Travels with Lizbeth Read online

  When I returned to Jack Frost’s apartment I told Eugene about the interview.

  “They think you are a lush,” Eugene said.

  I knew Jack Frost had that opinion of all writers and that Frost had been observing me carefully for the signs, but I did not know why Eugene would think the private mental-health agency would share Frost’s prejudice.

  Eugene explained that in Southern California a driver’s license is considered such a necessity of life that the only believable explanation of an adult’s not having one is that it has been taken away for drunk driving. Like Sherlock Holmes, Eugene often made remarks that seemed at first astonishing but seemed less so once explained. I was far from convinced that the executive director of the mental-health agency had calculated as Eugene thought he had, but I was less certain he had not.

  At last Frost delivered his video to the distributors. They paid him and he paid me with a tip that would have been generous if it had been timely. Before I left Hollywood for Roy’s I tried to secure a mail drop but discovered I could not do so without a California ID. I found this very irksome, for one cannot get an ID without a mailing address. But as I still expected to get the job with the mental-health agency, I did not think the mail drop was essential. Back in La Puente, I found Lizbeth in the yard with Roy’s dogs. She sprang vertically into the air from all fours in a way that seemed to me physically impossible. I had left her for so long only once before, and then she had been in her puppyhood home with familiar things all around her. In the weeks past she had reached an accommodation with Roy’s dogs, but upon my return she became so jealous I was afraid she would start a dog fight before I got in the house.

  Inside, I hardly recognized Roy’s home. All the while I had been there, Roy’s house had a comfortable degree of bachelorly disorder. Grateful to be off the road, I had washed the dishes and ironed Roy’s shirts, picked up the newspapers and swept out a bit. But Rufus had made the place shine.

  Roy had driven all night to some desert city to pick Rufus up from the motel. Rufus’s car was not misplaced; it had been stolen, flipped, and burned. Over dinner I told Rufus and Roy that I planned to leave in a few days, after my interview with the mental-health agency. I supposed that Rufus’s burst of domestic energy reflected some genuine effort at reform and I was eager to be out of his way. Such a change is difficult to effect in even the best of circumstances, and Rufus, who was supposed to be my friend, seemed not entirely reconciled to my presence.

  After dinner Rufus asked Roy for money for beer. Roy made it obvious that he thought Rufus was drinking too much again. Nonetheless, Roy gave Rufus the money. I was very tired and I did not want to encourage Rufus’s drinking, but he insisted I walk with him to the beer store on the boulevard.

  When we got to the beer store, Rufus walked past it. We were not going to the beer store but, as it turned out, to a crack house.

  Actually it was not a house. This was the suburbs and the crack depot was an ordinary, or better than ordinary, apartment complex with a prominent location on the boulevard. The complex showed only a nine-foot red-brick wall to the street. There were two driveways with a sentry at each. The drives led to several rows of covered parking stalls and beyond these was another wall, this one with several door-shaped openings.

  We passed the first sentry without a word, but we were challenged as soon as we reached the parking area. This was a drive-through operation and walk-up business was neither expected nor encouraged. Three cars in the parking area appeared to be occupied by customers waiting for their orders to be filled by runners.

  I came to understand that Rufus had been here many times before, but no one on duty recognized him. Nonetheless, they seemed willing to deal with Rufus. Rufus looked like a drug addict. I, on the other hand, looked like a plainclothes cop. I was escorted through one of the door-shaped openings to a courtyard and was told to stay there. In fact I was told not to move.

  After a long time my escort came back for me and I was returned to the parking area. My escort returned to working the cars, for the operation had fallen behind while accommodating Rufus. Rufus and I left.

  The complex could not have contained less than thirty units in the four or five cubical buildings that surrounded the courtyards. The complex was not very old and was well maintained. The lawn and the plantings in the courtyard revealed an attention to detail that indicated regular professional care. Although the crack operation was as smooth and orderly as any such enterprise could be, I could not help wondering what life might be like for the other tenants of the complex and who the other tenants might be. As soon as we were off the well-lit main boulevard, Rufus pulled a small glass pipe out of the pocket of his jacket and showed me the five-dollar rock he had bought. He had told me we were going for dope, by which I first thought he meant marijuana. I knew we had not visited any neighborhood pot dealer, but until he pulled out the rock I was not sure what Rufus had got.

  Rufus’s five-dollar rock was the size of a baby pea. I began to think that crack was not as cheap as television news stories had led me to believe. I knew five dollars’ worth of powder cocaine was hardly enough to be seen with the naked eye. But Rufus largely disposed of his rock in the time it took for us to walk the four or five blocks to Roy’s. As the euphoric effects on Rufus seemed especially short-lived, I estimated that one could easily spend as much on crack as on powder cocaine, and therefore the popularity of crack in the ghettoes was more a matter of availability than of price. Rufus admitted that he had spent most of his vacation money on crack: the better part of two thousand dollars in two days. He told me the gentlemen running the drive-through depot were Crips. I had noticed that they all wore the signal blue bandanna.

  Rufus was not in fact drinking heavily again, but only let Roy think so. Indeed, as the euphoria of the crack wore off, Rufus became morose to the point of tearfulness, just as he did when he drank. I would have assumed he was drunk if I had not known otherwise. But Rufus got to this point in a matter of minutes with crack whereas it would have taken him several hours of hard drinking to reach the same state with alcohol, and there would have been plenty of empty bottles and cans around if Rufus had been drinking. So I do not know whether Roy was fooled.

  I went for the interview at the private mental-health agency. The art director had no questions at all for me, which seemed either a very good sign or a very bad one. I explained that I had made enough money to buy eyeglasses and had arranged to borrow a car in which to take the driving test. But if I bought the eyeglasses I would be flat broke and so I dared not order them unless the agency was committed to hiring me.

  The executive director told me that I could consider the job mine and that I should get the glasses.

  The next day I again took the RTD into Los Angeles. When I reached the office where I was to have my eyes examined, I felt uneasy. I decided to call the agency once more. I looked about for a pay phone. By this time I had learned to go into a bar when I wanted to use a phone. Unlike the phones on the streets, phones in bars usually had all of their parts and were in working order. And in even the noisiest bar it was easier to hear a telephone conversation than it was on the street.

  The receptionist at the agency remembered me. I told him I was in Hollywood to have my spectacles made and had only called to check in. He told me to hold on. Sure enough, the executive director had something to tell me. The art director had vetoed my appointment.

  “Well, it’s a lucky thing I discovered this before I expended the last of my resources,” I said. I was disappointed not to get the job. But I was angry that the executive director, who knew I was about to spend the rest of my money according to his assurances and who must have known the art director’s position very soon after the interview had been concluded, had not bothered to call me with this news. I strained to remain civil.

  As the conversation closed, almost as an afterthought, he asked me where I was calling from. “A bar,” I said. Surely he had heard the pinball machines in the background an
yway.

  I supposed Eugene had been right. They had thought I was a lush. And now they would congratulate each other on not hiring me. “Told you so,” I imagined one would say to the other, “he called from a bar.” But what would the executive director have said to me if I had spent the last of my money for the glasses and the driver’s license and had shown up at the agency expecting to go to work?

  I was reminded of a saying I had heard once: Little boys squash ants in fun, but the ants die in earnest. So the executive director had urged me to get the glasses, and once he knew the glasses would do me no good, he had not bothered to inform me, for the price of a pair of eyeglasses was nothing to him.

  The only hope I had was to write the script for Jack Frost’s next picture. Frost had described what he wanted in great detail and had acted as if it were a given that I would write it. But I knew it suited his purpose at the time to hold out the promise of more work. Naïf though I was, I knew it was speculation to work on the script, but I had no better prospect.

  I took the RTD back to La Puente and bought a rollbag and another pair of jeans.

  * * *

  LIZBETH AND I walked to California Highway 39 two blocks at a time. It was a warm weekday in late March.

  The size of my new red rollbag had encouraged me to overpack. Although it would have saved me much pain on the road, I never learned to travel lightly enough.

  I did not intend to return to Roy’s. I had packed everything, and as I packed, everything had not seemed like much: a couple of pairs of jeans, a few shirts and underwear, writing pads and pens, a copy of Syd Field’s Screenplay I had bought in West Hollywood, a couple of cans of Spam for myself, a large beach towel Rufus reluctantly let me have, and the ragged bedspread I had been given in Tucson.

  In anticipation of buying a new wardrobe with his payment from the video distributors, Jack Frost weeded out his closet while I was at his apartment. I am very large, but Jack was even larger. He kept trying to give me his cast-off clothing, for it seemed especially to please him to patronize me in this way. Most of Jack’s clothes were enormous on me and too dressy for someone of my station, but I would have accepted more if I had any hope of keeping it.

  I kept a pair of running shoes that Jack could not have worn more than once or twice and a down jacket that he discarded because of a very small rip at one of the pockets. I would wear the shoes until they fell apart, and for a long time I had nothing so valuable as the jacket.

  Most of the weight I carried as we left Roy’s was dog food and water. I had learned my lesson and never again went in arid country with less than a gallon of water.

  The rollbag was a new kind of mistake. All of its weight depended from its one shoulder strap. However well I padded the strap, it dug into my shoulder. I learned to shift the strap from shoulder to shoulder as I walked, a procedure complicated by Lizbeth’s utter ignorance of the heel command. Although I never traveled with an adequate frame backpack, I am now convinced that is what I always wanted.

  Where private yards backed up to the noise-abatement walls along the boulevard, branches of orange trees spread over the walls and the walk was spotted with dropped, decaying fruit. I was told this fruit was too hard and bitter to be edible, but I did not verify this. The fruit on the trees looked as wholesome as any I had tried in the Rio Grande valley.

  According to my map, California 39 ran north into the national forest. When we reached the highway, the intersection was occupied by a shopping center, but a few hundred yards north I found a place to stand on a broad grassy shoulder. I stuck out my thumb.

  We were there several hours. For once Lizbeth did exactly as I wanted and lay on the rollbag in front of me so that she was clearly visible to any driver who might consider stopping.

  A young woman, alone in a beat-up yellow Datsun, stopped for us. She said she worked in a veterinarian’s office, so I attribute this ride to Lizbeth.

  The driver wanted to proselytize on a text of not giving bones to dogs.

  I had always avoided giving Lizbeth chicken. When in the press of necessity Lizbeth did have chicken, she never had any trouble with it, and she is not a dainty eater. I suspected the supposed dangers of chicken bones were more of the stuff of fable.

  But no. My driver did not mean merely that a dog should not have chicken bones. She meant that dogs should not have any bones at all.

  I pictured the many hours of pleasure that Lizbeth could derive from a beef rib. She would light into it with all the radiant enjoyment of doing what she was born to do. When the good had been had of it, she kept the bone and on occasion I found her going through her collection as an old woman goes through a family photo album. I nodded politely at our driver’s remarks. But, I thought, no one had been around to tell cavemen not to throw bones to their cavedogs, and Lizbeth herself was good evidence that the cavedogs survived. The driver asked if Lizbeth was spayed.

  Yes, she was. I can hardly imagine how much more exciting our adventures might have been had I tried to travel with a bitch in heat.

  I asked the driver about heartworms. By Texas standards the mosquito season was near at hand. I had been worried because Lizbeth’s heartworm prophylactic had been stolen with the rest of our gear in Tucson. I had asked Roy, but he had never heard anything about heartworms. Our driver said she had heard of a case or two of heartworms, but had never seen one. That gave me hope that heartworms were not endemic to the area.

  That settled all the pending dog business.

  I explained that I was planning to camp in the national forest while I wrote a script for an adult video. This my driver took in stride. To write adult videos in Southern California is rather analogous to being a bankruptcy lawyer in Austin or an undertaker elsewhere. It was an essential line of work, even if not everyone would desire it as an occupation.

  She asked whether I had decided which foothill I would camp on. Only then did I realize that the massive rocks looming ahead of us were foothills. They were not the mountains. I was awestruck.

  My driver warned that gangs of desperadoes of various kinds were holed up in the wilderness, quite beyond the reach of the law. The banditos would surely kill an intruder, and indeed the intruder would be lucky who was no worse than murdered.

  The L.A. area was then fixated with the belief that satanic death cults from Mexico were rampant. From time to time juvenile delinquents in the suburbs would mutilate a house cat, or something of the sort, and would leave to be discovered with the remains such symbols and indications as seemed to them to be satanic. This sort of thing was easy pickings for the evening news.

  Southern California is in reality queer, but as it is pictured by its own local evening-news programs, it is positively fantastic.

  In Azusa, California 39 split into opposing one-way streets. Going out of her way, our driver took us to the north end of town where a convenience store was lodged in the triangle formed by the lanes rejoining.

  I still had money in my pocket and I bought a very large fountain drink at the store. I had recharged our water bottles just before we got the ride and I did not want to break into them. Finding no other source of water, I scooped the ice out of the drink and gave it to Lizbeth. By my map, all to the north of where we stood was national forest. Yet up the road to the right was an extensive development of townhouse condos, both occupied and under construction. I had learned that the foothills would appear nearer than they were in fact, but I still estimated that they were within walking distance.

  I drank slowly and watched the customers at the convenience store. To this day I have the impression that people throughout Southern California are especially attractive. I expected as much in Hollywood, where several generations of the most attractive people in the country have gathered in hopes of careers in the movies. But it seemed to me there were disproportionate numbers of beautiful people throughout the region. Late in the afternoon Lizbeth and I made our move.

  We walked on the right, past the condos. The land on the left, too, s
eemed to be in private hands, for there was a defunct tourist trap with propped-up flats painted to resemble, vaguely, an Old West village, and there was a lodge: Odd Fellows, as I recall.

  The road turned sharply to the right. There was a tourist information station of the forest service. The station was closed, but from its posted map, and for the fact of the station itself, I formed the opinion that we had entered the national forest. Yet as we walked on I found evidence to the contrary. On the right the road hugged a cliff, so closely in places that we had to cross the road and walk on the left. On the left, at regular intervals, were PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO PARKING, and NO TRESPASSING signs. Below the road was water that I call a creek, for so it seemed to me at the time, but as best I can determine now it was the San Gabriel River, or what was left of it, below a great reservoir.

  We walked on.

  The light was fading. I was weary of carrying the rollbag, and I had got as much mileage as I could expect of Lizbeth in one day. We were amid the foothills that I had estimated to be within walking distance, but I had not seen a possible campsite.

  Then the road turned sharply to the right, but the cliff on the right turned more sharply. In the armpit of this curve was an abandoned tavern. That seemed promising enough, at least for the night, but beyond the tavern there seemed to be a fairly dense residential development.

  On the left the road had a very wide gravel shoulder. Here were NO PARKING signs, but I had not seen a NO TRESPASSING sign for some time. A graded dirt road, wide enough for a vehicle on it to pass another, led downward and backward from the left shoulder. I was almost sure there were no dwellings between the road and the creek. I led Lizbeth down the graded road.

  I found footpaths cutting off toward the creek, and we went down one of these until I found a wide spot. By then it was dark. I made our bed. The wide spot was relatively level, but not level enough. This was the first time we tried to sleep on an incline. We were not very good at it and we never got better at it. In the course of the night we slid, scattering our bedroll, gear, and things from my pockets.