I'm slithering through eastern Utah's winter dreamscape, high on the Verve, valor and bit of Vicodin. Steep, snowy slopes lean hard against the winding road, dicing up large white chunks of the powder blue sky. Five hours down I-40 awaits a month of writing, solitude and snowboarding. And as my iPod shuffles Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” from the deck, I open my window, stick my head out and scream at the teen-temp’d air. Thirteen degrees, to be exact. Two days ago I was in a tee-shirt.
One thousand mile markers separate me and my Sonoma County comforts - my cabin, friends, and most importantly, my girlfriend and sorta-stepson. And just as I’m feeling like a regular Dean Moriarty, I hear a dreaded pop under my hood. Much like the pre-rumbles that play point man to diarrhea, my two-year-old car is clearly about to shit itself. My engine sounds like three silver-dollars clunking in a tin can. I crank up the radio and try denial. By the time I reach Vernal, the next town, another fifteen coins have joined in on the death rattle.
I pull up to a flannel-clad man snow blowing the driveway of Wood Auto Repair shop. Do you know anything about cars? I ask. He smirks and shakes his head as if this was a dumbish question. It's clear that this character's last name is Wood. He's closed today, he apologizes. But I need you to hear this, I explain, because it doesn't sound good and I'm driving into the Rockies and I think I might be fucked. I step on the gas and the engine’s wheeze sounds worse than a whooping cough. He shakes his head and winces as if my black painted nails were feverishly clawing at a chalkboard. I'm definitely fucked. He breaks the news and, of course, it’s bad. Something about a broken rod or piston or something. Not good. Not good at all. Apparently, I'll need a new engine.
But can't I make it five more hours? I beg. His bushy brown eyebrows creep up his forehead. Boy, didn’t you hear what I just said? If I have any common sense, he warns, I will tow it to the nearest dealership. I thank the Wood man in the flannel and ring Subaru Roadside Assistance. More bad news. Since they only pay for the first $100 of the tow, and the nearest dealership is at least three hours away, this will cost me right around $800 - give or take. The first $100? I protest. How about first 100 miles! Just like that, I watch my snowboarding budget wisp out of my wallet. Um, no thanks, I say. I'll figure something else out. I walk to the Taco Bell across the street. There’s something about refried beans that makes me more lucid. While gorging myself on a seven-layer burrito sans four of the layers – lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and sour cream – I hear the battle cry stirring in my soul. I’m not going down without my broken pistons and rods flailing like crackheads on Cops. Besides, even if my Subie only lives another hour or so, I'll still save a couple hundred bucks. I have nothing to lose. Right?
Wrong.
With every passing mile my car-cacophony is increasingly ominous. Barely fifteen miles later, the 238 horses in my turbo charged-engine shift go from gallop to gander and I finally come to terms with the chainsaw roaring beneath my hood. My car dies in East Buttfuck, Utah. Since I know I can’t afford the $800 Subaru Roadside Robbery, I call the Colorado friends I’m planning to visit. Deric and Audrey have AAA and since they’re expecting me for dinner, they gift me with their Plus-Membership number.
Hi, I'm Deric, I lie to the AAA agent. My friend, Scott, well, I’m driving his car and it’s broken down in the middle of nowhere. And to make matters worse, I've lost my wallet. So unfortunately, I don't have my license or the actual AAA card to show you. Will this be a problem? He’s not supposed to do this, he says, but he's willing to make an exception, just this once, and promises to find a flatbed truck suitable for my rotting lemon. Three hours later, I'm seized by the cold dark grip of night, shaking like a seal in shark jaws. In retrospect, waiting for my tow truck in that Taco Bell sounds outright sexy.
I'm freezing and all alone, but not really alone because two dozen cars or trucks have stopped. This would never happen in California. It’s very nice and Mormon of you but can you please stop stopping because every time you do I have to open the door and say hello and goodbye and invite more of that Dentine Ice air into my car. I call my girlfriend, Naomi, which proves to be a mistake. Nobody in my situation wants to hear about how warm his girlfriend is, half-naked under the electric heating blanket on her featherbed, reading. I feel envy and regret in equal parts, like an Alcatraz inmate listening to San Francisco’s hum of freedom. My last filaments of sanity are stretched.
But as I stare at my breath, my foggy windows light up with flashing yellow hope. I dash to the front seat of the truck and say thanks to the bald man with the big beer belly and the I Love New York souvenir sweatshirt. With an uncommon kindness, he tells me to stay put and get warm and he’ll take care of my car. He disappears into the night and I stick my fingertips clear into the heating vents. In the rearview mirror, I spot some commotion in my front seat and I fear he’ll find my supposedly lost wallet. He doesn’t. Or doesn’t say he does, anyway.
We drive for hours. The Mormon and me. I know he’s a Mormon because I ask him flat out. Since I don’t want to answer many questions about my reason for traveling in the car with the California plates and me and other such details, I ask about his religion. I lead on that I’ve read Jonathan Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, or Jeff Gordinier’s The Lost Boys. My questions are designed to sound curious and neutral. Without asking him if he actually believes in the book of Genesis, I ask if the schools teach creationism or evolution. Evolution, he concedes, before launching into a discourse about Darwin’s theory. What really stuffs his gills about this “so called evolution” nonsense is if the fact that if amoebas crawled out of the sea and became salamanders and things, and monkeys became human, then why don’t we see any of that evolution happening right now? Did the monkeys suddenly stop wanting to become human?
Wow.
Pleased with his counterpoint to science and logic, he adds that his six children know evolution is just a theory that some guy had. It was much ado about nothing. That Noah must have had one big ship, he later muses. I’m stunned silent and slightly repulsed, as if he just flipped his eyelids. But I feel safe and warm and this is very important to a guy who was just recently stranded and not so warm.
He’s talked enough, he reckons, and the spotlight swivels in my direction. I admit that my Roman Catholicism wore off in my early 20s. I’m a godless free agent who’s not exactly seeking a Deal. But instead of dizzying him with my own Emersonian discourse about institutions, I talk about the shocking similarities of all major world religions. Even cosmologies simultaneously created half a world apart are virtually synonymous. This doesn’t surprise him, not one bit, especially since there’s no record of Jesus’ life from the ages of 12-30. It’s possible that Jesus may have traveled to all ends of the globe spreading his message and the other religions are merely misinterpretations of the Good Word. Well, considering the language barriers Jesus must have faced after walking clear across the oceans, it’s no wonder!
I don’t mind his colorful crochet of Christianity or his need to make sense of everything. He’s genuinely happy with his life and besides, someday when I’m old and rotten and dementia finally sinks its sharp talons in me, it might be nice to believe in a bright and shiny allegory. But I’m sure it won’t be a religion that tithes ten percent of my income or forbids coffee and tea, booze and butts. Per Section 89 of the book of Doctrines & Covenants, he’s never tasted any of those four evils. He doesn’t ever want to lose control of his mind. God forbid he becomes drunk on Earl Gray Goose when his family most needs him.
I admit to him that I intentionally smudge sobriety, blurring lines for the sake of secular desires and creative illusions. But I shouldn’t worry about it, he says, because I’m still young and single and someday when I’m married with kids I’ll figure everything out. What’s most important, though, is that I’ve got good, sound morals. I’d be a pillar in any Church, he says, although I seriously doubt this because of my AAA membership and wife Audrey and lots of other things, like the time I nuked my Toshiba laptop for ten seconds and defrauded my warranty all because I wanted store credit to switch to Macintosh. Deric sure is some model for morality.
For the last stretch of our three-hour drive, I steer our conversation towards more whimsical waters, like the Super Bowl. He doesn’t care who wins since neither the Oakland Raiders nor the Denver Broncos are playing. He roots for the Raiders and anyone who plays the Broncos. I tell him that I love the Giants who beat the Broncos this year, which makes him happy. But he’s curious as to how I came about liking a New York team if I’m from Colorado. I’m from New Jersey, I say, hoping this will be the end of his curiosities.
We’re finally at the Subaru dealership and my impotent car sits sadly on the lot. My savior asks if Audrey, my wife, will be picking me up. She’s out of town, I say, so I’ll just take a cab. No, no, he insists. He’d like to drop me off, but I’m on the phone with a taxi. In the meanwhile, he wants me to stay warm in his cab. So we chit and chat and speculate about whether or not the warranty would cover a new engine. He thinks it will and asks if I’m happy that I bought the extended warranty. I slip and say, Yes! and wonder if in his eyes, my skin is bubbling off. The emperor has no clothes, no AAA membership, no Audrey.
But his expression betrays nothing but pleasure and relief that I have an extended warranty. And since I lost my wallet and all, he even lets me pay for the extra 45 miles of tow charges with Scott’s credit card numbers. Afraid to slip on any more banana peels, I thank him and say goodbye. He wants my address before I go because he wants to send me some information about the Church. The book of D&C isn’t a bad thing to read, Deric, he says.
Sure thing, I say, and happily hand him my Colorado address.
posted by Scott Keneally @ 4:02 PM
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