DAY 38: After the apocalypse, with country music playing

  507 miles: from Van Horn, TX to Cuba, New Mexico



CUBA, NEW MEXICO | Friday, Apri 16, 2010 | Rt. 550, Frontier Motel

From Marfa we drove west to Van Horn, Tx. We might have headed north rather than west on our way to Chaco Canyon, to catch the Carlsbad Caverns and Roswell, NM. But a place just north of El Paso had biodiesel, B99, the golden stuff that had eluded us for nearly 5,000 miles. And each route would end up pretty much equidistant by the time we'd get to the Pueblo ruins at Chaco. So it was easy to decide which way. Really, we didn’t care much about a mid-century government coverup of alien life, not the schtick that would remain, the alien magnets and rubber masks, and really we didn’t care about a cave. Stalagtites. Stalagmites. We wanted the golden biodiesel. It was easy.

The land changed. Hills, then soft mountains rose up around us, studded with flowering yucca, spiky green heads above grey trunks with giant hats of yellow flowers. We passed endless nut tree farms, rows of trees that went on and on, even as we cruised along at 62 mph. We passed the abandoned still-life buildings, the hanging-on mobile homes, the metal windmills, pulling water to the surface, into troughs for the cattle grazing.  

Beyond the farms and ranches, in the open desert, the air came through the windows tinged with the oily faint pungence of creosote, the grass of the desert. It’s a rugged twiggy shrub with tiny hard, greasy green leaves. The creosote puts out a kind of cotton almost, that comes after the small yellow flowers of spring that seem to have already passed by. We’d seen the flowers in Langtry, but not since. Maybe those had been late. But that smell of the creosote is also memory, is probably why I mention it. From my time in the Nevada desert. I was always searching out oddballs holed up in strange places, Marta Becket was one, with her mime-vaudeville-ballerina show in Death Valley Junction, people like her that I would find, driving empty two-lane roads for hours through creosote and cactus, in deafening silent heat. There would be some accumulation of life shored up around a house, or in Becket’s case, around an old borax mining town hotel. I’d pull up. There was so much time in these places. Nothing that wouldn’t get done. It could all get done. You could just talk awhile. Then I would go home, back the same desolate roads, and write the stories in a house cooled by a swamp cooler.

So we drove a long time through valleys flanked by low mountains. We stayed at a cheap motel, the Desert Inn, run by an old woman who was Indian, who totaled up the bill from the other side of the counter in her traditional dress. The last light was amazing. Everything, even the abandoned buildings across the street, were beautiful, delineated in that light that builds and fills just before going out each day.

We got up early. We were planning to camp about halfway to Chaco. With our first stop in the town of Anthony, which straddles the Texas and New Mexico border. The biodiesel was in New Mexico. It was just off the main road, Rio Valley Biodiesel. You'd never know it from the road. Just a low building. The pumps out back. We went in front past the Mercedes sedan, also running biodiesel, and there were four people sitting at a round table. They sent us around back. A guy filled our tank and two five-gallon cans. Recycled oil. The whole bit. So easy when finally we found it. And 2.48 a gallon, cheaper than gasoline, and no emissions. We're mixing it for now though, to a 50-50 ratio, out of an abundance of caution, as far as not wanting to clog lines and filters. But this gives us a good, the best biodiesel blend we've had, guaranteed, for the next 1,500 miles. A small, sweet victory. And they gave us directions, we talked a bit, to a back road, North 28, through pecan groves to La Mesilla, New Mexico. All the groves, beautiful, the Rio Grande again, the adobe houses with their soft curves.

We kept driving. We drove past our planned campsite. We ended up driving 507 miles, past sundown, headed north, Yellow Truck's shadow running along beside us, until we made Cuba, New Mexico, elevation 6,900 feet.

We drove long enough so that we talked. We talked about how in the end people want a home. Want stasis. Want place. I said how in some ways I envy the guy who never leaves his one town, who relies on the stories of people passing through to understand, to see, the rest of the world. That person ends up learning the deep nuances, the softest currents of ebb and flow in his community. Unlike us, now, gliding along, skimming, like a skipping stone over water, landing briefly and retreating back into the low sky.

But we agreed, a person has to travel, or wants to, too. To see other places. For instance, the people who play lotteries. When you ask them what they want to do, if they win, they all say, To travel. I want to go places, see the world. Travel is deep, ancient restlessness and dissatisfaction, as easy to grasp as the comfort of staring into a campfire. We dry into husks in our routines, most of us, even when we love them in a certain way, and then as soon as we have no routine, no ritual, when we are uprooted, traveling, we hunger after the comfort of the familiar. A place for everything and everything in its place. Order. Predictability. Inevitably, even after all you have learned about eating right and living green, if you travel long enough, you will stop recycling and you will end up at McDonald’s for breakfast. Maybe there are heroes who don’t know this submission. Maybe there are heroes who eat diner pie for breakfast every morning, like I would like to do some day. But the fact is, Adrienne and I are still mortal, just part-time vagabonds. We get cranky and spit and nicker like horses, bare our teeth at each other across the front bucket seats. And now McDonald’s has wifi, so sometimes, stealing it from the parking lot just doesn’t cut it, and so we go in, we’re hungry, it’s not yet 10 am, we can have an egg mcmuffin. And coffee. Not delicious. Not really satisfying. But familiar. Easy. Anonymous. Almost private in a way. Just the two of us at our plastic table and swivel seats. Like home after the apocalypse, with country music playing.