Backroads, v2

The troopers asked the bikers to take it easy on their way out, and after a while the herd filed out too and mounted their rockets; they roared back up the road they'd just come down, leaving the diner all but silent --except for the rattling air conditioner.

The place was a mess now; it looked like a bomb had gone off in there, and the girl, Mary, came out and looked it over and shook her head. I was still sitting by the air conditioner, map spread out over the table and looking for possible routes into the mountains ahead. I looked at her again; she was maybe thirty, thirty five, her sandy brown hair was short, almost too short, and she looked strong, almost muscular. Not quite feminine, not quite boyish. It seemed to me she comfortably inhabited the nether regions between two opposites. She looked content, if not exactly happy.

She came over to the table and sat down.

"Where you headed?"

"Nowhere in particular. East, I guess."

She looked out the front window, took on that faraway look that defines the joining of memory to borderline discontentment. "That your Wing?" she asked a minute later.

"Yup."

"Love the color," she said, and I could tell she meant it, too. "Kind of like a desert rose." She stared out the glass door at the bike, eyes full of daydreams. "Would be fun again; to just point and go wherever the road takes you. How long you been on the road?"

I looked down at my watch. "About six hours, give or take."

She laughed.

"I just got the bike, a couple of days ago. Have some time off; thought I'd ride up to the mountains."

"Stay on 12 and ride along the Snake and keep on to Missoula. Go north to Flathead, then up to Glacier. Take the highway over to St Mary's. Nice ride."

"Done it before?"

"Yeah, couple of times. You campin'?"

"That's the plan."

"Rain comin' this afternoon. Thunderstorms. Might want to find a good place to set up around four or so."

I have no idea why I said what I said next; it kind of caught me off-guard too.

"You want some help cleaning up this mess?"

She turned and looked at me, and it was like the first time she really saw me. A little smile passed across her face, like a cloud across a vast prairie, and her eyes grew soft and warm. "If you want. Sure."

We carried a load into the kitchen and she turned on the water, let it warm up and I bussed loads to her while she washed. We dried and I helped her put the clean stuff away, then we went out and cleaned off the tables. Afterwards I sat at the counter, folded maps and gathered my things and she brought me another Coke.

"On the house," she said.

"Gracias."

"Por nada."

I smiled. She smiled. I felt a hint of expectation in the air, and she leaned forward, kissed me lightly on the lips. I kissed her back. She liked that, and so did I. She leaned in to me; I took her and wrapped myself around her. She reached down, felt familiar places and sighed through our kiss. Her breath was sweet, her eyes full of mischief and suddenly too many nights drifting among songs best left unsung crossed between us, and I could feel our pulsing need filling the air inside that little diner with a steam of our own. We didn't say much, made no promises, but I heard the music, sure enough.

"Office in back," she whispered breathlessly, then she broke free, staggered to the front door and locked it, came and took my hand and led me through the kitchen and on into another world.

A desk, a chair, a little cot against one wall. I peeled shorts down slim, smooth legs and kissed her flat, fluttering stomach, her fingers slipped through my hair, urging me onward, downward. She sat back on the desk, spread her legs, held my head tightly when I found the center of her need. In the eye of her storm she paused, shook, cried and begged for more, and who was I to argue. She was a fine cook, and it was my firm intention to eat whatever she put in front of me.

+++++

She lived in a spare little house behind the diner. The place was neat, reflected an almost ascetic life, but I could immediately see she did not live alone.

"Don't worry about it," she said, and I didn't.

We made love, I mean love in the best, loosest sense of the word, for hours. She was, I think, patient with my deliberateness, my needing to see her wantonly sated, and was I tolerant of the extremities that came for her, and I pushed my way past unseen demons that lurked in the shadows of her barely open eyes.

She had just mounted my face again, and as I lay under her I heard the front door open, then quietly closing.

Mary slipped down a bit, sat on my chest, pinning my arms deliberately I think, while her roommate walked over and looked down at me. I was all too aware that there was still a flagpole between my legs pointed right at the ceiling fan.

I felt a little awkward. Maybe.

Mary's roommate's name was Betsy, by the way, in case you were wondering, and it seemed Betsy was quite content to have a go at the world record for flagpole sitting. Or so it seemed to me when I thought about things later that evening.

+++++

Next morning I loaded my stuff in The Desert Rose, for Mary had christened the poor beast when I pulled the Wing around later that evening. I said my goodbyes while the sun poked over the hills east of town, and I left the girls standing in their doorway feeling all kinds of smug. I think I was smiling a little too, come to think of it.

East on Highway 12, easy twisting curves ahead, up hills and down endlessly, real mountains looming ahead in the gold morning air, deer beside the road grazing on long, soft grass. An hour and the fuel gauge has barely moved; two hours and well more than a half tank remained. I was confused, but the scenery was grand. Win some, lose some, I guess.

Came out along the Snake River and kept heading east; small towns with strange names drifted by, some towns smaller than small. Filled up mid-morning, grabbed breakfast at another little Main Street diner, and looked on with wonder as the waitress in this place berated all her regular customers like a drill sergeant. I'm sure someone somewhere found her attractive, but I was all too glad to hit the road again -- and lost in awe that two women like Mary and Betsy thrived out here among the tall grass and antelope. I could have lingered for days in their soft arms and gentle sighs, and was sorry that I hadn't.

The highway lifted into mountains, left the Snake and ran alongside other, smaller rivers and streams that lined the meadow-strewn flats of those steep-walled valleys. The air grew thin and clear, a hint of cold bit into my hands and face, snow capped mountains loomed in the distance. How different all this was, I thought, than the journeys men on horseback made a hundred years before me, yet in the careless way Time takes measure of such things, the impulse really was the same. I leaned into a deep curve and just as I came out of the turn found myself almost eye to eye with an elk; I hit the brakes hard and leaned on the horn. The animal's antlers seemed about ten feet taller than me as the Wing whizzed by about three inches from its nose; I kept braking and came to a stop on a gray gravel shoulder and climbed off the bike. My knees wobbly, now breathing in deep, shocked gasps, I turned and watched as the elk meandered along the roadside munching something obviously quite irresistible. I pulled down my zipper and took a leak right then and there. It was that or wet myself, and I still consider myself either too old or not old enough for that kind of bullshit.

I took a granola bar from a saddlebag and unwrapped the thing; the elk apparently thought I'd just rung the dinner bell and trotted down the middle of the road toward me. Over the years I've read a few accounts of what elk can do to a man, especially during their rut, but this damn thing looked and acted like it had just been sprung from a petting zoo for good behavior. It stopped a couple yards away and just looked at me, then at my goddamn granola bar!

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" I shouted at the thing. He just stood there, waiting. I opened the saddlebag again and took out a couple of bars and unwrapped one; the elk raised his head a little, a good sign, I hoped, and I took a step towards him. He met me halfway and took the bar gently, chewed the thing up in short order and waited for another.

"Alright, Bullwinkle," I said to the looming rack of antlers. "But this is the last one. No more." I held out the bar and the elk's neck leaned forward; he took the bar in his mouth, then crossed the road and disappeared into a well of darkness. While the animal rumbled through dark shadowed trees I tried to get it back together, but nothing seemed to make sense for a few minutes. A pickup truck roared by sometime later, the rancher hit his horn and waved as he passed; I tried to wave but ended up leaning against the Wing, lost in jumbled waves of relief and disbelief.

An hour or so later I pulled into a desperately tiny town -- just a couple of storefronts and a row of rambling cabins set back in the woods -- and I put a couple of gallons in the tank and got right back on the road. Sometime in the early afternoon we crossed into Montana and the sky seemed to open up overhead; the arc of the sky was suddenly so pronounced, spread so wide in every direction, it looked as though the curvature of the earth had been subtly and inexplicably altered.

As evening softened the landscape, the lights of Missoula appeared in a huge valley spread across the far horizon; I was tired, my butt was hot and sore, and I was pretty sure I could win just about any contest for worst body odor hands down. I wanted, I told myself, a hot shower, a soft bed, and a chicken-fried steak with a quart of cream gravy all over it. And damned if my GPS didn't tell me right where to find one, too.

So of course I rode into Missoula and turned into a little KOA campground and pitched my tent; by the light of a little battery powered lantern I boiled some water over an open fire and cooked some Ramen noodles; I got desperate and grilled some sausages too. I was so tired I barely made it into the tent; I fell asleep with my clothes on and was soon dreaming of being bathed in cream gravy by gorgeously garish geisha girls.

About the time I woke with a desperately full bladder I heard someone outside in the darkness banging pots and pans, then shouting "Bear! Run for it!" -- followed by car doors slamming and engines starting. I was sitting up in the tent about half a heartbeat later, half in and half out of my sleeping bag, the need to take a leak suddenly the sole focus of my all my earthly desires, when I heard something shuffling and snorting right outside the tent.

I was under no illusions as I sat there; I knew the tent would prove to be about as significant a barrier to a pissed-off bear as a wet Kleenex, and now all I could think about was having eaten sausages and Ramen noodles, and had I remembered to wash my fucking hands afterward? A nine hundred pound carnivore was sniffing around on the other side my lightweight rip-stop nylon home-away-from-home, searching for the source of his hunger, and he'd found it, too.

A truck came thundering into the campground and someone was firing a rifle; I heard the bear streaking off into the mobile home park next door, dry wood cracking, small trees snapping, thundering footsteps receding into the darkness. A few minutes later I unzipped the tent and walked to the bathrooms. I took a pillow and blanket with me.

+++++

The ride north to Flathead Lake was full of contradictions; a Jesuit Mission here, a root beer stand there, our oldest traditions cloaked behind layers of ambivalent indifference, hidden from view in plain sight. I was beginning to see signs of this everywhere I went: billboards proclaiming yet another entertaining diversion just a few miles ahead, as if the overwhelming natural beauty around this part of the world was not worth a second thought. Had we really become a culture that hides from it's traditions, sacrifices our natural gifts on the altar of sensory overload? If that was true, what did Mary and Jennifer mean inside that inward spiraling dynamic? What had we sacrificed, with our interstate highways and jumbo jets? Connection? Or was the time we spent on superhighways or tucked away inside superjets meaningful beyond the mere passing interest the experience provided? Without some sort of belief in an underlying purpose in life, was there any context to understand the deeper implications of any encounter we might chance upon? Or was there simply no purpose to these meetings? Had three people just bathed in pure experience for a few hours, then simply turned away from all meaning, turned to bask on rocks warmed by the indifference of a cold, empty universe?

Some days out on the road are filled with thoughts like these. A root beer float sounds good; you pull into an A&W for a break and see half-naked children caked in dirt sitting in the shadows of a rusted-out trailer. What do you think, what do you feel? Was luck all that separated me from those kid? Were those children paying the price for someone else's bad choices, and was this truly the only world they would know? I could just get on the Wing and leave. What would happen to these kids? In a world filled with so much indifference, was it relevant to simply pass through fields of experience like a combine across prairies of amber waving grain?

Flathead Lake was huge, by the way; the way around followed sharp contours along it's western shore. Maybe all my life ahead would be like this backroad: sharp contours close to the edge, turning always turning and struggling to keep my balance among all the indifferent roadside attractions and wasted lives.

Then Whitefish Montana lay just ahead, purple mountains majesty ringed the horizon everywhere I looked. What waited down this road, I thought, or that one? Would whatever happened be a simple matter of indifference and timing? Could you believe in fate, in destiny, in the face of so many contradictions out here?

Pulled into Whitefish a little after noon, rolled through the town looking for a gas station and a place to sleep where I might not be on the menu, and instead found myself in front of a train station. Orange and brown railway memorabilia decorated the grounds; a well preserved steam locomotive and old signage seemed to point the way back to a different time, these things wanted you to stop and think about what had happened here once upon a time, and by implication, what we'd turned away from in our mad dash for Utopia. A gleaming silver passenger train pulled into the station and dozens of people got off; some remained on the platform, smoking cigarettes and looking at the old station, while others danced over to waiting people and disappeared in happy clouds of reunion. Memories were everywhere, being made, being relived, being watched over like precious stones, and I found it a touching scene. How many memories had been made on this one platform over the hundred or so years of its being?

I waited until the conductor shouted out "All aboard!" and waved to the engineer, and I watched the train pull from the station, heading west. I stepped onto the platform and watched it disappear around a curve, but I could still hear it. That lumbering rumble, the occasional blast of its horn, but soon even that was gone and all that remained was wind passing through pines.

I turned and walked by the relics, was kept in good company by a few good memories, then turned to walk to the Wing, my Desert Rose.

There was a woman standing beside the bike; she was looking at it closely, leaning over to examine the instrument panel. She looked to be about fifty and as short as a fireplug; her round face was framed by short red hair, her skin shockingly white. A small backpack was on the ground at her feet, a walking stick in her right hand.

As I got closer she must have felt me coming; she turned and looked at me, her eyes wide and open and green.

I remember thinking something about fate and destiny when I looked at her, wondered what the road ahead held in store for us. Then she smiled at me.

"Is this your motorbike?" she asked. Her lilting accent was thick, almost indecipherable; I guessed Irish, maybe a Scot, but I didn't really know.

I nodded as I walked up to the Wing. "Last time I checked."

"It's fantastic! Huge! I've never seen anything like it."

"Really? Are you into bikes?"

"No, not really. Never been on one."

She continued to walk around the Wing, looking with what I took to be a mild form of astonishment. Next to the bike, the woman looked almost dwarfish.

She couldn't have been more than five feet tall, yet neither was she what I'd have called petite. She left the impression, in fact, of being rather more round than anything else, yet she wasn't fat, not even plump. Maybe it was her face, maybe her body, but there just weren't any hard lines or angles anywhere on her frame; all was soft and -- round. She was wearing jeans and hiking boots, and an oatmeal colored sweater; a blue New York Yankees ball cap was strapped to her yellow backpack.

"So, where're you headed?" I asked. "Up to the park?"

"That's right. S'posed to be a motorbus come round in a bit."

"You camping?"

"Me? Lord no. Just packed light." She touched the saddle, looked at the Wing again.

"Where're you from?"

"Dublin. And you?"

"Oregon."

"Oh, yes, I'm off to Portland after Glacier."

"Me too." I looked at her, possibilities turned over in my head like tumblers in a safe.

"I really need to get something to eat and my bus isn't due for an hour. Man in the station said the diner across the street is pretty fair."

"Want some company? I could use a bite myself?"

She looked at me with that. "Sure. I could use some help with the menu."

We walked across the street, into a dark place that seemed to have been filled with slot machines and pool tables decades ago, but there were some tables in the back, and a waitress walking by with a load of food. We made our way through the tiny casino, our eyes not yet adjusted to the smoke-filled darkness, and we groped our way to a table along the back wall. She leaned her pack against the wall, sat down and looked around, trying, I guess, to make sense of these bizarre surroundings.

"You'll excuse me," she said, "but is this simply the norm around here, or is it as strange as it seems." She looked a little uneasy. I looked around the room; my eyes could make out a bit more now. About half the machines in the casino were being played by old men, most appeared to be Native American and drunk. A couple of glassy-eyed women leaned against the bar on the far side of the room nursing empty glasses of beer and counting coins.

"You're out west now. Things are different here, different than most other places in America. Still a wild independent streak in the people."

"I was thinking it's like a time warp. Weird, you know? Like a saloon in the old west, from the movies, like, but full of stoned Indians and neon lighting."

I laughed. "Pretty fair description, really. Lots of booze and drugs out here now, a lot of dead end roads, no where to go."

"Do they still live on reservations? The Indians, I mean?"

"Yeah, all over the place, but usually the land isn't worth a damn."

"You sound like you know a something about it."

"Not a lot. I worked on one for a year, north of Seattle. Indian Health Service; part of my training."

"Oh, you're a physician?"

"Yup."

"So? Booze, drugs? Dead end roads?"

"Not much to talk about. It's a welfare state gone mad, cradle to grave socialism, no incentives. Most of the men are fat and diabetic by the time they hit their teens; the women usually wait until after they've had a couple of babies before gaining their third hundred pounds. A huge percentage are alcoholic, lots of drug abuse, meth and heroin mainly, and free health care waiting to pick them up when they fall down. They don't have any incentive to improve their lives, so most simply don't. They give up. If they weren't on a reservation they'd be homeless, or worse."