great American road trips: ep. 5
space man
Daylight vanishes all at once from the sun-soaked walls of this narrow canyon, instantly bleeding the sandstone gray. I have been cautious to linger below the speed limit since leaving the interstate, but feel myself lean anxiously into the accelerator, sensing the looming twilight. Wheels hug the shoulder as I round a curve and a Mad Max truck barrels around it in the oncoming lane. A Jeep flashes its brights in my rearview mirror and, though I press harder on the gas pedal, jumps the double-yellow line in the road and quickly overtakes me once the truck passes, spitting black fumes as it weaves back into the lane in front of my leased SUV. I keep my gaze forward, careful not to make eye contact.
Have I crossed over into California yet? It is impossible to tell, as my phone signal went out some miles back when I began this gradual incline, just outside Goodsprings, NV. The only road hazard I fear worse than a gun-toting desert road rager is a California Highway Patrol officer, and I am traversing the badlands in between their domains—the barren and untamed western border of Nevada, a horizon and a half beyond the familiar taupe boundaries of Las Vegas, where I left my last pack of cigarettes. I am on edge already when the canyon suddenly splits open and the road disappears all at once into fading blue sky.
Catching my breath, I crest the hill before I can careen onto the shoulder and Sandy Valley opens up below.
Having been here only once before, in the dead of night, I am momentarily awed by the sight of the receding sun over the distant mountains. Desert sunsets seldom disappoint. A single road shoots down from the canyon into the aluminum mojave pueblo along what I recognize as the state line—here Nevada, there California—and recedes into the dust northward, vaguely in the direction of Las Vegas.
I hadn’t the slightest inkling of this place’s existence six months ago, before R. appeared at the door of my parents’ house after years on the lam. His shoulder-length hair was cut short and he was down at least thirty pounds, but he grinned wide as ever when I opened the door. When asked where he’s been, he responded in familiar cryptic overtones. He spoke of conspiracy and impending doom, of a godless place called Sandy Valley and of an ongoing feud with the local LDS church.
I could never be certain until months later that this dilapidated desert hamlet truly existed as he described it. R. is the only adult in my life not registered as a Republican voter whose explanations for the workings of the world have made even less sense to me now than they did growing up - back when he would regale us with winding tales of the Freemasons and CIA coverups from South Asia to the cosmos. Even as we sat smoking at eye-level on the patio, I found myself nodding and “ah, yes”-ing to more things now than I ever did as an eight-year-old, when I was intrepid enough to pull curiously at the threads of his mangled monologues.
“You know, just like they did to Oswald,” he said at one point.
I ashed my cigarette thoughtfully. “Lee… Harvey Oswald?” I ventured, though I could not be sure if we had just been discussing real estate in the Andes, geopolitics in the Sahel, or both.
R. nodded, looking me in the eyes. “The big man himself.”
“Ah, yes,” I said, nodding. We both laughed.
R.’s sudden reappearance in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown is exhilarating. In over a decade R. has never, ever asked how I am doing. Rather, his greetings since I was a teenager have typically (as far as “typical” goes for R.) involved inquiring after my most recent sexual encounter. He does not ask how I am keeping on during the pandemic; he wants to know if this “shit show” has interfered with my “quest” for “pootang.”
His candor and curiosity leave me enchanted as ever. R. sees things for more than what they are. The world appears to him as constellations and interconnections. As long as I have known him—which is most of my young life—he has treated me as an equal, but in his otherworldly presence I feel grounded and naïve.
Months later, I hazard into Sandy Valley alone, reading the directions that R. had scribbled on a small Post-It note before bidding sayonara and disappearing into the night.
Minding the speed limit, I slink past a single ramshackle gas station and a K-12 school moonlighting as a community center, though there appear to be more community members drifting through the parking lot of J&J’s General than anywhere else in town. One right turn off the highway and the gravel gives way to dirt road.
There are no children playing in the yards I roll past. A few large dogs approach chain-link fences and bark curiously, but as darkness descends on the town yellow eyes begin to peer out from beneath the trailers that have not yet sunken completely into the arid earth. I flip on my high beams, find the crooked mailbox leaning with the painted number matching the one R. has written down.
The yard is gated with military fencing, identical to the rest of the unirrigated land in the area. A pit bull rushes to greet me. The house is… quaint, I suppose. From the outside it could be the spaceship R. originally arrived to earth in, chipped-paint siding boarded up at random intervals, with a small wooden front porch on stilts. A smaller outpost I recognize from my single previous visit peeks around the carport.
I beep once and the screen door flies open. R. wears a jacket and shorts, carries a tattered bag. He waves and jogs to the gate. No sooner has he unlocked it than a spotted snout appears outside my window. Claws scratch at the door.
I get out to greet them both but R. pulls me into a hug before I can say anything.
“How are you?” I inquire politely, but his son A. is already buckled in the backseat, cooler on the floor, hatchback closed.
I get in and shift into reverse as R. waves me out the chain-link gate. When we are clear, he latches it shut, pats the dog once on the head, then gets in beside me.
The first thing he does is turns in his seat to make sure A. is buckled in and has thanked me for giving them a ride. Then he turns to me and says quietly, “Let’s get the fuck out of this shithole.”
A. calls me “Mr. T.” (my actual name, not the initial), which is what R. has told him to call me. I ask him how he likes living in Sandy Valley and he says with a shrug that it is “alright.” A. has a smartphone that he uses to look things up so that he knows what he is talking about before proffering opinions. At eleven years old, he may be one of the most intelligent adults I have ever met.
Despite his proximity to what I assume is the meth capital of the Southwest, he has not yet succumbed to vice. In this insipid and dusty place, potential radiates from R.’s humble offspring. It suddenly becomes clear to me why they must leave.
R. does not hide his disdain for this place as we return to the highway, though his language is tidier than usual in his son’s presence. He rolls the window down as he talks to point toward acreage that sprawls from the local airstrip across the border. At a glance, I instantly assume cult dealings, but instead he says something about a complex human trafficking operation, bribery and local corruption. The headlights splash across a wooden sign: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I nod. “Ah, yes.”
A. and R. both look back one last time as Sandy Valley vanishes and we weave into the canyon toward the I-15. I do not. I hope to never come back here. I am no stranger to America’s myriad townships and rural villages, but this place gives me a distinct case of the heebie-jeebies. The banjo theme from “Deliverance” comes to mind and I hand A. the aux and ask him what kind of music he likes to listen to. Already connected to the Bluetooth, he puts on the Foo Fighters.
We drive on toward the interstate and I want to ask R. where they will go once we get to Las Vegas, how they have ended up here, about the past and the present and the future. After two decades of captivation in the wicked webs spun by his winding and unnavigable monologues, I long to understand him.
I turn for resolution, and see that R. is crying. It is dark, but the dashboard display sparkles on his wet cheeks.
The song ends. There is no service in this canyon so a new one does not immediately queue up. It is quiet.
“Can you explain something to me?” I ask. R. wipes his eyes and turns to look at me. A. glances up curiously from the backseat. I take a breath. “Who keeps building all these churches in the middle of nowhere?”
He grins wide as ever. “You remember the Freemasons, right?”
TG