Friday’s Story #6
By: Keith
Memorial
By Keith Wilcox
The music resonated peacefully between us. It was slow and finger-picked and contemporary. The words were Spanish and the man was singing about a love he was, at one point, afraid he would scare away. A native speaker would probably not find it mysterious. It was the middle of the night on a flat road somewhere in Kansas and we headed east. Kansas seemed uniformly boring. The music was soothing, and I appreciated it. Larry didn’t speak Spanish but he had a look like he was probably thinking about it. I sat in the front copilot’s seat. Larry, a friend from my college days, drove. I picked him up in Denver on my way through. It was his turn to drive. Neither of us spoke. We were busy interpreting the music.
Larry had a car in Denver but it was old and likely not up to a cross country trip. We both decided, when I called him 24 hours ago, driving together would be nice. Larry was a nice guy, but he was not successful. Massage therapists rarely are. In college I had pegged him as a future novelist. It was not a dream of his to write, but I thought it suited him. Larry was absorbed in thought as the SUV hummed through Kansas. We’d be in North Carolina in 15 hours and we would attend the memorial service of our mutual friend whom neither of us had seen in 20 years. Scott, Larry and I had made a promise to each other in our sophomore year when we all lived together in a run-down rented house off campus, and when we understood everything, and when none of us were worried about being lost at sea. Larry and I were one day away from fulfilling our end of the bargain.
I studied history, Larry studied political science, and Scott wanted to be a biologist. We thought that the things they taught us in school would serve us well afterwards. It was not the case. Larry massaged people for a living, and I didn’t know if he chose that career because he wanted it or because he was one of a million other people in college who didn’t stand out. I did not stand out either. I got lucky; my father owned a chain of lavanderias, in and around, Los Angeles. You didn’t call them laundry-mats in Los Angeles. I found a job when I graduated, but I wound up knowing a lot more about washing machines than I did about banking and history. My dad gave me three laundries in Torrance to manage, and then he had a heart attack and died, and I took over the family business –lucky.
“Larry, you doing okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I think I can make it ‘till Kentucky.” He didn’t look at all tired. “Maybe we’ll stop in a few miles and I’ll get a coke.”
“That’s fine. But, if you want me to drive just say so. I don’t mind.”
“Okay.”
We made the promise to each other in 1989. It was after spring break which we had intended to take together in Palm Springs. That was the week that we all found out how useless college was. It was the week we drove a beat up old Volkswagen van through the desert and did peyote with a bunch of out of work Indians. We finished college two and a half years later, but that week had been the pinnacle of our college experience. The Indians found us when the van’s oil filter had dropped off on the highway and none out of the three of us knew what to do about it. We rolled down the windows and waited. Every two or three minutes a car or group of cars drove by, but nobody stopped until the Indians found us. There were 7 of them in two beat up Buicks, and they squeezed us in and drove us to the reservation, what they called a reservation but was really 10 crappy houses in north Santa Fe. They told us they were Pueblo Indians, but we wouldn’t have known the difference, and we didn’t care anyway. Larry asked them if we would be welcomed if other Indians saw us around. The Pueblos said nobody would have a problem as long as we didn’t stay too long. They had enough problems to deal with and we weren’t important. We were just going to get an oil filter and oil and belt wrench and be on our way. It wouldn’t be a problem.
We got back to the van, and we paid for all the materials, and we gave them a wad of money for their troubles. They asked us to follow them for a mile, and we did. We turned off the highway on an old dirt county road and drove a quarter of a mile up and stopped. The sun was already 4 finger widths from the horizon. We consumed peyote for the first, and the last, time that night. I never asked, but I was sure that neither of my two friends had ever done it again. It would not be right to replicate the experience. The Pueblos took us to a bare spot a little ways from the road, and we sat and talked for a while before they let us drink with them. They had nothing to do because they were out of work, and we had nothing to do because we were college students.
Read the continuation on Part 2, Part 3, and The End
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Beautiful story. Must I wait until next Friday? Ok,ok, I will
Smoking peyote! That’s an interesting twist.