We Ate the Road Like Vultures (3 page)

I dried my hair with the towel and tried to brush it with an old guy's comb I found on the sink, but the teeth were so close together I ended up with a fuzzy great knot around my shoulders. I pulled my fingers through it a bit, but gave up, tying it back up into the functional knot of all my travels, and I walked out and into the living room with plaster and moose still on the floor and great chairs and ancient men. It had changed in the hour I spent in the bathroom and some huge-arsed Mexican momma was turning lamps on and setting those soft-bottomed trays for each of the men to eat where they sat. It smelled like beans but it had that tinge of the divine that mixes with food when you can't remember the last thing you ate that didn't make you burn. She was laughing and speaking in fast bouncing Spanish and Chicco was constantly smacking her ample butt as she went past his chair, and she clearly loved the attention even though she was only about forty and they were twice her age. I walked in hesitantly, wondering not only if they were annoyed that I hadn't nicked off yet, but if they even remembered me. My grandpa had a
short-term memory of about fifteen minutes by the time he reached the twilight zone and I could be in his apricot nursing home room telling him all about European football and lean down to get something from my bag, or walk out to get a cup of coffee and when I came back he'd have no idea I had even been there—‘Hey Lulubelle!' he'd shout in that deaf old man screech, ‘Nice to see you, love, how's school?' And then twenty minutes later we'd do it all again. The good part was that I only had to find about three things to talk about and I could repeat them if necessary. I couldn't bullshit him because he was completely sane and he'd call me on it immediately, but whatever I did say was gone in a few seconds.

They hadn't forgotten me though. Carousel and Chicco—who insisted I call them that—nodded and gestured to a broken-down chair full of escaping donkey straw. The housekeeper gave me a disapproving, if not scathing, glance and begrudgingly scraped some extra beans out of the pottery dish onto a plate for me.

‘Well you're a walking fucking cliché, aren't you?' Carousel smacked through a mouthful of
beans. I think he meant my T-shirt so I ignored him. ‘Got a thing for dead men, huh? Dug
him
up yet?'

I gave him the finger, which was as mature as I could be bothered with, and ate my beans. It wasn't nearly enough and I sat watching them eat massive servings of beans and tomato salsa and whole jalapeños and antacids like it was their last meal, which I supposed was understandable at their end of life, but I was a growing girl and the Mexican witch just sat quietly adding extra beans when they wanted more and ignoring my Oliver Twist self on the donkey chair. They had eaten in silence, concentrating on getting food on their spoons and then across the seven shaky miles to their mouths, when Chicco finally looked up and saw me sitting and shrinking into holocaust starvation. He smacked a hand down on the old girl's leg and said, ‘Bonita sweetie, don't be jealous, honey, she's my grand-niece. Give her some more beans.'

That made a huge difference because she turned to me in shock and then smiled a great Mexican-mother smile at me and piled my plate
so high with everything I thought I might never leave my seat again. It was fantastic—I could taste the dirt in the beans, that salty dry scent of sand that pervades everything out there, and the heat in the tomatoes that made them so ripe they busted open on the vines. It was red and thick and spicy and I loved the way it made my mouth heat up and swell, and I ate three of the peppers and even the seeds before I noticed them all watching me.

‘What?' I said, but it sounded like I was swimming through beans.

‘You're an odd one.' From Chicco.

‘Remind me a bit of my daughter,' a murmur from Carousel. ‘Your eyes.'

‘Or your great granddaughter?' Beans tried to escape the corners of my mouth but I licked and sucked and bit them back in.

‘Fuck you.' He laughed heartily.

The woman passed out some sugary pastry and they ate it in companionable silence, seeming happy to slop and spray powdered sugar from loose lips to werewolf eyebrows. Finally the plates were cleared and goodbyes muttered and kisses accepted and their cook left with a small smile
and nod for me as I stayed in my chair, unsure if I was to be offered a place to sleep or a swift sharp word out the door. They took their time picking bean skins and pastry from their dentures with a wicked-looking toothpick for Carousel and, in Chicco's case, a bayonet the length of his forearm. He stared at me and I knew he was expecting some sort of comment, so of course I said nothing, and finally he begrudged me a win and spoke first, and of course it was not serious but was all jokes and mocking.

‘How come you haven't been raped and mugged and murdered, little Lulu? All that way by yourself. From the border down it's all buses and hitching and nowhere to stay.'

‘I can be nondescript,' I said, by way of explanation. ‘I don't really have a memorable face, not too pretty, not ugly, not blonde, not tall, not fat, but not crazy thin either.' It was true. I'm pretty in a basic kind of way I guess, my skin is a little tanned and I don't have pimples or freckles or shitty teenage skin, but I've got nothing about me that stands out, nothing you'd say that was weird or wild.'

They were unconvinced so I kept going.

‘And its not like I've been sleeping in the gutter outside a saloon or anything, I have money.' Again with the mocking eyes. ‘Okay, not millions but I have plenty.'

‘Stealing from Daddy?' Chicco coughed from the minute slither of smoke that wafted above the match he had used to light his giant cigar. When he gathered himself he shoved the great fat thing into his mouth and kept quiet.

‘No. Of course not. I don't need to steal. You're not the only one with residual income. I kept a calf my father was going to put down a few years ago, born with short legs and ugly markings on it, and it grew up into one of the best stud bulls in the state. I let him out five or six times a year to shag cows and I take a ten per cent stake in any stud bulls sired by him. I get cheques for about five grand a month and I don't have to do anything. I've invested some of it in my own breeding program and I have three more bulls growing on Dad's farm—except I bought a couple of fields off him, so I guess it's my farm as well.'

They were shocked and actually confused and I realised they were really old snobs about stuff like cows and farms, and I hadn't expected that. ‘Don't look at me like that, not everything in the world is about books and politics and literature. Someone has to breed your steak.' And they were sheep for a minute, with wiry embarrassed heads downcast with sun spots beaming off the top in a weird code of secrets from stars and gods.

‘We weren't mocking you, Lulu,' Chicco tried to be soothing, like some grandfather, and raised his thin hands towards me in what was most likely meant as supplication, but felt more like he was telling me my time had come. So much so, I leaned back in the chair and got a rusted nail pressing into my back—crucified by a fucking Mexican chair.

‘I kind of figured you for a writer, that's all.' Carousel had a way of talking with his face down and watching out the side of his hooded eyes at me, reminding me I could read all the books I wanted but he was still a stranger who I had only ever looked at from a distance and through clouds
and rain at that. ‘Coming all this way—I just thought…didn't think of bulls.'

‘Yeah, well I didn't expect you to be so fucking ancient, which is stupid I realise, laws of aging and time and all that, but I only ever read about you being young and mad and wanting everything at once and it felt a bit like me and here you are all old and wanting nothing anymore and it makes me feel a long way from where I thought I was going.' I looked at my pastry and didn't want it anymore. ‘I'm more of a reader than a writer. Which isn't as cool, I know, but the world needs readers even more than it needs writers cos you all write so fucking much and expect the world to lap it up and here I am just wanting to read… and ask you a few things, and find out why you are hiding in this weird purgatory and not wanting to get on with the next life or hell or heaven or wherever the fuck is waiting for you to hurry up and kick the bucket.'

They were silent in their huge recliners and I thought they might want to know what my questions were, or what my intentions were, but
it seemed they were actually going to fall asleep and leave me sitting there all night as the desert got colder and colder, so I changed the subject and asked my most pressing question, before it was too late and it would haunt me endlessly.

‘Why do you have an elephant and a moose? In Mexico?' I corrected myself as quickly as I could, ‘Why
did
you have a moose?'

Chicco relaxed and laughed. ‘It's not as wild a story as I wish it was, but we were in town one night about a decade back and there was a travelling show, kind of a poor spic version of a circus, with these guys who had bought up the leftover critters of any zoo they could find and smuggled them over the border. He was making them do the sort of tricks no one really thinks is clever, like standing on a ball or letting a monkey ride on their backs or smoke a cigar or whatever, but they were so lost and flea-hounded that we thought it was the funniest thing we'd seen this side of seventy and were determined to free the animals and get them home.'

Carousel had perked up at the story and was leaning forward. ‘And by home we meant here
to the ranch, we were never going to take them back to Botswana or Nome or fucking Sydney.'

‘Sydney? Who was from Sydney?' I had been thinking that ‘ranch' was an ambitious name for this puddle of dust when the mention of my home country forced the contemplation out of my head.

Carousel smiled. ‘The kangaroo. He was the one who smoked the cigar. So addicted he'd jump his hind legs against the front door for hours until we lit one for him. I tried to help him quit, slowly and gently. Had him down to cigarettes and only three a day, but one week there was a dust storm and we couldn't get into town and no one could get out here and we ran out of cigarettes. He went mad and bounced off into the desert. Haven't seen him since. Been about a year now.'

‘Two, at least,' Chicco snorted. ‘He was an ornery bastard, loved the heat. Hated the other two, even though they adored him. You could almost hear him cussing them when his ears went back and his huge feet went up to kick. I kind of miss the bastard actually.'

Carousel continued, ‘Anyway we went down there with a half-dead truck we'd borrowed and planned to steal them in the middle of the night, and we're old and slow as molasses, and three hours on we were still tugging the elephant up the back ramp and we misjudged his size and a tyre punctured on the truck when his weight hit. We were ready to leave him behind when the owners, greasy and mean as they come, popped out of the bar nearby screaming and threatening to kill us, and we went to take off in the truck when Chicco pulled out the biggest fucking gun I've seen outside Jerusalem, which I didn't even know he had…'

‘Got it from a Mexican army general, had a basement full of such shit. Could've taken the head off Salinger if I needed to.'

‘Salinger's the elephant.' Carousel continued. ‘And Chicco pointed the gun at these two and told them he had only two bullets but each was gonna take out a ball full of guts and a brain full of nothing, and they stopped still and watched us haul that elephant into the swaying, bottomed-out truck and then we drove off. They never came
after us and that little town would never sell us out. We've been here too long.'

‘And we spend a small fortune here.' Chicco was pragmatic about Mexican loyalty and my week's experience told me he was right, wealth was the only love source in that hungry place.

‘Well, that was the weirdest story I've heard in a while.' I spoke far too soon cos I was cut off by the scratchy bell from outside the door. We all froze and listened. After a moment and a deep sigh Carousel pushed a button on the side of his chair and it whizzed him upwards onto his feet.

‘Fucking peak hour, twice in one day after not a peep in a decade.' He looked stiff and old as he lumbered towards the hallway.

‘What about the Mexicans?' I wondered aloud.

‘Back door—they know.' Chicco sighed. Suddenly he grinned. ‘Hey—you get the door, Lulugirl! You get rid of whoever the fuck is out there at this time of night and you can stay in the spare room.'

Carousel raised an eyebrow—more at the spare room comment than the idea, and smiled that tiny wry smile of his.

My choices were obviously limited so I tried to hide my delight at the joyful prospect of a roof over my head for the night and headed past Carousel for the door.

It shouldn't be too hard to get rid of someone, even if they were here for the same reason as me, which was unlikely considering I was the first in a lifetime, surely anyone would be dismayed at the presence of a young girl and leave.

By the time I opened the door I had my speech all prepared and my rhotic ‘r's' ready for a wild ride but what I saw was so far from what I had expected and what I heard was so much crazier than anything that had happened so far that I invited the visitor in to meet my grandfathers and promised him dinner and the spare room.

3

 

 

You have to keep believing what you believe, and there ain't nothing like good travellin'.

 

 

I
F I WAS SURPRISED AT MYSELF FOR LETTING THE
guy in, Chicco and Carousel were more so. They clearly believed me incentived enough, so they were silent as I brought down the hall a tall, young man so unearthly in his beauty he should have been on a billboard for some sort of underwear. I only came up to his bicep, which I noticed because he was in one of those shirts with the sleeves ripped out. He was tanned to the colour of Ironbark honey and his hair was white blond and long and straggly in that ‘Oops, am I bedraggled and phenomenal?' kind of way. And if there is a way to describe his eyes, I don't know it, and I'm not a writer so I'll have to use a few clichés—like those rivers of ice up in the
Scandinavian mountains, so light in their blue that they are more a reflection of the sky than anything of themselves.