Wakefield (25 page)

Wakefield had stopped along his way to walk over the ruts of wagon wheels, he ate fry-bread and jerky and barbecue, and everything was for him completely new and became part of him, which is why it's the desert that draws him now, where his heart had once filled and might fill again.

Wakefield pushes on over the superhighway, past exits that lead only to oases of pure pragmatism: Gas, Food, Lodging. There are two nervous systems that go by the name “road” in America: the neocortex-like network of interstates that sucks cars in at one end and spews them out another; the other hidden, vestigial, nostalgic, the roads of his youthful journey. Only a hundred years or so divide the epic-heroic endeavours of the first explorers of the West and the building of the interstate highways that now inscribe the face of North America. An even shorter time will elapse between the disappearance of these roads and the ascendence of the disembodied virtual highway. But the projections of dreamers and futurists blossom and fail in rapid succession, leaving behind a bizarre archeology.

Wakefield wants to find again the fragmented, narrative, homey roads he remembers. He drives all day and all the next night through Iowa, Missouri, a bit of Oklahoma, winter brown giving way to green, snow to rain, dark mud to hard, cracked soil, then the land becomes the desert. If he can succeed in finding again the hunger and curiosity of his youth, he might beat the Devil yet. Back then he didn't care about money or comfort or even company; he was moved by something awesome and divine. In the desert his whole being was lit by the knowledge of his connection with the universe. That is how the saints of the desert must have felt, tormented by the blazing sun, chilled almost to death at night, yet filled with the ecstasy of the holy spirit.

He's also stayed awake all night many times in the neon-lit insomnia of cities where the all-nighter is culturally certified and commercially mandated. But the all-nighter of the bohemian heroes was something else: it was spiritual work, the night shift; they stayed awake so the demons that haunt the world wouldn't get them in their sleep. Theirs was a celebratory song of a vibrant new night of jazz, sex, and vitality that defied Fifties America, a celebration conducted atop a trembling hill of youthful melancholy and fear. Kerouac's American night was a carnival and America herself was just waking up. His fraternity of the wee hours did not discriminate by age or economic status; nobody had any money and even bums were valued for their stories. Their booze was rotgut wine and whiskey, and their drugs were speed, pot, and the occasional morphine derivative. Hearts were broken, leaking love and sorrow, and were continually mended by rivers of talk and desperate sex.

Wakefield is a trembling hill of exhaustion when he pulls into the shiny, new truck stop and eats a microwaved burrito and a Snickers bar washed down by a large coffee. He consults with the teenager behind the cash register, who has no idea where the old highway is, but a Mexican truck driver sets him straight. He gives him directions to the Sirena Motel at the intersection of two old roads, one leading through the desert all the way to Arizona, the other through the mountains to Colorado. The Mexican repeats “la see-ren-aaa” and winks.

Wakefield finds the place and drifts off to the moaning of the wind rattling the windows, and the shrieks and moans of drunk girls and truckers who come and go all night, slamming doors and shaking beds.

In the morning brilliant white snow has blanketed the hills and everything is eerily quiet. Wakefield heads out on the old road toward Arizona. He passes a series of ancient Burma Shave signs that start just beyond the crossroad. They are faded but still legible:

THE POOREST GUY
…

IN THE HUMAN RACE
…

CAN HAVE A MILLION-DOLLAR FACE
…

WITH BURMA SHAVE

These little billboards had exploited the narrative nature of the old roads, making their pitch in installments so that the traveler had to wait to find out what the next one said. Pretty soon another serial begins, the handlettered signs punctured by bullet holes. The first asks the question:
AFTER LIFE WHAT?
A grave question, which Wakefield cannot answer. Half a mile later, the next sign answers:
THE JUDGEMENT.
That makes life a crime and death a trial. Wakefield doesn't like it: what kind of malevolent deity would conduct the trial? And why? Isn't each action rewarded instantly by a reaction, thus by an organic, instant judgment? “You can take your trial and shove it!” he shouts at the sign.

The sign pays no attention and he soon comes to the next one, asking another question:
AFTER THE JUDGEMENT WHAT?
This is something he'd like to know, but he doesn't expect to be enlightened by the answer. He drives on through the slush, hoping his tires don't sink in a snow-filled pothole, until he sees the answer:
THE RESURRECTION.
Well, that's better, but he still doesn't think it's fair to have to go through a trial to get there. After a few more uphill miles, near the top of the mesa, his irritation is piqued by the follow-up question:
RESURRECTION FOR WHOM?
Now he's sure that these signs are an evil trail of crumbs left by a wicked witch to lure Hansel and Gretel, and he vows not to stop for any old ladies selling gingerbread. A full five miles of snow-glazed high desert later, the answer is waiting for him:
THE SAVED.
Wakefield hums a scrap of a Grateful Dead melody to quell his growing anxiety as he scuttles on down the road.

There is no salvation, obviously, for anyone who's made a deal with the Devil. He will be unsaved and damned whether he wins or loses. If he loses, he'll be carried off in a cloudy wisp of darkness and guilt, one more of the Devil's triumphs. If he wins, he might live “authentically,” but in the end he still won't be welcomed into the Light that animated his soul in his youth, a Light he still believes might exist. Wakefield is struck by a revelation. What if I just go ahead and die? Not wait for the starter pistol, not look for any kind of life, not play the game at all? Just drive on until I find a good spot to die. That would cheat the Devil out of his game and I'd end up where I'll eventually end up anyway. Just drive until I die. This seems like such an elegant solution to Wakefield, he nearly goes off the road.

Don't you dare! says the Devil, grabbing the steering wheel.

Somewhere in Arizona (at least he thinks it must be Arizona) Wakefield realizes he's getting younger. He has left behind snow and mountains and has received the benediction of the sun. The desert relieves him of his memory, and his past recedes. A saguaro forest stands guard on all sides as the road approaches an interstate overpass; a few wild pigs are under it, consuming the contents of a discarded Burger King bag. There are RVs on the road now, and smiling old folks driving big American cars.

At a rest area outside a national park, Wakefield sits at a picnic table and strikes up a conversation with the other travelers. One family—mom, dad, and five kids—is going to visit grandparents who've retired in the desert. A honeymooning couple is headed for a luxury lodge in a verdant canyon, a snazzy resort “with two golf courses.” Two slender doctors' wives are bound for the Dream Ranch to ride horses, play tennis, and sweat in the sauna. A college boy on break is going to “party with some people I met at a party.” Wakefield points at the spectacular saguaros rising from the desert floor with their arms in the air: “They look like they're either dancing or praying.” The kid watches them for a long time, hoping to catch them at it, but the cactus forest just stares back. For the first time in a long time, Wakefield feels compassion for everyone, a nonspecific tenderness. The human thing, how strange.

The new bride asks Wakefield what he's doing out here. “I'm here for the light,” he tells her, paraphrasing Saint Patroclus, an early fan of the desert. What was true for old Saint Patroclus is still true for these sun-worshippers and light-lovers, and it's true for him because (he startles himself) he is no different than everyone else.

Wakefield drives on, past the ramshackle houses of Mexican migrant workers, past RV parks and swanky retirement communities. He stops on the decaying main street of an old college town surrounded by desert mountains and decides to eat lunch in the hotel. A sign in the lobby announces a reunion for a Mexican family from both sides of the border: the American Hernandezes are hosting the Mexican Hernandezes, and most of them are already in the restaurant, shouting about NAFTA, shushing children, raising toasts, laughing loudly. Wakefield is ravenously hungry. He consumes a big plate of green chile, beans, rice, and a pile of corn tortillas, and washes it all down with a Dos Equis. He is thirsty, thirsty, drinks another cold beer and swabs the plate clean with one more tortilla. The din of Spanish and Spanglish mixes with the border music on the jukebox, and Wakefield feels pleasantly as though he's in a hot bath.

He picks up a copy of the local paper,
The Desert Star
, and reads the headline “Desert Development Ousting the Gila Monsters.” The Gila monster, pictured full front, is a beady-eyed and beaded orange-and-black venomous lizard. He looks an awful lot like a gargoyle at Notre Dame, an old image of the Devil if there ever was one. The article says he makes burrows underground and is pretty invisible until you smash his house: then his “talon-shape teeth gnaw on the victim, pumping in venom.” As usual in cases of man against monster, Wakefield is for the monster. He hopes a Gila will sink his talon-shape teeth into a developer before the Gilas are completely wiped out.

Outside of town he comes across a row of motorcycles parked on the roadside. He hears gunshots; the bikers must be out in the hills shooting Gilas, pigs, and possibly saguaros. He parks the car down the road from the bikes and follows a footpath into the scrub. As he walks he sees whirling, darting hummingbirds, and snakes and lizards and spiders. And there are more javelinas, plump, fifty-two-pound peccaries rooting about in the mud of an arroyo. He hears a coyote howl. The path ascends along a canyon wall crowded with prickly pear cactus; ocotillo, the “living fence”; purple brittlebush; and carpets of yellow desert marigolds, verbena, and sacred datura. A sage-and-creosote smell floats over everything. Hawks and turkey vultures float in the sky. Gunshots sound out at regular intervals, but nobody shoots him. I am not granted, Wakefield thinks almost sadly, the honor of dying with old nature.

My old nature, thinks Pan, is threatened by my own guns. Since when have I become so goddam universal? Why the hell is God sleeping? I'm going to wake him up, I swear. I can't do everything, moans Satan,
and
pay attention to the particulars. Maybe the bureaucracy is right: forget the individual cases, get to work on the species.

The hitchhiker is crouched by the side of the road, holding a cardboard sign: Will not Work for Money or Love. His prophet's white beard reaches to his waist and a smelly-looking green rucksack sits beside him. He approaches the car warily when Wakefield pulls over, says, “God bless the meek, for they have no automobiles,” throws his odoriferous pack on the backseat and climbs into the front, emanating a stink of rotten bananas with a hint of something carnal.

“I'm called Never Stop. How do you do?”

“Wakefield,” says Wakefield. “Driver.”

“I'm an Imaginary Archeologist,” Never Stop tells Wakefield: “I discovered Gatobilis, the city of cats, and now I'm going to Washington, D.C., to register it with the patent office.”

Gatobilis, ca. 1200
BCE,
was built by large cats—“pumas,” surmises Never Stop—and it is mentioned by both Herodotus and the Old Testament. The city consists of intricately decorated hollows dug in the ancient sandstone, linked by ladders and toppled columns. Never Stop stumbled on it while looking for a place to starve to death, which had originally been his spiritual intention. Now he believes that the hidden city was put there to give him new life. He's spent three years studying the cat city, and has concluded that the Gatobilan dwellings were built for the purpose of lying down and stretching. Never Stop found a cache of scratching posts, combs, and musical instruments adapted to claw use, as well as hundreds of crystals that once decorated the city.

“There are cat cities,” Never Stop raps on, “such as Rome and New Orleans, and dog cities like Prague and New York, but this burg was built totally by felines, man. In Gatobilis, cats built tombs for their cat poets, who are greatly honored in the religion. They fled two hundred years later and their descendants are the cats that live around the graves of poets all over the world. I found this verse.” Never Stop pauses dramatically. Wakefield waits. “‘Pet a cat and history ceases.'”

The desert is turning twilight magenta and mauve. A sickle moon follows the car. Mark Twain wrote that “cats are filled with music; when they die the fiddle-makers take out the music and make fiddles,” something Wakefield has always remembered.

“My work will be done when I get my patent,” Never Stop says modestly. “In the future, architects will study Gatobilis and give up pretending that humans are the measure of all things. This is not the case, as any pet owner knows, or like they say in Latin, ‘
In Gatobilis Arcadia est.
'”

“Amen,” says Wakefield. “Only trouble is, I'm not going your way.”

“What are you talking about, man? That's where I'm going. D.C. That's the patent office.” Never Stop is pointing at a billboard for The Golden Eagle Casino, showing an eagle-feathered warrior holding cards in his hand and flanked by two sexy female representatives of the Asian and the Caucasian races. It's only a few miles down the road.

Never Stop reaches into one of his recesses and removes a dirty quartz crystal. “Thanks, man.”

Wakefield puts it on the dash. The Devil might like something from Gatobilis.

“Blessed be, man.”