The Drive Page 14

  ‘Go around that rock. Great. Watch out for those cactuses. Cacti, I guess. That’s it. Straight through that gap. We’re getting close now.’

  We came to an old rock formation. There were two hoodoos, sticking straight up like the legs of a giant who’d been buried upside down. Between the hoodoos the ground folded into a crevasse. We got out of the car. Our footsteps raised puffs of dust as we walked over. The crevasse was six or seven feet deep and wide enough to walk in, like a natural corridor.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘One of America’s secret places. Come on.’

  He led me down into the crevasse. The sides were steep and had a rich, ochre colour. Twenty yards along, the ground closed above us and the crevasse became a cave. It grew dark quickly. He’d brought his headlamp and he flicked it on. As he walked, the beam wobbled and bounced off the walls.

  ‘I wish I’d worn my visor,’ I said. It was still locked in my trunk.

  ‘You should have.’

  Our footsteps echoed off the stone in the enclosed space. The roof got lower, and lower, so that we had to stoop. The walls tightened around us, and I held out my hands to feel my way along. The rock was slick with secretions. He was humming to himself – an off-key tune I’d never heard. When I looked back, I couldn’t see the light of the entrance.

  ‘This is cool,’ I said, ‘but maybe we’ve gone far enough, eh?’

  He just kept walking.

  ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

  He turned around, so the headlamp shone in my face. ‘You said you trusted me.’

  ‘I don’t even know you.’

  ‘You don’t know yourself.’ He sounded angry. ‘That’s why you’re here.’

  He got on his hands and knees. There was a hole in the rock down there. He crawled into it. I was thinking, this is how assholes die. Assholes like us. Exploring underground caves, without proper equipment. But I got down and followed him, creeping along, hand over hand. The ground was wet and bits of shale dug into my palms. As we progressed, the tunnel got narrower and narrower, until we had to wriggle along on our elbows, army-style. He was about ten yards ahead of me. I could see his light up there. Then it went out.

  ‘Hello?’ I called.

  There was no answer. Just the sound of my own ragged breathing. I inched forward. It was completely black. I felt around blindly. The walls and roof of the tunnel were gone.

  ‘This is a darkness that has never seen the sun,’ a voice said. ‘Now stand up.’

  I did. I heard a click, and then there was light. It illuminated the ceiling of a cavern, arching overhead. The rock face was smooth and covered with figures, painted in red. There were animals that looked like deer, elk, and maybe buffalo. As the light flitted across them, their legs flickered and blurred, giving the impression of life. There were people, too – men in the middle of the hunt, with bows and spears, and women standing still. The bodies of the women were big-hipped and shaped like bells, or vessels. They seemed to brim with life.

  I gazed up, mouth agape, craning my neck until it ached.

  ‘If you have things to say,’ the hitcher said, ‘this is the place to say them.’

  He was cradling his headlamp in his hands, like a pearl. It lit up his face from below.

  ‘Things like what?’ I asked.

  ‘The things that go unsaid. That’s what this cave was for. The Natives brought young men here, to purge them of their sins and troubles, and prepare them for adulthood.’

  I nodded, pretending I understood.

  ‘We’ll try it. Together.’ He closed his eyes, took a dramatic breath, and declared into the dark, ‘I used to fantasise about making out with my aunt.’

  Then he opened his eyes and looked at me. Expectantly.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Was she super-hot or something?’

  He frowned. ‘No – you’re supposed to go next. It’s your turn.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  I thought for a second, and then said, ‘I once kicked my own cat, for no reason – and hurt her leg.’

  ‘I was in a gang. A biker gang.’

  ‘I still mooch money from my stepmom.’

  ‘I held up a liquor store at knifepoint.’

  Our voices bounced around off the walls, blending and blurring with one another.

  ‘My girlfriend cheated on me.’ It was the first time I’d said it aloud. The words just leapt out of my mouth, like a frog. ‘She cheated on me, so I imagined killing her.’

  ‘I walked out on my pregnant wife.’

  ‘I’m impotent. Ever since she cheated on me, I can’t get it up.’

  ‘I’ve got a son I’ve never met.’

  We went back and forth like that, working ourselves into a frenzy, trying to top each other’s transgressions. Then I came out with it. My trump card.

  ‘I shot a bald eagle.’

  Silence. He shone the light on me – so I had to shield my eyes.

  ‘You shot a bald eagle?’

  ‘It’s in my trunk.’

  ‘Wow. Okay.’

  We kept saying things for a while, but none really beat my eagle.

  The route back through the caves seemed to take a lot less time than going in. But then, that’s usually the case once you know the way and the mystery has evaporated.

  When we reached the car, the hitcher asked if he could see the eagle.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s kind of personal.’

  ‘Come on. I showed you my secret place.’

  That was true. I owed him. So I popped the trunk and opened the cooler. ‘Here she is,’ I said.

  The bird looked even bigger than I remembered, crammed into its coffin with both wings folded back. Its beak was open and its tongue stuck out, like a piece of pink taffy. The bags of ice had gone soft and plump, but hadn’t melted completely – they were still cold.

  We stood side by side, looking down at the bird.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ he asked.

  ‘I was thinking of burying it. Maybe giving it a proper ceremony or whatever.’

  He reached into the cooler and held his palm over the eagle – as if feeling for warmth, or sensing its aura.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said.

  chapter 36

  Our fire looked like a small nest, made out of twigs and sticks that we’d gathered from the surrounding desert. Flames fluttered in the nest and the coals at the bottom glowed orange, like magic eggs. Near dusk we’d parked and set up the hitcher’s tent behind a rocky outcrop, maybe fifty yards from the road. Then we’d dug ourselves a makeshift fire pit, and I’d got out my flat of road pops. I knew I’d need them to wash down this plan of his.

  ‘You sure it’s fresh enough?’ I asked.

  We were sitting cross-legged on either side of the fire, swilling beers and waiting for our meal to cook. The flames sputtered and crackled with bird fat.

  ‘I told you – I’ve eaten tons of roadkill. And you had this baby on ice.’

  He’d constructed a makeshift spit out of two forked branches. Stuck on the skewer between them was the eagle, plucked and feathered and slowly roasting. All the feathers lay in a bloody bundle over by the tent, along with the head and the claws, which we’d cut off.

  ‘I won’t be able to eat much.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty hungry. But you have to try some of it.’

  According to him, this was the only way I could make amends for what I’d done. He’d also said something about absorbing the eagle’s strength, or accepting it into me, or whatever – but you could tell he just really liked the idea of eating an eagle. Every so often, one of us would get up to rotate the bird on the spit. Then more juice would stream off into the flames, making them hiss.

  While we waited I asked, ‘Were you really in a gang?’

  ‘What’s said in the sacred cave,’ he said, ‘stays in the sacred cave.’

  I pointed at the spit-roast.

  ‘My eagle
didn’t.’

  ‘Okay. I was in a biker gang. My brother’s gang.’

  That was why this guy had looked familiar. He had the same features as the biker I’d seen up in Trevor – the one who’d seemed to recognise me.

  ‘Your brother’s gang isn’t called the Cobras, is it?’

  He was in the middle of turning the eagle. He stopped. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I keep seeing him. I think he’s got a beef with me.’

  He was so blown away by that, he had to sit back down and take a big drink. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking exactly the same thing: this proved his theory.

  ‘What a coincidence,’ I said.

  ‘A meaningful coincidence.’

  We looked at each other and said, ‘Synchronicity!’

  He asked why I thought his brother had a beef with me. I told him I wasn’t sure, but it was possible that I’d run into him back in Vancouver, and that we’d had a little altercation. When the hitcher heard that, he couldn’t believe I’d gotten off so easily.

  ‘No wonder my brother’s pissed,’ he said. ‘You better watch yourself.’

  ‘How can I do that?’

  ‘Just don’t mess with him – he’s got a gun.’

  ‘I’ve got a gun of my own.’

  We stared at each other in silence for a moment. Then one of the logs in the fire sort of exploded, sending sparks everywhere, and we both jumped – as if we expected his brother to appear out of the darkness. Afterwards we did the guy thing, where you laugh at yourself and act all tough and shrug it off.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, and stood up. ‘We ought to check on this bird.’

  I held the spit while he cut into the thigh with his penknife. The skin had gone brown and crispy, and the flesh inside was cooked through. He sawed off half a dozen thick slices, catching them on a tin plate, then transferred some to another plate for me. I only wanted a small portion. Actually, I didn’t really want any portion – but if I was going to take a break from my fast I figured eating eagle was the way to do it.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, taking a bite. ‘That’s good.’

  We ate with our hands. I picked up a small piece and blew on it to cool it off. The meat was dark and stringy. I chewed it cautiously, with a kind of reverence. It tasted a bit like turkey, only tougher. I swallowed maybe four or five mouthfuls. That was all I could manage. My stomach felt small as a walnut.

  I offered him my plate. ‘Want mine?’

  ‘You bet.’

  He took it from me and kept eating, shovelling fingerfuls into his mouth. When he finished, he got out a napkin and started wiping the grease off our plates.

  I asked, ‘Why did you quit your brother’s gang, anyways?’

  ‘I just got sick of all that macho bullshit. It’s not as if they really do anything, except drive around acting tough, and deal a bit of weed. They want to be like the Hell’s Angels, but they’re not. I should never have left her to go with them in the first place.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘I missed my own son’s birth.’

  ‘You could always go home. To see them again.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I will.’ He had his head down, still polishing the plates. ‘Just like sometimes you probably think you’ll forgive your girlfriend, and get back together with her.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And other times…’ He shrugged. ‘Lo que paso, paso.’

  I gazed at him through the flames, waiting for him to explain. He was finished with the plates. He put them aside, and tossed the napkin in the fire. It flared briefly and died out.

  He said, ‘What’s done is done.’

  After dinner we fooled around with my gun. It was kind of inevitable, considering we were two guys, half-cut, sitting around a campfire. He asked to see it, so I went to get it from the car. I checked the clip and safety and handed it over. He hefted it, testing the weight, and sighted along the barrel. He told me it was some kind of Glock.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, twirling it around his finger, ‘I haven’t shot a gun for a while.’

  ‘Have a try, if you want.’

  We were lounging in the dirt. He looked around for a target. There was an empty on the other side of the fire. From where he sat, he pointed the gun and casually squeezed off a round. The can popped up and spun into the air. As it came back down – just as it touched the ground – he shot it again. And again. He kept it dancing like that for five or six shots.

  ‘Nice shooting, Tex,’ I said.

  ‘Now check this out.’

  The can had landed on a clump of bunchgrass. He took aim and closed his eyes, shooting blind. For a second I actually believed he was going to do it. But the next bullet kicked up sand.

  ‘Nearly,’ he said.

  ‘That would have been so awesome.’

  He put the safety on, and handed the gun back to me.

  ‘My wife did that once. We used to go to the shooting range together, as a kind of date thing. One time she stepped up and said she was gonna try it blind. Bam. Bull’s eye.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Not for her it wasn’t.’

  ‘Only a woman could do that.’

  He nodded and cracked open another beer. The spray shot up into his face. ‘She wasn’t even a good shot normally. I mean, she was all right – for a chick. Not as good as me, or my brother. My brother’s insane. He practises all the time, at this gun range south of here.’ He twisted off his ring-pull and tossed it into the fire. ‘He loves luring people into having a shoot-out. He’ll get them to bet something, too. Just so he can win it from them.’

  ‘What a dipstick,’ I said.

  He took a swig of beer. ‘If he’s really got it in for you, I’d avoid him.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not gonna have any shoot-outs with him.’

  He started snickering. He was on his sixth or seventh beer. ‘The only way you’d ever beat him is by sheer blind luck.’

  ‘Totally.’ I laughed, giving him a high-five. ‘Like chick-luck.’

  By then the fire had started to sputter. To put out it out, we pissed on it. Not at the same time. He pissed on it first, then me. As we arranged our beds I could still smell our piss, steaming up from the stones. The ground beneath my sleeping bag felt hard and cold. The fire would have kept us warm, but we were both paranoid about starting a brushfire.

  We lay on our backs, gazing up. There was no moon, so the stars stood out in thick clumps, like splashes of spilled milk. The hitcher pointed to various constellations, and told me their names. I knew all the regular ones, like Orion and the Big Dipper, but he knew the more obscure ones: the Crab, the Archer, the Lion. He even knew one called the Eagle. Or pretended to know. Sometimes it was hard to tell with him.

  As we dozed off, I asked him, ‘Where are you going, anyways?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘San Francisco, eventually.’

  ‘Frisco’s overrated. I’m going to Sausalito.’

  I propped myself up on one elbow. I could see his shadow on the ground. ‘Is that far?’

  ‘Far enough.’

  He rolled over, turning his back on me. Our little bonding session was finished, apparently. I lay down again. I decided I wouldn’t say anything else to him, the prick.

  Then he said, ‘After tomorrow, I’ll go my own way.’

  ‘I don’t mind driving you.’

  ‘Yeah – but you know what they say about guests.’ He burped, deliberately loud. The smell lingered in the air. ‘They’re just like fish. After three days, they start to stink.’

  chapter 37

  I awoke with sore shoulders and numb toes. The sun was already up and so was the hitcher. He was in the process of dismantling his tent, which neither of us had slept in. I huddled in my sleeping bag as he folded up the poles, making them click and clack like giant chopsticks.

  Then he noticed me watching.

  ‘You could help, you know, instead of just lying the
re.’

  I got up to give him a hand. First I shook the dew off the fly, then I started rolling it.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, grabbing it from me, ‘the poles get rolled up inside the fly.’

  ‘They’ll still fit.’

  ‘I said they go inside.’

  Eventually I left him to it. I cleaned up the campsite instead. I kicked dirt over the fire pit, gathered up our empties, and stuffed all the eagle feathers in a bag. They felt soft and sumptuous as velvet. When I told him I was thinking of keeping them, he just snickered – as if that was the lamest idea in the world, even though he’d already taken the claws for himself.

  ‘Feathers might come in handy, okay?’ I said.

  ‘Handy as a handjob.’

  It was the same once we got back on the road. First he complained about me having my morning smoke, which hadn’t bothered him before. Then he found my bag of whipped cream canisters beneath his seat. He got one out and gawked at it. ‘Have you been huffing whippets?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘That’s kids’ stuff. If this were a real road trip, you’d be doing real drugs. I’m talking Fear and Loathing-type shit – ether and mescaline and acid.’

  ‘Nobody does acid any more.’

  He couldn’t argue with that. Outside, the first waves of morning light washed across the landscape. The cacti and yucca plants glowed coral-red, and the sandy ground glittered like a seabed.

  ‘Dawn is pretty incredible out here,’ I said.

  He yawned. ‘When you’ve seen one desert sunrise, you’ve seen them all.’

  ‘How long have you been on the road, anyways?’

  ‘How long have you been on the road?’

  I was getting so sick of that fucking trick – his little mimicking trick. ‘A while,’ I said.

  ‘Hah.’ He fiddled with the whipped cream canister, trying to pop the top. ‘Let me guess. You borrowed Daddy’s car to go on a little road trip. For how long? A whole week?’

  ‘It’s not my dad’s car. I rented it because I needed to get away.’