my pants when I had sat on the toilet in the rest room.

  No one had been in the rest room when I was, but someone surely had been there since. I almost did not go back to the park to look. I was sure the money was gone.

  Nonetheless we did go back. We were not yet near the rest room when Lizbeth pulled me off the path. I thought she had done all of her dog business, but I soon saw the point. She pulled me right to the bankroll, where it had fallen in a clump of grass. I had seen dogs trained to do such things, but of course Lizbeth had no such training.

  We had stepped off the trail at this place the first time because a runner with a loose dog was coming along. I must have put my hand in my pocket then and dropped the money. That Lizbeth found it again seemed very auspicious.

  That afternoon I called Billy. We planned for him to take Lizbeth and me to the highway the next day. But Billy had not been paying much attention to the weather forecasts. An ice storm moved through and I could not leave until Wednesday.

  Wednesday we went out of the way for a cocktail at Sue’s. Billy considered this a tradition of my departures. I supplied myself with tobacco at Ramblin’ Red’s and bought dog food.

  I took a backpack, a bedroll made of a shower curtain and a sleeping bag, and a rollbag with another sleeping bag and the blanket I sometimes wore. The rest of my gear I discarded. I was resolved to remain in California whatever happened.

  * * *

  LIZBETH AND I did not reach the interstate until Friday evening, so late that I thought it best for us to turn in. We were by the road before the dew rose, and the first car that came along stopped for us.

  The ride lasted little more than an hour. As we approached Junction, the driver said he was going into Junction and asked where I wanted out. I told him I wanted to stay on the highway and the exit to Junction would be the place. When we left the highway at the Junction exit I saw at least six other hitchhikers, one with a large, long-haired black dog. But the driver did not let me out. He said he would take me through town. I was relieved because I did not want to hitchhike with so much competition.

  I wondered at the significance of Junction’s name. I did not notice any railways. Another highway intersected the interstate there, but the town antedated the interstate system. Junction sits at the confluence of the north and the south forks of the Llano River, but to call this a junction seemed peculiar. I saw the deer industry was a considerable part of the economy. One locker had a pile of antlers as large as a two-hundred-dollar Christmas tree.

  The numbers of hitchhikers I saw at the first Junction exit inspired the thought that we would be stuck in Junction, much as we were in El Paso when we came east. Between Junction and El Paso are 450 miles of road and not much else. Some stretches in Arizona and California appear more forbidding, but they are much shorter. If a ride did not work out the driver would have to put up with the rider for many hours or be responsible for putting him out, if not in an absolute desert, then near enough to come to the same thing as prospects for survival go. I do not know if drivers make these calculations.

  As I stood by the last Junction ramp, the sun set in the south.

  We crossed the frontage road and I found a cactus-free spot of the right size along the fence line. I attached the various makeshift extensions to Lizbeth’s leash and tied the free end to a fence post. I prepared our bed in the last few moments of twilight. I encouraged Lizbeth to eat some dog food, but she was not hungry. She wanted only to get under the covers. The sky was clear. The night was cold already.

  I sat up to smoke what I thought to be my last cigarette of the day. I saw in silhouette against the last brown light of twilight a man with his thumb out, standing where we had been standing. After a while I called to him and he came over to us. Lizbeth was excited to have company and I suppose she seemed fiercer than usual. But eventually I convinced him to extend his hand so she could lick it.

  I could hardly see him, the night had become so dark, but I perceived he wore a short-sleeved sports shirt. He had no coat and no bag. He shuddered.

  His name was Mike. He was not drunk and did not seem crazy. As Lizbeth and I would not fit in a zipped sleeping bag I had laid the bags open as if they were blankets. There was room for Mike if he wanted to stay the night with us.

  Mike resisted this suggestion at first. He said he would get a ride before it got much colder. But his bravado evaporated quickly once he discovered he was shivering too hard to light a cigarette. He started to say he would be back if he did not get a ride soon, but he seemed to realize how ridiculous he sounded. “Shit,” he said, “it’s so dark they won’t even see me.”

  Lizbeth had crawled back under the covers and the hardest part of rearranging the bedding was dislodging her. After I had spread out the bedding, Lizbeth and I c
rawled back in. Mike held back a moment. Then he pulled off his boots and dropped his pants and got under the covers too.

  We talked, as the hour was early. Mike’s story was that he was the only one working in a household of many young people and had finally had enough of it. A domestic dispute would explain his taking to the road with no gear. If it were so, his temper might return and he might decide not to leave after all. When I suggested this, he said the house he left was in San Antonio. He had hitchhiked all day and not thought of its getting cold at night.

  He asked me if there were a Salvation Army in Junction. I did not know. He said he might try to get a coat in the morning. Otherwise he had no plans. He would go to L.A. or San Diego however the rides worked out. He did not really care. He would be starting from scratch wherever he went. We agreed to stop talking and to try to sleep.

  Having offered Mike the protection of my bedroll for the night, I felt it would be ignoble to make a pass at him. I was afraid that if he refused me he would feel obliged also to leave. I might have chanced that if he had been been properly dressed to withstand the cold. Yet high resolve had little chance against my proximity to his young virility and his proximity to my warmth. As a tacit compromise, first I, then he, masturbated barracks-style—that is, each as the other pretended to be asleep. Perhaps this compromise was best, for although whenever I woke I found his arms around me, the following day he offered up various, apparently gratuitous, homophobic remarks.

  About 2:00 A.M. I was awakened by distant gunfire. From the hoots and hollers I deduced the gunfire was only the natives saluting Saturday night. I fell asleep again.

  I woke first in the morning. Lizbeth stayed abed. I walked east toward the underpass, looking back to see if Lizbeth had noticed I was up. I went to a restaurant at the intersection and got two carry-out coffees. I would never have got back without spilling the coffee if Lizbeth had come. As I got near the bedroll, Lizbeth got up to greet me. Mike remained a lump in the covers. He had put on his pants. I spoke, getting nothing coherent from him until I mentioned the coffee. He sat up. I saw his face in light for the first time. Mike was such a ringer for John Travolta—the younger, TV John Travolta—that any other description would be pointless. Stupidly I remarked on the resemblance immediately.