Travels with Lizbeth Page 8

  Lizbeth and I were not let out entirely off the beaten path. One side of the road was a large gravel parking area where empty beer bottles and cans had been gathered into five-foot piles. We were a little downstream of a recreational-vehicle park that was ersatz bucolic and as near, I suppose, to inoffensive as such things get. No one else was up and about, for it was still early on a Sunday morning. I could not find a way down to the river, but when I found a level spot out of plain sight, we lay down and slept.

  I awoke about noon. The parking area was nearly full of cars. I had only to follow the people to find the way to the river. Five or six trails led down to a dozen or more little clearings and each of these had a little concrete grill. All of the sites were occupied by the time we got to the river, and we sat on a flat rock out of the way while I worked on the script.

  Quite early in the afternoon the groups began to depart. I seized one of the areas at the end of a trail—so no one would have to pass through by Lizbeth. I accumulated a pile of old coals and lit these by using a piece of cardboard to carry hot coals from the fires that had been left burning. This was the only time we had a fire any place we camped. The water in the river was beautiful, clear, and cold and sweet smelling. Lizbeth drank it as it was. I was tempted to do the same, but owing to the RV park upstream, I boiled the water. I have had hepatitis B and have no desire to experience hepatitis A.

  We stayed by the river two nights and it was as pretty and peaceful a place as Lizbeth and I have been in our travels. The crowds did not come on the weekdays. I finished the script Monday. The river was very broad and shallow where we camped. I had seen people wade across it Sunday and I wanted to do the same. Lizbeth refused to cross with me, and wisely—for I missed my footing on several slippery rocks—she refused to let me carry her across. Instead she stood on the shore and barked at the water while I explored.

  Tuesday morning I read the script through once more by first light, and then I packed. I expected a ride would be hard to find on a weekday. I recalled we had passed a fork in the road shortly before we were let out at the parking area. I decided to walk back to it to take advantage of whatever additional traffic might come from the other fork. When we reached the fork, however, there was a NO HITCHHIKING sign.

  I had noticed the road was marked by eighth-of-a-mile markers. We walked another mile and a half without encountering another NO HITCHHIKING sign. As always I was concerned that any confrontation with the law, whether serious or not, might result in Lizbeth’s being taken from me and put to death. But I felt we had given the sign a respectful berth. I looked for a wide spot on the shoulder. At last the shoulder expanded and there was another large graveled area. Here was a very small building entirely surrounded by a chain-link fence that was topped with concertina wire. This seemed to me to be a telephone switching station. The fence bore NO LOITERING signs. These did not impress me as being official. In any event, I was by then disgusted. I set the gear down as far as I could away from the building while remaining in a position to take advantage of this stopping place for any car that might want to give us a ride.

  After a couple of hours we had been passed by no more than a dozen cars.

  At last a man in a pickup stopped and signaled me to get in the back. Lizbeth was still lashed to the gear—it had become my habit to do this whenever we stopped. I boosted her and the gear together into the bed of the pickup. As I got a foot up on the bumper, the truck pulled away. I almost fell on my face. Lizbeth was carried away; her paws up on the tailgate, she looked back at me until the truck was out of sight.

  I was dumbfounded. After a second or two I shouted “Hey!” several times. The driver could not hear me or would not stop, I did not know which. I was afraid Lizbeth would try to leap off the truck. That would certainly be the end of her. Helpless, I watched until the truck was out of sight. I did not know whether the driver had meant to do this, perhaps from pure meanness or to see what I might have in my gear. The example of Tucson suggested either motive or both. Of course I was unconcerned about the gear. The driver’s timing argued for intent—in another fraction of a second I would have had a leg over the tailgate. And the worst of it was the very puzzled way Lizbeth had looked back at me.

  I sat down on the gravel, nearly in the road, limp and numb.

  After what seemed like a very long time, the truck came back. I was not sure it was the same truck as it approached. It had, after all, been a mistake. The driver had heard me chunk Lizbeth and the gear into the bed of the truck and had not looked back, assuming I was in the truck as well.

  The driver opened the sliding window at the back of the cab and we shouted back and forth as we went, although with Lizbeth on my lap I was too overcome to be a fit conversationalist for many miles. The driver had been fishing and had caught nothing.

  I wondered then about the water Lizbeth and I had been drinking, for I realized I had seen no fish and that the water was so clear I would have seen any fish there were. The driver said I was very lucky he had picked me up. I had my doubts on that score. The driver explained that the NO HITCHHIKING signs were on account of a prison facility in the area. What is more, in my denim workshirt and blue jeans I was attired exactly as the prisoners were, save that their jeans had one white hip pocket, a difference bound to be lost on passing motorists as I faced them with my thumb out.

  The drivers would not have calculated the likelihood of an escaping prisoner having acquired a dog and red rollbag. I wonder yet whether our driver had taken his opportunity to examine Lizbeth and my gear. He certainly was gone long enough to have done so.

  We were let out on I-210, which runs north of I-10 and roughly parallel to it. We were picked up by a Latin man in a battered van. He spoke no more English than I spoke Spanish—I use the term Latin where I am not certain of a more specific word; the numbers of Central Americans found throughout the Southwest are now so large that Spanish-speakers cannot be assumed to be Mexicans or Chicanos. This was a fairly long ride and the driver let us out in a many-leveled freeway interchange.

  I did not want to hitchhike there, for it was certainly dangerous and most likely illegal. But the driver had understood my destination was Hollywood and had seemed to indicate I needed to change roads here. At any rate, the interchange was fenced in. I tied Lizbeth and the gear in a shady spot. Even unencumbered I did not find a way out for more than an hour.

  When we emerged from the interchange we were on another of the wide suburban strips. In retrospect I have come to believe we were in Pasadena. I found what I was nearly sure was the ramp we wanted, but there was no room for us to stand on it. I had to stand on the strip and to try to indicate I wanted on the ramp. We were there for several hours and it was especially frustrating because those who wanted on the ramp had to slow to turn onto it, and this gave me the impression we had a ride several times when we did not.

  A gray-haired lady stopped. I knew this could not be a ride, but I thought it might be a handout. Instead she said she was looking for a missing dog. Obviously the missing dog could not have been her own, for she continued to question me closely in spite of her being near enough to see Lizbeth clearly. Having thought once that day that I had lost Lizbeth, I was unnerved by this interview. The woman still seemed suspicious even as she drove away.

  I do not see how I could have thought the owner of the missing dog might appear and try to claim Lizbeth, nor do I think I really thought precisely that. But I was beginning to expect the worst of every situation and I had a strong impulse to flee with Lizbeth.

  I do not remember much about the ride that took us to Griffith Park, except that I was glad to get it. We were let out near the tennis courts at rush hour.

  I found pay phones at the tennis courts and used Billy’s credit card number to call Jack Frost’s apartment several times. Eventually Eugene picked up the phone and told me Jack was out of town, but that he might return the next day. I got the impression that Eugene was not being entirely frank with me.

  Hitchhi
king appeared out of the question in rush hour. Lizbeth and I walked down Los Feliz. Here were some of the grandest mansions I had ever seen, but many of them were going to seed. I supposed no one who could afford one of these places would want it. The houses were too near the central city. They would require large staffs, and security would be difficult to provide at any price.

  After dark we came to a sharp curve that turned us onto Western Avenue. I knew that many of the streets north of Hollywood Boulevard were cut off by hills. I did not much want to negotiate Hollywood Boulevard with Lizbeth and the gear, but I did not want to wander around in the hills after dark. I was concerned that Lizbeth might misbehave in the crowds, but once I saw what the neighborhood of Western Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard was like, I was glad to have her with me.

  Where the Hollywood Freeway passes under Hollywood Boulevard I found a weedy spot on a corner and sat down with Lizbeth on the gear. I had walked my limit with the gear and thereafter we moved at intervals from one bench at a bus stop to another. Lizbeth, on the other hand, was still feeling frisky because for most of the distance we had covered she had walked on sidewalks or grass.

  By and by a prostitute came along, tears streaking her makeup, and forced two dollars on me. She said her little dog had been lost or stolen and she wanted me to buy Lizbeth something to eat with the money.

  Although a considerable part of the weight I had been bearing was dog food, I formulated in that moment a new corollary to my existing policy of not stealing and not panhandling: I would not refuse anything that was offered to me.

  Lizbeth displayed a talent for hustling. In this instance she surpassed herself—a wan look, a few feeble twitches of the tail, a languid, tentative lick. I found it difficult to keep from laughing. Lizbeth had never been taught this. At home she had been demanding if her food or water was overlooked. She had been forbidden to beg while people ate, but attended meals with quiet alertness, as she was allowed to have the scraps and lick the plates.

  Her new set of behaviors I called the Dying Dog Routine. It is a wonder passersby who have seen it have not lynched me for cruelty to animals. I suppose one of her progenitors began working up this routine dog-eons ago and natural selection has preserved the bits most likely to affect human sympathy.

  Of course as soon as the prostitute walked away, Lizbeth was up and about and in high spirits.

  We continued west on Hollywood Boulevard. At one of the benches where we stopped, a wino—gray stubble on his face, clothes slept in, bottle in a brown paper sack—gave me a dollar to buy food for the dog. Lizbeth was shameless.

  La Brea Avenue was the last convenient stopping place before we had to climb the hill to reach the fire zone. We rested there for a long time. I wanted to make the hill all in one move because the way was lined with fashionable apartment buildings and our lingering there might have aroused suspicion. On Hollywood Boulevard, we did not look so out of place.

  I found no place to tie Lizbeth and I took her with me across the boulevard to a liquor store. There I tied her to the gear and went in to buy cigarettes. I worried because all of the gear would really only slow Lizbeth down if she decided to light out after a skateboarder or a cat or something of that nature. In the liquor store I had to wait in line. Sure enough, a man who had not realized Lizbeth was affixed to my bags tried to grab one of them. Lizbeth snarled. I left my place in line and went outside where I saw the man fleeing down the boulevard. Encumbered by the gear, Lizbeth had managed to pursue him for only twenty yards. After I put things in order I went back into the store for my cigarettes and this time no one messed with the gear or Lizbeth.

  I had no qualm about spending the money on cigarettes. The wino and the prostitute had meant for Lizbeth to eat, and eat she would.

  We returned to the north side of the boulevard and remained there for more than an hour. About a half-dozen young men were drinking in the shadows near the intersection of La Brea and Hollywood. They were all dressed in the Nazi-punk attire that seemed to be fashionable among some young people. One at a time they stood on the corner, where they would get picked up quickly. I was told later that local Johns prefer the hustlers on Santa Monica Boulevard and consider the trade on Hollywood Boulevard to be fit only for tourists. Perhaps that is so. None of the young men was gone for very long.

  When any of them returned, he went to the liquor store and brought a bottle back to the group. Whenever the corner was unoccupied for more than a few minutes some little discussion would arise in the group—over whose turn it was, I suppose—and eventually, with an obscene gesture for his comrades, someone would leave the group and take up his station at the corner. Generally the bottle stayed in the group, but once, on his way to the corner, one of the young men offered me the last swallows in a bottle, which I declined. He killed the bottle himself and chucked it into an empty parking lot.

  Eventually the group broke up, the punks wandering off one at a time. By the time none was left, the hour was very late. Lizbeth and I went up the hill.

  I was quite breathless when we reached the fire zone. When we got to it the avenue ended and there were barricades. We stepped over a six-inch-wide trench. Then there was a road that had been paved once.

  We went up the road about a hundred yards and then cut off. I began looking for a flat spot. The weeds were quite high and I had begun to trample down a bed for us when I saw something peculiar. Several stone steps led to a stone platform, perhaps ten feet wide and twenty feet long. All I could think was that this was the stage of an outdoor theater. That did not seem quite right, for the stonework was above the surrounding ground and not below it. I did not care what it was besides being a clean flat spot to lay our bedroll on. I could hear several rowdy parties, or perhaps just one and its echoes, but I fell rather quickly to sleep.

  * * *

  I AWOKE AT dawn, which was a good thing. I had got turned around in the weeds. I thought the stone platform was distant from the old road, but the contrary was the fact. Joggers and little old ladies walking their dogs came along shortly after first light. I cached the gear, and Lizbeth and I went exploring.

  The stone platform on which we had slept was once one of the porches of a house that had burned, although the rest of the ruins were so grown over that this was not at first apparent. There were ruins of many other grand places. At one, its chimney still standing, was a stone hearth, quite as large as the one in Citizen Kane.

  This is what a fire zone is: a burned-out area on a hillside where the danger of fire is reckoned to be so great that rebuilding is prohibited. The fire zone I was in was almost completely walled round, so far as I could tell. Sections of the wall varied in style and there were various kinds of more-or-less ornate gates with stout locks. I deduced then that the walling off of the fire zone was the sum of various private projects. Indeed, the trench we had stepped over the night before was for the foundation of yet another section of wall, perhaps the last section. Then the area would be a private park for those who had keys to the well-locked ornate gates.

  At a decent hour I brought Lizbeth and the gear down to the entrance of the fire zone and tied her and the gear to a tree there. Jack’s apartment was in the first building on the avenue and I could see Lizbeth and the gear as I stood at the call box of the apartment building.

  Eugene answered my buzz. He said Jack was still in San Francisco visiting another producer. As both Jack and Eugene were completely illiterate, I had done Jack’s filing while I was there, and from sorting through his documents, I knew the other producer whom Eugene named spoke for most of Jack Frost’s backers. Eugene said they were celebrating the completion of Frost’s picture, but I still thought Eugene was hiding something. Perhaps Frost was being called onto the carpet. Frost’s parking place could be seen through the automatic roll-down gate of the building’s garage. I verified that Frost’s car was gone and returned to the fire zone.

  Not far from the stone porch, but farther from the road, I found a terraced garden, quite overgrow
n and wild. One of the levels was waist-high from the next, and as this spot was concealed by vegetation, it seemed a convenient place to camp.

  I discovered the punks I had observed the night before, or some of them. They occupied a little stone building below. This structure was about twelve feet on a side, and although there was no evidence of pool equipment or a pool, I called it a pool house in my mind.

  The punks saw me and I saw them at various times. Once when I was away from my camp I heard Lizbeth snarl. I returned quickly to her, but I found nothing disturbed. Thereafter the punks did not come near my camp and would avoid a trail rather than confront Lizbeth. But the punks did not have a dog, so in their absence I inspected their digs.

  Perhaps the building had been no more than an ambitious garden shed. I found no plumbing or remains of electrical connections. The roof evidently had survived the fire, but since then had half rotted away. Swastikas had been spray-painted on all the walls. Whether six of the punks lived here or only three, the lot of them evidently slept en masse.

  One corner of the room was given over to an altar: pentagrams, small animal skulls, drippy candles, that sort of thing. In another corner was an enormous pile of plastic Big Mac and Egg McMuffin boxes. They drank whiskey; I found no beer or wine bottles. I was somewhat surprised not to find hypodermic needles and spoons. All the clothing was in one pile—mostly black jeans and morbid T-shirts. I supposed they all dressed from this common stock; those I had seen were of the same size—about six feet tall and 180 pounds.

  I checked with Eugene again in the evening. He assured me Jack Frost would be back the next day.

  The moon was nearly full that night and the punks partied loudly until just before dawn. I napped through most of the following day. When I went to Frost’s apartment again, I could see his car was back in its spot. But when I buzzed Eugene, he said Frost was still out of town. I mentioned the car. Eugene claimed a friend of Frost’s had driven it back.