Tequila Sunset
by Takeo De Meter
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five
They
helped me set up „camp“ that is they helped me figure out the
tent that Hideki and I had bought but that I had not tried yet and found
out that it was a 2-man job to get it sorted out. Too large, too heavy,
pure cotton / linen and must be a bitch to handle when wet. Also found
out that I did not possess the most elementary camping gear like a chair
or something or something to cook on like some form of a stove. They were
so friendly as to share their evening meal with me and I contributed Coke®,
rum and corned beef. The rum must have done it because an hour later or
so we were the best of friends. They told me all about their trip and
the back roads / tracks they had followed down to Belize and back to where
they were now. Roads only got interesting in the very south they said.
They also asked where I was going and I had to give them the honest answer
that I really did not know, told them about Hideki and Rosita and added
that I was just passing time and was just heading south. They suggested
that I take a trip to Belize since I got the truck and the time for it.
The scorching noon sun woke me the next day by heating that damn tent
up to sauna temperatures and I staggered out, to find that all the others
had left already. Oh well. So I took my time to fold that tent up again
and gather my stuff. Taped to my steering wheel I found a plastic envelope
containing some maps and a friendly note that thanked me for the rum and
wished me a good trip.
I briefly considered traveling down to Belize, but finally folded the
maps back up and decided to go back where I came from. Damn shitty potholed
gravel road whipped up as much dust as any sand track would do and it
was gritting between my teeth by the time I got back on the highway. Land-Rover
aerodynamics have the wonderful property of whirling dust even against
the direction of movement: it all comes back to you, just like the blind
man said, as he was spitting in the wind. I equally hate gravel and sand
tracks. Never understood why anyone would travel them for „fun“
I traveled them for a living and that was enough. I was wondering if I
was having fun now, since this was upposed to be a „vacation“
and all I had done was driving in the heat (some of it in the cold) and
eating dust. Not really, so I produced a couple of choice swearwords to
myself and sortof felt relieved when I turned right on the highway, back
North.
I drove on all afternoon, stopped briefly for a drink underway and continued
out of pure frustration and boredom. It was night when I reached the foothills
of the Sierra Madre and got totally lost in the dark, climbing uphill
on a steep track. Fuel was still plenty, temperature stayed normal and
I sortof enjoyed listening to the low and steady growl of the engine,
reflected by the rocks. As if the S II was talking to me, telling me its
life in a lengthy monotone. It seemed as if I were listening to my own
godforsaken soul as if the truck were my alter ego, droning on about the
purposelessness of my mere existence. The rocks were dark and grey and
cast black shadows alternating with bleak flares of silver moonshine splashed
across the road. Reflections in a shiny windscreen, reflections of my
soul, reflections of my mind. No door tops, Arm resting on a galvanized
capping, feeling the coolness of the metal. Hand caressing door and feeling
Birmabrite under the grey paint. Existential dilemmas. To drive or not
to drive. The road is futile, it leads nowhere anyway. I am going nowhere,
at a steady pace. I am moving, not traveling. Am I making way over the
surface of the earth, or is this orb just moving under me, in opposite
directions, so that I am standing still in reality ? Does this journey
make sense ? Does life make sense ? Not really. Not to me, anyway. It
never did and I doubt it will ever do. I work, I get paid, I travel, I
work, I get paid, I get into the next truck, I travel again. I am not
working now, I am merely moving. I have no companion. My truck, my tool
is my companion. I have nothing to share but my loneliness or my emptyness.
Try to share nothing. Try to share the true meaninglessness of life. The
canyon walls are talking to me in the reflections of the exhaust of the
2 and a quarter litre. The gravel on the road lets the tires tell me that
they are weary and its pebbles say that they will be lying there forever,
under the tires and hooves and feet of meaningless and directionless travelers
like me. The ancestors cut the roads through the mountains, knowing that
it would help me getting lost in life. Madness.
That is when I saw her, the Lady Of The Mountain, in a hairpin bend, standing
in the middle of the road. I hit the brakes and skidded sideways, grinding
to a halt with one wheel over the edge, or almost. I stared at her, looking
at her unearthly beauty, not hearing what she was saying. She was talking
to me allright, but I could not hear her voice, all I heard was the wash
of the water of the arroyo down the precipice nearby. But my soul listened
better than my ears. I heard her say that my travel would not end here,
that my travel was without end and that my way to go would be long until
I would reach my destination in the Nowhere. Then she was gone. It all
happened so fast that I only clearly remember hitting the yellow knob
down so that my front axle pulled my out of the tight spot I had gotten
myself in. A foot further would have meant a thousand feet deeper. I parked
the truck along the next straight stretch of track and decided that I
had either drunk or driven too much. The night was cold and I suddenly
remembered that I had a warm sleeping bag in the back. Time to hit the
aluminium. The future would tell.
THE END