WE WERE heading east to pick up the samples from the army depot. Our 29th time on I-40. The return trip would be number 30.
“I probably put out more CO2 doing this job than the company cleans up at the site!”
My body had looked up some figures. It should stop looking up figures. Idle hands, devil’s workshop, hasty conclusions.
“Each roundtrip adds six, maybe more, but let’s say six ... that’s six tons of carbon dioxide, for this cargo van. Chickenshit!” my body laughed. “Fifteen thousand eighteen-wheeler semitrucks hit the road from the port of Los Angeles every day. Ten, maybe twelve thousand more leave Long Beach. That’s just two ports. We have more than three hundred ports in the U.S. The truck traffic adds about six million tons of CO2 each day. Maybe a lot more. About two billion metric tons of CO2 annually. Eat that!”
Where was it going with all that? It thinks it can just Google numbers like that? The numbers it looks up are bogus. Even if correct, what was it going to do? Start a cult to train assassins to take out big oil CEOs?
“Just fucking drive,” I wanted to say. I was getting tired of it.
Lane closures were in full force. Construction season’s final stretch before the winter months. Repeated signs warned, “Your tax dollars at work,” “Reduced speed limits enforced,” and “Fines double in construction zones.”
They mean the speed limit bit in Arizona. On trip number one, my body was pulled over doing 78 in a 75 zone, just east of Flagstaff. The trooper just gave it a citation, no fines. My body thought the speed was an excuse; the officer was just checking the inside of a white cargo van with no cargo area windows, vehicle of choice for traffickers.
***
JUST EAST of Kingman, we were crawling then stopping, crawling then stopping. Unseasonal heat was on; the station DJ with the slogan, ‘songs from back in the day’ was advising staying hydrated. The van’s AC was working well. DJ’s next song was Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative.” My body turned up the volume.
At our turn to move three feet, my body took its time resuming the five yards an hour pace. When stuck in snail’s speed traffic, it’s best to let the car in front gain some distance, then drive at the speed of the actual flow. You don’t eat through the brake pads that way.
Just as my body started moving, a red muscle car cut us off, sneaking in at a-bat-out-of-hell speed from the right shoulder. California plate. Dodge Charger with a Raiders decal on the back window. “Really original! Reeeeeally original! Asshole!”
“They need lobotomies,” my body said. “Nothing bad ever happens to these dickheads. They just fuck up everybody else!”
There was a piece of news about some bears behaving curiously in El Dorado County, California. Black bear cubs were acting social and not afraid of people. People were petting them. Turned out the bears had encephalitis. The disease can be triggered by a virus, bacteria, or parasites. My body thinks the road pests need to be injected with something like that.
At the next lane closure about a hundred miles farther east, all traffic merged to the left lane. The red Dodge was some cars ahead. “Ha HAAAA!! You didn’t get far, did you? You ASSHOLE!” My body was happy!
Traffic was at a turtle’s pace, then slowed down even more. The red Dodge kept zigzagging between the lines, hitting a few cones. We were still moving very slowly some twenty minutes later. When the right lane opened eventually, he took off.
“Fucking asshole!” my body shouted with a tone suggesting the red Dodge had insulted it personally. “Fucking ASS ... HOLE!”
I wanted to say something to calm it down, then thought better and said nothing. Nothing worse than telling an irate person to calm down when they’re having a fit. It just adds fuel to the rage.
My body mumbled something else under its breath. I just ignored it. By this trip it was clear that it liked cursing at other drivers. Didn’t mean much really. Just a pressure valve. It helps to vent, my body says. Don’t keep it inside, it says. I keep it inside mostly now. Not my body. It vents constantly while driving.
At the next gas stop, my body went inside for its afternoon coffee, a sandwich, candies, other road food, a newspaper. It likes The Navajo Times and knows all the exits to gas stations that carry the paper.
I looked in the bag and saw a handful of sugar packets. Didn’t use to take sugar in its coffee. A new essential? A side effect of the pain killers? How would that be?
Back on the road, my body was pulling into every open rest area, and pulling into all gas stations. Another new development. Pulling into rest areas and not using the restrooms or into gas stations when not needing gas, very strange new things.
“And ... how the hell is this even possible?” my body said. “I get pulled over doing just three miles over limit, and this asshole gets away with doing 100? What the ...!”
Maybe the Dodge dude had a radar detector. Maybe he did get pulled over, we just didn’t see it. Who knows? Why does it matter?
I said nothing.
It was mid-October but felt like midsummer. Seasons have moved. Humans are not impotent. We are mean and very potent; huge brains and no ethics. We have rearranged the seasons.
My body was drinking a lot of water. Pain killers need water. Unseasonal heat needs water. Takes a lot of water to break down and digest pain killers and stay hydrated. That’s what it was. So, frequent restroom stops, some ‘just-in-case.’ In ‘just-in-case’ rest areas or gas stations, it drove through slowly, paying attention to all the cars; they could be backing out suddenly.
***
WE GOT to Gallup three hours later than usual. Already too late to pick up the samples. Guys at the site were in their per diem hotel rooms by now, having their per diem early dinners, watching their favorite TV channel’s early evening news covering local apartment fires, school shootings, and local politicians fucking people. My body thought to check into a motel for the day, near the site.
The exit to the army depot goes past a casino, Navajo-owned. It was open at half capacity, the casino billboard said.
As we were passing the casino, my body spotted the Raiders decal on the back window of the red Dodge in the parking lot of the casino. It was parked all the way back from the front entrance, backed up against the perimeter fence, ten feet from the access road. Could see the driver get out of his car and walk toward the front entrance.
He was about a fourth of the way to the entrance when my body backed up the van next to his Dodge Charger, on the side of his gas tank.
OK. That’s what the sugar was for! The stupid asshole was about to do something very stupid.
“He’s going to be inside for a while!” My body got the sugar packets out of the shopping bag, ripped a page off the newspaper, tore open the sugar packets, poured it all on the paper, shaped the paper into a cone, folded the end bit.
Dodge driver stopped. My body froze. “Is he coming back for something he forgot?” He started walking again, slowly. Ten feet later, he stopped again. Knelt, put the thing he was holding on the ground. We couldn’t see what it was. The Dodge driver was untying and tying his shoelaces, looking up and around as he did.
My body got out its bandana, wrapped its face in it over the KN95 mask, put on sunglasses, baseball cap, ripped out a sheet of newspaper, got the duct tape. It walked to the back plate and covered it with the newspaper and taped it up. No front plate to cover.
Next, it went to the Dodge’s gas tank, unscrewed the top, got busy pouring sugar down the opening, half the sugar falling to the ground. It was nervous but not looking around. Kept its head down.
Ten, maybe twelve seconds into the sugar pouring, we heard three explosively loud cracking sounds, like fireworks going off two feet away. The three loud firecrackers were followed by four more in rapid chain.
Fireworks stopped.
Screams and the roaring sound of stamping feet followed. People were pouring out, gushing out, stampeding out of the casino in panic, terror stricken, screaming “Active shooter! Active shooter!”
Police started arriving in under a minute. Time freezes in those situations, though. It could have been ten, twelve. Ten tribal police cruisers came careening in, red and blue lights flashing, sirens on and fading quickly as they stopped in formation, circling the front entrance.
Six officers rushed inside behind metal shields.
Silence.
My body snapped out of it, left the car it was vandalizing and jumped back in the van.
We waited.
Ten minutes later, two ambulances pulled into the parking lot, drove right up to the entrance. Another fifteen minutes, two people were carried out on stretchers and loaded into the ambulances. Out of the parking lot, the ambulances went in opposite directions.
An hour later, the red Dodge was still there. Maybe he was a witness, the police interviewing him. Fifty or so other cars were also in the parking lot.
We waited.
An hour later, we were parked outside the gate, across the street, keeping watch. Police had cleared the area, some of the civilians had got into their cars and left. Twenty-some cars were still parked where they were. The red Dodge was still there.
A tow truck entered the parking lot sometime later and started hitching up the red Dodge.
My body thought to go talk to the tow truck driver. With its bandana over the KN95, the baseball cap, sunglasses on. Put on its safety vest with reflective strips. Safety vest, a sign of camaraderie with the tow truck driver.
The Dodge owner had been taken to the hospital. In bad condition but stable, from what he knew.
My body felt like shit. It wanted to go to the hospital to see the man. Have a talk. Apologize for vandalizing his car.
The hospital location? He didn’t know; he was just there to take the Dodge to the police impound. “They’re taken to different hospitals, depending. Ask inside.”
My body was filled with guilt now. It had to find out what had happened in the casino. We had not seen anybody taken out in handcuffs. The shooter had to be inside being interrogated.
My body thought it could apologize to the Dodge driver for destroying his engine. Potentially, of course; if he didn’t start the engine, it could be saved for a small expenditure. My body would pay for it, of course. Of course!
And, of course, remind him that his driving was very menacing; other drivers might have been driving for ten, twelve hours; might be tired and easily startled, jolted, easily gotten into an accident. Maybe end up dead.
As we entered the casino, my body was met with questioning side glances. Three tribal police officers were in the front lobby talking to civilians, taking notes. Other officers were checking the front desk security monitors; they all looked up, staring in our direction. More officers on the floor of the casino were talking to civilians, taking notes.
“Sir!” my body started, voice cracking, not sure who it was addressing, just looking to see if anybody responds.
“Uhhh ... I just wanted to know which hospital they took ... Uhhh, the guy with the red Dodge? I ...”
One tall tribal police officer approached us slowly. Folded his notepad closed, put his pen in his breast pocket.
“Why do you want to know? A friend of yours, a relative?”
“Oh, no! Oh ... Noooo!” my body said emphatically, looking stern.
“He just ... He ... Well, heeeee cut me off some way back ... We saw him later again, and he was, uhhh ... he was still like ... driving like a maniac ... so I ... look, I was just on my way to work ... I just wanted to have a word with him ... I saw his car in the parking lot, so I ... so, I just wanted to talk to ... “
The tribal police officer interrupted by waving his hands to our face, as if to signal “Stop talking!”
Speaking calmly, with his eyes half-closed, in a melodic tone, like he was reading a bedtime story to his kid: “And ... So ... you thought, on your way to work, you pull over and trash his engine!”
My body shook a jolt.
“We have CCTV, you know!” he said, with less melodic tone. “We were watching you! But we were more worried about this other asshole. You’re lucky. If he was a real shot, he’da been out shooting your ass next!”
He looked up toward the ceiling, closed his eyes a half second, took in a long breath, exhaled and said: “What civilization you bring us!” Just straight talk now, no music. “Next time someone cuts you off ...,” he took in a breath, “... just get on with your life!”
Red Dodge driver was the shooter. Motive? Denied entry. The Casino was open at half capacity only for tribal members. The Dodge driver was a very white, Southern California type, in his mid-thirties blond glory, tanned to perfection, over brimming with owning the world. His driver’s license had a Huntington Beach address.
He had gone back to his car, sat there for an hour. Had then emerged with a handgun with a contraption making it a semi-automatic. The security had watched him the whole time, preparing for his reentry.
Once inside, he had been shocked to see guns pointing at him. Hit three times, in right shoulder, right and left thighs; while dropping, his gun had gone off, killing two slot machines, injuring one unlucky gambler, uncritically.
***
BACK IN the van, my body made a call to the site supervisor to let him know we were running very late. Made-up excuses followed. Supervisor was understanding but sounded skeptical.
We checked into a motel; one-story row of rooms with green doors, parking spaces in front of the rooms.
Shock was descending. We were stunned. Transported to another reality, drinking silence, digesting what had happened.
My body opened the window and listened to the desert winds. Listened to the trucks passing, the rubber humming on the road, engines droning.
Next morning, we picked up the samples and headed back for delivery. We counted the thirtieth time passing Crazy Creek and Dead River.
We laughed at a big rig passing a giant rig. Giant rig had an oversize load and the rows of yellow lights flashing. This was going uphill, one doing twenty-seven miles an hour, the other twenty-five, taking half a day to pass, a mile-long queue of cars lined up behind them. California plates were red-faced, all twisted up in rage.
My body was not going up and down the radio dial, back and forth, back and forth, from static noise to country music, to fire and brimstone God and the Good Lord Jesus, to Mexican music, financial advice, remorseful ballads, bellowing right wing nutjobs, screaming heavy metal, grating pop music and more static noise.
We drove all the way in silence, listened to the mechanical sounds of machines running on asphalt ripping through nature that should have been left alone long ago.
The whole way we didn’t look for any constellations, planets or stars. Just before Kingman, the last rays of light in the horizon faded. It was a moonless night. We didn’t look for Venus and Mercury at twilight in the western sky, didn’t look for Orion’s Belt later, or Ursa Minor or Ursa Major, Centaurus, the Northern Star, or Leo. My body did not pull over to get out the binoculars to look for spiral galaxies.
We were stunned by the fact of being trapped on this planet of dirt and water, in a species ripe with murder and hate, ignorance and bedlam; all held together by billions of humans directed to work to keep it barely together. Barely.
We drove in silence and listened. My body was ashamed of itself. I was ashamed of my body.
By midnight we were in San Bernardino. Without our tax dollars hard at work closing lanes and destroying flow, we could have been there by 9:00 without stops, 10:00 with the stops for gas, toilet runs, food and a smoke.
The next morning, we delivered the samples on time and in proper environmental conditions.
Didn’t lose the job.
Image by Genaro Barba (2021).
