I’m Trying
I waited at the bus stop in New Meadows for only about 20 minutes before Rob pulled up in his Camaro to pick me up. The sun was low and casting shadows across the mountains in a way that seems to be synonymous for late August in Central Idaho. I threw my duffle bag in the trunk and got in on the passenger side. Rob pointed to a cooler sitting in the back seat saying that he’d picked up a half-rack and some ice. After a twelve hour bus ride from Salt Lake I was more than ready for a cold beer.
The previous June Rob and I had become official graduates of Council High school. The afternoon that we attended our last day of school Rob, Dave, Dennis and I spent the afternoon at Dave’s house in his room listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, drinking beer, and contemplating just what the hell we were going to do for the rest of our lives. Regretfully for many young souls freshly out of high school in that part of the country the notion of continuing one’s education at the university level can be a remote concept at best. Rob had spent his life on the family ranch owned by one branch of a somewhat locally storied family and his future seemed to be pretty much mapped out. After having for all intents and purposes ran the ranch since he was big enough to climb onto a horse or tractor he was pretty much planning to stay put, and happily so. Oh, like the rest of us, he still had notions of sowing a few wild oats before he settled in for good, but other than that he had a fairly cogent idea of the direction he was headed.
Dave on the other hand was treading in somewhat more precarious waters. His father was a medical doctor who had, if memory serves me correctly, practiced in Council for some time. Being the goal driven man that he was he had decided to move to Boise for bigger and better things. Consequently he and his wife, David’s mother, divorced. David’s three older brothers were achievers much in the same vein as his father and as such in many ways followed their father’s foot steps into the professional life. David on the other hand had aspirations of making his own way on his own terms contrary to his family name or his father’s notions of what he ought to do. David was the self anointed black sheep of the family, a role that at this time in our lives he seemed to relish.
Dennis had excelled in many ways throughout high school; athletically and in academics, but this was the result of not so much any kind of driven ambition but rather the character he possessed. His father worked in the saw mill and life in Council was something, as far as I can tell, that Dennis had no intentions of ever changing. I don’t know if he ever even contemplated a life beyond that mountain town.
I on the other hand had absolutely no intentions of spending my life in Council. I’d spent the last couple of years of school thinking about the day I would leave. At first I considered pursuing a career in something like journalism, and I actually went through many of the motions to enroll in Boise State University. But I didn’t. Something that in many ways I do regret, but in other ways I realize that I was not nearly focused nor disciplined enough for such an endeavor. Also since the time of my earliest memories I had always loved music. I wanted to play in a band. I remember at the age of 10 or 11 while still living in Riggins starting a band with some other kids. None of us knew how to play any instrument except my fundamental skills at percussion. It didn’t matter. As I got older, after my parents divorced and I ended up back in Council, I put in a lot of effort in the school band program and did well. I loved playing drums and it was at about the age of 14 that I began to eat, sleep, drink and live the drums and playing in a band. A few years later I was invited to play in a local country sometimes country/rock band that taught me well in a lot of ways. It wasn’t too long until I decided I wanted to step away and out, and try to pursue that dream, but that’s a whole other story.
Be that as it may, as the four of us sat in David’s room listening to Pink Floyd and drinking beer I had a somewhat tepid approach to life. I was torn between what I felt I ought to do and what I really wanted to do, and as per one of my great character flaws at that time in my life, when torn between two decisions I opted to do basically nothing. Well, perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. I did opt to do something in that I took up an offer from my mother and step father living in Salt Lake City to come and stay with them over the summer to “see what I might want to do.” Not too long after the Pink Floyd incident I was on my way to Salt Lake City.
The bus bound for Salt Lake City stopped in Boise, and it was there that I met Darlene. Darlene was 32, blonde and pretty. Luck was with me in that it was the unoccupied half of my seat that she decided to sit in. She was on her way back to Phoenix after visiting relatives in Boise. By the time the bus got to Twin Falls I learned that she was from Oklahoma and after getting a degree at some university or another she had married. She and her husband had moved to Phoenix where they started a floral shop. She had, or rather her husband had, dreams of starting up a chain of floral shops that would span from one coast to another.
She was attentive to my side of the conversation and often referred to me as a “sweet boy.” It wasn’t too long before the dynamics began to change, to subtly cross over into some kind of foreign territory; foreign for me anyway. The more we talked the more she would occasionally reach over and touch my arm or put her hand on my leg. Every time she made contact I had a tickling somewhere between my sternum and my toes. By the time we arrived in Salt Lake City it was well past 11:00 pm and I told Darlene that I was supposed to give my mom a call when I got in, but she insisted that we get something to eat at a hotel across the street from the bus station. She had booked a room for a couple of days in which she planned to wander around the city before continuing to Phoenix. Fine I thought, and soon we were chewing on a couple of burgers.
I don’t know what it is with me, but in many ways I’ve always been exasperatingly naive in the ways of women. I’m not threatened or intimidated mind you, it’s just that often times I fail to notice signals, or perhaps more accurately I ignore them, sometimes at my own peril. Shortly after finishing the burgers Darlene asked if I wanted to come up to the room for a bit. She said it innocently enough, but it seemed to be a signal that even I could understand. The changing of dynamics was not so subtle anymore.
We picked up our bags and headed for the elevator. The whole time my head was swimming. Perhaps I’m overly analytical, but there were about a dozen things I kept weighing in my mind about this whole burgeoning situation. She’s beautiful, but she’s married and everything about this seems somehow disposable. When we got to her room everything remained conversational, and I was almost praying that somehow, someway this situation could turn in such a direction as to alleviate any hard decision making on my part. It’s not the difficult decisions that are the problem. It’s the lingering doubts that almost always follow.
After a few minutes I looked at my watch and noticed it was well after midnight and knew that my mom would most likely start worrying pretty soon. Darlene sat in a chair quietly looking at me for a moment. I walked over to the door and mumbled something about having to make a phone call, and Darlene plunged in with, “Why don’t you stay here with me tonight?”
There it was, all laid out and in the open. It was time for a decision and I had already made it. I told her that I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I know it sounds patently absurd in light of me being an 18 year old healthy male, but I did have reasons for my tepid response; a girlfriend back home, Darlene being married, etc. But the largest factor was that hooking up with some babe from nowhere for a spur of the moment tryst was so far from my mind at that point in my life that I was, frankly, unprepared for anything like it.
She looked rather pensive for a moment, and a wan smile touched her face. “You’re probably right,” she said. She lowered her face to her hand and I heard some quiet sniffles.
I felt pretty shitty and walked up to her. I stumbled for words telling her that I was sorry, but as soon as the words came out I immediately knew how offensively condescending I must have sounded. She asked me if it was because she was married. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
She bailed me out by regaining her composure. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, putting you in this position.” She stood up and gave me a tight hug with her lips pressed against my ear. I suddenly felt more sad than confused. We remained that way for a minute or two before she whispered, “You probably better leave.”
Back at the bus station I called up mom to let her know I’d arrived. She mentioned that it was pretty late and asked me how my trip was. I told her it was uneventful.
After almost three months in Salt Lake City I squandered any opportunity I may have had at seeing what I wanted to do. Instead, I let myself fall into a morass of self loathing and confusion tempered by a bit of homesickness and missing a way of life that I was utterly comfortable with. At that time for me life was a series of all or nothing situations. If I were to leave home to pursue any kind of dream or life, it meant that I was saying goodbye forever to any former life and cutting all ties. There was no notion of being able to visit, to keep in touch. To do so, in my warped way of thinking, would be approaching it half-assed. When I look back on it now I realize how horrendously flawed my thinking was. It’s life in do-or-die mode without hedging your emotional bets. Realizing that one can live a life, pursue a goal and still not abandon all that makes who we are was one of the single most important moments in my life. When it’s all or nothing, nothing can get pretty lonely.
On highway 95 between Tamarack and Council I drank a beer and looked out at the country side. The pines flew by, and I marveled at how I could be so fervently in love with these mountains and Central Idaho yet feel such a strong desire to leave. Rob filled me in on some of the details that I missed while away. He told me of an adventure that he and Dennis had in New Meadows when, in a bout of drunken idiocy, they managed to get into a street-brawl with three equally drunken idiots. Apparently the fight started at the doors of a bar and ended in an alley. He and Dennis had gotten the better of them, but it took Rob a couple of weeks to fully recover. That was one adventure that I was glad that I missed out on.
We got into Council just before sunset and we stopped by Dad’s to drop off my duffle bag. Neither Dad nor my step-mother was home, so I just left the bag on the couch, and Rob and I headed out on the town. We come across Dave driving his little blue Ford Courier pick-up truck and he suggested we combine our beer and “go tear it the fuck up.” Soon all three of us were packed in the Courier, swilling beer and headed North out 95 towards the Y.
We blew past the Y and drove on to Fruitvale where we turned around, made a “pit stop” (our lingo for taking a piss), grabbed another beer, and headed back to town. Somewhere by the Mill Creek Road turn-off Dave stunned us by announcing that he’d joined the Army and was due for entry in a couple of months. When Rob asked him why the hell he’d done that, Dave simply replied with, “Because I wanted to,” and that was that. Some ten years later while sitting on a beach in Hawaii watching the sun come up with a model from Mexico City named Norma, who was on her way to Japan after a photo-shoot, I pondered what made the two of us stay up all night talking about our separate lives in such detail. After all we had only met a few hours before. She said she couldn’t speak for me, but she did it because she wanted to. When she asked me why I was smiling I told her that I had just experienced a bit of déjà vu. And that was that.
Just before we drove into town Dave made an abrupt turn into the fair grounds compound and headed directly for the rodeo arena. As luck would have it the gate into the arena was open and with even more luck to the point of absurdity we noticed that someone had been practicing barrel-racing and consequently left the barrels in place. It wasn’t too much longer before we realized that you haven’t lived until you’ve barrel-raced in a Ford Courier.
By the time we finished running the barrels it was nearly dark, and we drove into town to see what was going on. We came across some people sitting in their cars in the parking lot of the Council Valley Market where we were informed of a keg out on Ridge Road. It seemed a bit early to do the keg thing, so we decided to take the scenic route via Pole Creek.
After a couple of hours and several pit stops later we were pulling off Hornet Creek Road and onto Ridge Road. I’m guessing it was sometime around 11:00 pm by now. While I had been in Salt Lake City Dave had spent a couple of hundred bucks on a spiffy new stereo for the Courier and most of the night thus far had been spent listening to Queen so loud that in order to talk we had to shout to the point that my voice was getting horse. We managed to hit a cattle guard on a side-ways slide and put the little Courier up on two wheels for a precarious moment before it slammed back down on all fours. Dave pulled over and we stumbled out laughing and falling into the gravel road. Dave had made the mistake of turning the Courier off. I say mistake because apparently it had a questionable fuel pump and sometimes it wouldn’t start back up unless Dave crawled under the tank and jiggled something around. Sometimes it would start right up, but other times he would have to resort to giving it a little kick. Sometimes, if the Courier didn’t start right back up Dave would get out and kick it some more. Right now it was being overly temperamental and Dave was kicking the shit out of the side of his truck spewing out obscenities that would have made Satan cove his ears. He gave it one last brutal kick with a perfectly timed, “Fuck!” and promptly fell on his ass. By now Rob and I were about to pass out from oxygen depravation due to our inability to stop laughing. Finally, thankfully, the Courier started up and we all climbed in with a fresh beer, and continued the journey to the keg.
By the time we arrived at the keg there were only two forlorn looking people sitting by the fire. We were somewhat stunned at this because normally you could expect twenty or thirty people. I asked where everyone was and was told that Butch G. had taken off in a drunken rage towards town headed the Fruitvale way and he had run off the road. Everyone had left the party to go check out the excitement of Butch G. and his car wreck. Rob asked how long ago it happened.
“Hell, at least an hour ago.”
Since the excitement was apparently back in town, we took a pit stop, grabbed a fresh beer, and continued on down the road following the path that everyone else did.
Dave was driving, Rob sat in the middle and I sat on the passenger side. Throughout the night we had been throwing our empty beer bottles in the back of the Courier. I had just opened another beer, and rolled down the window and had my arm hanging out. August in that part of the country can get pretty chilly at night. Combine that with the fact that Dave was driving fifty plus miles per hour down the gravel road it got cold enough for me to pull my arm back in and roll the window up. Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust was blasting out of Dave’s new stereo. I took a drink of my fresh beer then took another. We rounded a corner with the Courier doing a little bit of a side ways slide and then . . .
Holy shit and everything turned to slow motion.
On the other side of the corner were perhaps 15 people standing in the road. Ruben’s wrecker was parked sideways just beyond the crowd, and beyond the wrecker was a police car. Dave had three choices; take the Courier down off the steep bank to the right, plow through the people, or take it to the left and up the cut-bank and hope for the best. He opted for the cut-bank on the left.
We hit the bank hard and the Courier instantly flipped end ways. At the apex of its upward trajectory it began to roll sideways perpendicular to the road below. Finally after clearing the people and Ruben’s wrecker, we tumbled back down to the road and stopped rolling when the Courier landed on the passenger side and continued sliding down the road. The passenger door window blasted out into my face, and Dave and Rob’s weight were on me. I was watching the gravel road sliding by my face just inches away. I sure as hell didn’t want to get my face, arm, or anything else in a position to get sucked out and mangled between the truck and the road. After an eternity we came to a stop no more than five feet from the front of the police car. I suddenly felt claustrophobic with Dave and Rob lying on me. I instantly formed an absurd visual straight out of a cheesy prime-time detective show where the car bursts into flame.
Get me . . . the fuck . . . out of here.
Luckily the front windshield had blown out offering us a quick exit. Dave was first and Rob was next. He used the side of my face for leverage to lift him self through the window, and then reached in and pulled me out. I stood in amazement noticing that I was still holding on to my beer. Just before the corner I took two drinks from it, and now I noticed that I hadn’t spilled one drop. Not one drop.
I stood looking at the bottle in a hazy stupor until it was suddenly ripped from my hand and tossed over the bank into the darkness. The beer bottles that had accumulated in the back of the Courier had scattered all over the road. Several of the people that were standing there quickly gathered them up and tossed them over the bank. Soon we were surrounded by people who could hardly believe what they had just witnessed. “Jesus Christ!” someone said. “That’s the best show I’ve seen in my life!”
I felt some pain in my ribs and a little blood trickled down the side of my head from the glass. Dave was muttering something about what a complete fucking dumb-ass he was. Rob was asking if anyone had a beer. Dick M. come running up, “Dude! Did you hear that Butch crashed his truck?”
I looked at Dick with mock amazement, “No shit?”
Johnny F., the deputy who belonged to the car whose headlights illuminated the totaled Courier which lay in a crumpled heap came running up. “Jesus!” he said. “You damned kids have a keg, and you think it gives you the right to Goddamn kill yourselves!”
After Ruben pulled Butch’s truck up the bank and onto the road he up-righted the now dead Courier. It was a safe bet to assume that the night was pretty much over. I’m not sure how Rob and Dave got home. I got a ride from Ruben’s daughter who was helping him collect money by accumulating the crashed cars of drunken idiots out driving. She drove me to her house and ministered a little first aid on my head and fed me a cup of coffee. She made the observation that I and my friends were some of the craziest knuckleheads she was likely to ever meet. I couldn’t very well argue with that, so I took a drink of the coffee instead.
When the coffee was finished she drove me to my Dad’s house and I quietly went to bed. The next morning when I woke up, Dad and my stepmother were sitting at the table eating breakfast. Dad said he figured I was home since he noticed my duffle bag sitting on the couch. He then noted that I looked like I had been shit on, rode hard and put away wet.
“We got a little carried away and had a little accident,” I said.
“I know that,” Dad said, “but are you okay?” Word gets around fast in a small town.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Dad slid a plate of eggs and bacon to me. “Are you ever going to stop being stupid?”
“I’m trying,” I said.