Backroads

"Office in back," she whispered breathlessly; 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 maelstrom 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 tell immediately 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 wanting to see her wantonly sated, and I tolerant of the extremities pushed on her by unknown demons that lurked just behind her barely open eyes.

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

Mary slipped down a bit, sat on my chest, pinning my arms quite 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 above my head.

I felt a little awkward.

Mary's roommate's name was Jennie, by the way, in case you were wondering, and it seemed Jennie was quite content to have a go at the world record for flagpole sitting. Or so it seemed to me, anyway.

__________________________

Next morning I loaded my things in The Desert Rose, for as such Mary had christened the poor beast when I pulled the Wing around later that evening; I said my goodbyes while the sun peaked over the hills east of town and 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, twisting easy 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 to glad to hit the road again and lost in awe that two women like Mary and Jennifer thrived out here among tall grass and antelope. I could have lingered for days in their soft arms and gentle sighs.

The highway lifted into mountains, left the Snake and ran alongside other, smaller rivers and streams that lines the meadow-strewn flats of steep-walled valleys. The air grew thin and clear, a hint of cold bit into my hands and face, snow still capped mountains in the distance. How different all this was, I thought, than the journeys men on horseback made a hundred years before me, yet in a distant way the impulse 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 away from its nose; I kept braking and came to a stop on a gray gravel shoulder and climbed off the bike, my knees wobbly and breathing in deep, shocked gasps. I turned and watched as the elk meandered along the roadside munching something obviously quite irresistible, then hastily pulled down my zipper and took a leak right then and there. It was that or wet myself, and I consider myself either too old or not old enough for that nonsense.

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 on 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 it 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 go to find it all.

So of course I pulled up short of Missoula and turned into a little 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 Vienna 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 here; 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 Vienna sausages, and had I washed my hands afterward? A nine hundred pound colossus 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 woods, 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 toward Flathead Lake was full of contradictions; a Jesuit Mission here, a root beer stand there, our oldest traditions cloaked in layers of ambivalent indifference, hidden from view in plain sight by all way call the modern. I was beginning to see signs of this everywhere: billboards proclaiming yet another entertaining diversion just a few miles ahead, as if the overwhelming natural beauty all around was not worth a second thought. Had we really become a culture that denies tradition, sacrifices belief on the altar of sensory overload? If that was so, what did Mary and Jennifer mean inside that spiraling dynamic? What had I sacrificed? Or was that time meaningful beyond the merest interest the experience provided? Without belief was there any context to understand the deeper implications of any encounter? Or were there none? Had three people just bathed in pure experience for a few hours, then simply turned away and walked out to bask on rocks warmed by an indifferent memory?

Some days out on the road are filled with thoughts like these. A root beer float sounds good; you pull into a stand 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? Is luck all there is separating me from those kid? Were those children paying the price for someone else's bad luck, or was this truly the only world they would know? I could just get on the Wing and leave. What would happen to those 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?

The lake was huge; the way forward followed sharp contours along the western shore. Maybe all my life ahead would be like that. Sharp contours close to the edge, turning always and struggling to keep my balance.

Whitefish Montana lay just ahead, purple mountains majesty ringed the horizon everywhere I looked. What waited down the road? 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 locomotive and old signage seemed to point the way back to memories of a different time, wanted you to stop and think about what had been once, and what we'd turned away from. 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. Others danced over to waiting people and were soon lost in 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 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, headed 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.