Travels with Lizbeth Read online

  Perhaps Frost never intended to see me again after he paid me for my first script. I think it more likely that he did plan on a second picture and did want me to write it, although I expect he made the prospects sound more promising than he knew them to be. I think his backers had some bad news for him when he reported to them. At any rate, it was quite awhile before he made another picture that I know about.

  I had not eaten in several days and was running low on water. Whatever Frost intended, I had to move on.

  * * *

  FRIDAY MORNING WE remained in the fire zone until after ten o’clock. Lizbeth drank the last of our water. I packed up our things. As we passed Jack’s apartment I buzzed again and got more of the same story from Eugene. For what it was worth I told him I would mail the script whenever I could get it typed up.

  I estimated our chances of survival on the streets of L.A. as very slight. The punks did well enough, but they were young, strong, and attractive. I had discovered another young man who camped in the fire zone and who fared not nearly so well.

  He was arrayed in tatters, his pants held up with a length of cord. In Austin he would have been well dressed at least, for he was a normal size and easily could have worn the good clothes the students cast away. His camp was a pallet of cardboard in a clump of tall grass that may have been a kind of bamboo I had never seen before. He had obviously been there a long time, and his camp was well concealed, but he had not found the means to improve his digs. From my observations of the mobs of homeless people—mostly young and white—I had seen in Santa Monica as I had gone about looking for work, and the black families I had seen living in the central plaza in Los Angeles, I was convinced that I would be better off returning to Austin.

  Lizbeth and I walked south on La Brea Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. Jack Frost had mentioned a grocery store there. I assumed that like all other grocery stores in Southern California, this one would have a machine that vended water, and of course it did. I filled our bottles. I wanted to be on the road to Austin that day.

  But as night fell, the farthest east we had got was the bridge where Santa Monica Boulevard passes over the Hollywood Freeway. We had got only one ride and that had lasted only a few blocks. Moreover I had no good idea of where we might find a ramp to I-10.

  We backtracked a couple of blocks to the gas station at Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue. I called Roy. I might have found help nearer, but I did not know it then.

  At Roy’s, Rufus, who had been less patient with my visit, said I might stay longer. Roy agreed, but this time he sounded just a tad less convincing. I was not eager to get on the road again, but I no longer had even the most implausible plan for finding a situation in Los Angeles. I was afraid I would become too comfortable at Roy’s. While I had some plans and prospects I could justify accepting and even requesting Roy’s help; he could afford it. But I could not justify becoming a drone and I did not want to tempt myself to try it.

  When I called from the gas station, I had in mind only getting to the interstate. I saw no reason to change that plan, but I had no objection to one more good night’s sleep and the chance of getting cleaned up before I hit the road again. Saturday morning I laundered my things and repacked. I accepted some more cans of Spam and, of course, provisions for Lizbeth. In the early afternoon Roy and Rufus drove us to the interstate.

  Lizbeth and I were on the road again.

  FIVE

  To Austin

  We had three or four rides in quick succession. One of these got me no farther down the road.

  A young man in a nice little car picked us up around sunset. We were hardly on the highway when he asked me whether I ever had sex with men. He drove us to a large, new home in—I would guess—the Riverside area. He said his lover was at work and that they had an open relationship. I would suppose this was so, for they obviously slept together in one bedroom while the other bedroom was reserved for sexual guests, with a plastic mattress protector under the sheets and various sexual appliances in and on the bedside table. For all of these provisions, I could not find a condom. I would have used one, if I had found it.

  Aside from a couple of unsatisfactory daytime assignations with a young man who lived across the street from Roy and Rufus—and the rather pitiful five-dollar trick I had turned on the highway as we traveled west—I was sexually starved. I could not even remember the last time I was in a real bed with someone. Considering those circumstances I thought I did rather well, but I gathered it went rather too quickly for my host.

  Afterward I discovered a stack of magazines in the living room. My stories were in almost all the magazines. I hope my host did have an open relationship with his lover, because I could not resist signing the stories. Although his home was considerably east of the ramp at which he had picked us up, the young man insisted on returning me to that ramp. I suppose he wanted to prevent my returning to the house, for he had told me that he was going to work and that his lover would not return for several more hours.

  I was much encouraged, although it was long after dark and Lizbeth and I were still in the midst of the Southern California version of civilization.

  At the same ramp we were picked up by some college boys in a small nearly new pickup. They were on their way to Palm Springs for spring break. Lizbeth and I were accommodated in the bed of the pickup, where I was given the task of fishing in an ice chest for beer. The boys suggested I continue to Palm Springs with them, but I got out where the road to Palm Springs left I-10.

  The hour was then very late, but I decided to try hitchhiking awhile longer, for I supposed some drivers would make a point of crossing the worst of the desert at night. Before long a very small sports car stopped. Packing Lizbeth and the gear into the space behind the seat proved challenging. I do not believe the driver was drunk, but he clearly was not all there, either. The speedometer only went to 100 or a 120, but when we hit the highway the needle moved as far as it could to the right and stayed there.

  The driver’s story was that he was engaged in an over-the-highway race. Sometimes he described this as a one-on-one wager. At other times this was an underground competition with a large purse and dozens of competitors. Besides the evidence that this was a lie, in that he never told it twice the same, the driver wasted several minutes in stopping to pick us up and our mass would be a considerable factor if the race was the near thing our driver said it was.

  I have said I am not a good rider. And I am not. But on the dark straightaways through the desert, even with the strong crosswinds and the blowing dust, the speed did not bother me. What did bother me was that our driver allowed himself to be boxed in when we approached semitrailers traveling abreast. He could not, of course, make any better time than the trucks until one of them gave way. Several times we ran for many miles with the hood of the sports car actually under the overhang of the rear of a semitrailer. No driving skill a human being may possess would have done any good if the truck ahead had braked for any reason. Very simply, it was highway Russian roulette.

  I was terrified.

  Dallas Matsen had scared me because his judgment of what he could make his vehicle do differed from my own estimate of his abilities. But it was a matter of judgment. With the driver of the sports car, it was only a matter of chance whether we lived or died.

  Perhaps I flinched too visibly. Perhaps he meant from the very first to strand me. He put us out at the Joshua Tree crossover. Although this was by far the most isolated and desolate place Lizbeth and I had yet landed, I thought we were lucky to be alive. I noticed the driver took the crossover and returned to the west rather than continuing his imaginary race to Blythe.

  From the earthwork at the southern end of the crossover I could see a very great distance in all directions. I saw no artificial lights at all. Clearly our travels had come to an end for the night. I thought we would have great difficulty in the morning. But I had profited from our experience in Tucson. I would worry about tomorrow tomorrow. I picked a spot and we
went to sleep.

  * * *

  I WAS ALARMED by how quickly Lizbeth and I went through the six liters of water I was carrying.

  As might be expected of an Easter forenoon, there was little traffic of any kind. I was concerned as I poured the last of our water into Lizbeth’s dish. Her dish was a plastic bowl. I had punched a hole in its lip so that it could be tethered to the rest of our gear and would follow us if we had to run after a ride.

  I could form no suitable plan. My survey of the night before had revealed no evidence of habitation in any direction. Were we to walk, I knew we should stick to the road, but walking in the daytime seemed more likely to make things worse. In any event, we got a ride before I could think much further, and considering that California had lost an hour in the night to daylight savings time, perhaps this ride came much sooner than anyone could expect.

  It was a beat-up panel truck of just the sort I expected to stop for us. The driver was a slender man, balding although he was several years younger than I. He had with him his son who was knee-biting high and perhaps five years of age. The child alternated between torturing Lizbeth and being terrified of her. Lizbeth had no previous experience with children, but she was a paragon, yipping once or twice for rescue and moaning in exasperation, but never snapping or growling.

  The story was that it was the father’s turn at custody. I envisioned a scene of wild rejoicing at the mother’s household.

  Fortunately we sometimes had respite as the child was able for short periods of time to amuse himself by maiming chocolate bunnies and mutilating toy chicks from his Easter basket. I became convinced that these behaviors did not represent the child’s deep emotional scarring at being the product of a broken home, nor were they the artifacts of abuse, but rather enacted the child’s self-realization that he was a spoiled, undersocialized, little monster.

  The driver offered me soft drinks from the ice chest and I refreshed myself with Sprite while Lizbeth got water from the melting ice. The driver never said how far he was going. The panel truck contained the tools of several trades. From his spare remarks, I gathered the driver was an itinerant contractor.

  At the first stop I filled my water bottles. After several oblique inquiries I still had not discovered how long this ride might last. Lizbeth then refused to get in the back with the child, and although it became quite warm there, she rode the rest of the way curled up under my legs. That very much frustrated the child, who was reduced to trying to poke at her with sticks and soda straws whenever the father and I were distracted.

  We stopped at a number of flea markets. The flea markets were usually some distance from the highway and I never recognized any sign indicating their presence. The driver just knew where they were. Several of them seemed to have sprung up from the desert sand. But others were better organized, with portable toilets and electrical rigging of a temporary and dangerous appearance.

  Much of the merchandise was trash, the sort of things one throws away before having a garage sale. Weapons, mostly knives, and rocks were the staple stock of the more prosperous-looking vendors. Dickering was de rigueur. I was astonished at the prices the rock specimens brought and even more so at the theoretical prices on their tags. Being rather deliberately out of touch with New Age mysticism, I did not appreciate the new demand for natural crystals.

  The desert flea markets were clearly institutions of an alien culture, one I wished I had investigated more closely. The trade in Nazi memorabilia was especially brisk. My driver told me that automatic weapons, mortars, and a considerable variety of ordnance were usually available at these gatherings upon discreet inquiry, and of course no records were kept. Moreover, the vendors and the customers were entirely white. Not many blacks reside in this part of the country, but the utter absence of brown-skinned aboriginal people struck me as remarkable. Indeed, there was not a great variety of European stocks, for almost everyone seemed to be Scots-Irish. These sinister indications aside, I had a deep sense of cultural difference, as if I were not quite absorbing what was going on around me.

  The child, however, was not likewise inhibited. As we approached a flea market, while it remained to me a tiny blur on the horizon, he would begin shouting, “Buy me! Buy me!” Most vendors had two-bit boxes filled with mangy stuffed animals and tooth-marked rubber and plastic things. The child could not get enough of these. Books, the mainstay of Austin garage sales, were rare in the Arizona flea markets. Occasionally there was a small box of two-dozen volumes of mass-market paperbacks—dog-eared, much-read tomes by Danielle Steele and Louis L’Amour. No doubt Arizona readers cannot bear to part with more substantial fare.

  We circumvented Phoenix on roads that were little more than dry ruts. These took us through open range, and only then did I realize what open range was. There were no fences. Livestock wandered about freely, quite oblivious to traffic.

  As we got on the interstate again and put the last of Phoenix behind us, I began to have a horrible suspicion. My worst fears were realized, for when we reached Tucson, Lizbeth and I were put out somewhere not far from the Miracle Mile. Before so very long we were picked up by three Chicano boys, locals who were cruising around on a Sunday afternoon. We rode around for about an hour. At times we got quite far from the highway.

  My rollbag was new and the camouflage backpack I had persuaded Rufus to give me was in good shape. All my clothes were new, and I was still relatively neat and clean. I wondered whether I appeared a bit too affluent. Slowly I was reassured that the boys meant no harm, but they did propose, quite without premeditation, I think, to strand me far from the highway.

  In no bargaining position I simply insisted on being returned to the highway. This the boys did, not graciously, but as if they had not realized I was utterly at their mercy. For all of that, this proved to be a valuable ride. We reached the south of town and we would not have to walk on the highway ramp to cross the gorge.

  Not much daylight was left, but I stationed myself near an on ramp at a busy intersection. Just at sunset a young woman in a little car pulled over. I could not believe she was stopping for us, and I continued to face the traffic. When she had pulled abreast of us, she rolled down her window. She said she was alone and could not offer us a ride, but she wanted us to have something. She handed a wad of currency out the window. I thanked her profusely and all the more sincerely because she made no explicit religious reference in her little speech.

  When she was gone I pulled the money out of my pocket and counted it: fourteen dollars. I wondered if I had not judged Tucson too severely. I could not really complain of indifference, for indifference is everywhere. I had been robbed only once. Against that were the couple who left the cold cuts, the couple who rescued us to Phoenix, the boys who had done me some good, however haphazardly, and this woman who gave me fourteen dollars. Yet my opinion of Tucson remained largely negative because of the many hostile indications from passersby who, if they could not help me and would not wish me well, could have at least remained as people elsewhere: indifferent. The brandishing of firearms, the pointless threat, the gratuitous insult: in these things I am grateful never to have discovered Tucson’s peer.

  The interchange was well lit, but shortly after the sun set I gathered up our gear, and Lizbeth and I walked south until I found a concealed spot. There we slept.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING I shaved using Lizbeth’s water dish. We were very near the truck stop where we were first let out in Tucson as we traveled west—and where we had been robbed. I recharged our water bottles at the service station there that catered to passenger vehicles.

  In the forenoon we had a couple of short rides of which I cannot complain. We were carried beyond the suburban traffic, exactly as I would have wanted of a ride out of any other town. That we were let out in desolate areas with no shade cannot be blamed on the drivers; there simply were no better places. I knocked the dust of Tucson off my shoes.

  At last a Chicano couple in a large, new red truck stopped. Th
ey already had one rider in the bed of the truck and he was quite afraid of Lizbeth at first. He told me he had no idea how far this ride was going. He had been drunk when he was picked up. He was not even sure where he had been picked up, but this had been a very long ride and the truck had stopped for many hitchhikers who had since reached their destinations and been let off. He himself was going to El Paso and he thought it possible the driver had said they would take him so far.

  Soon we came to an old man who had walked past Lizbeth and me earlier. The pickup stopped for him. He did not say a word to either of us although the other rider tried to converse with him in the sort of Spanish that omits all articles and renders every verb in the present infinitive.

  We were all put out rather suddenly in what seemed to me the middle of nowhere. Our hosts had become increasingly amorous as we traveled. They were indeed going to El Paso, but they were going to take a motel room first.

  After I hopped out of the truck, I stopped to adjust my gear and by the time I had done that, all evidence of the other hitchhikers was gone. The terrain was hilly. I climbed a little rise to look around. The interstate arced to the left. Secant to it was a road almost as broad that passed through a little town before it intersected the highway again. Although walking is often a waste of energy and sticking to the main road is the best policy, I decided to walk through town. We wanted water and the distance did not seem so great.

  Just after the fork there was a cattle guard—whether to keep livestock in or out, I never discovered. Lizbeth had to be carried over.

  We got nothing of Benson but water and good wishes—I even spent a little money there. But I found it to be a wonderful little town, quite undeserving of being surrounded by Arizona.

  At first I saw nothing that seemed to me very special: a new shopping center with a large grocery store. In the shade near the entrance to the store was a soda-vending machine, and wonder of wonders, attached to it was a free drinking fountain. I had not seen such a thing since I left Texas. Very rarely a free fountain could be found in the West, but this was the only time I found a fountain near a machine that took money. I filled our bottles and Lizbeth’s dish. I bought myself a Coke with the fifty cents I had planned to spend on water. I sat down with Lizbeth in the shade. We got no dirty looks and people stopped to admire Lizbeth and to pet her.