Chapter 24: Turning South again
The bus turned south. We turned off route 40 and slid down the center of the state along route 17.
To one side of the road, the distant hills turned into a dusty haze, while croppings of stone showed to the other like skyscrapers built in the middle of nowhere. Signs along the roadside indicated the beginning of open range, and the fence that had accompanied along the road through the Painted Desert now vanished
I could have hopped off the bus at any time and walked anywhere I wanted, though the scrub lands now nearly as wide as the sky itself.
I would have perished within a few hours.
The excitement of Flagstaff faded from the other passengers' faces, sending most back into that sleepish on-the-road mood that had filled them for most of the trip through the plains. While this part of the country had its stark contrasts, we all hungered for our final destination, and a rest to the ceaseless sense of motion that the last three days had meant.
We had been on the road for three days, and in the same bus since Pittsburgh, some of us managing to wash ourselves and change our clothing in toilet at the rear of the bus or in the restrooms at some of the rest stops along the way.
But the stench was awful, in not completely from being unwashed, then from being too close for too long, some men compensating with too much cologne, and women with too much perfume. Many like myself had worn the same clothing all the way from Philadelphia, full of sweat and other body odors. Despite the air conditioning, the bus smell of pipe tobacco, cigarettes, cigars and an occasional joint, not to mention the stink of alcohol some of the other passengers had brought. The bus toilet also stank, even though emptied at the longer stops. We lived on top of each other, and shared all those smells each of us produced, and it was horrible.
So, instead of counting hawks as I had earlier across the breadbasket of America, I began counting milage posts, counting down to our next scheduled stop.
From time to time, odd sites appeared that were not part of the dramatic natural landscape, signs of the old wilderness and previous travelers attempts to conquer the desert. On my side, I saw an old stone building, now covered with weeds, as significant to me and my mood as the skull of a steer might have been to travelers passing here 100 years earlier. The place's roof had fallen in or blown off. The glass and shudders had vanished from its windows, and the doors fallen from the hinges. Whether once a store or trading post, I could not tell, nor read the faded letters on the stone.
Mrs. Warton slept, but her husband, Bill, seemed awake, only his gaze seemed focused on some other space, distant in geography or time, I could not tell.
Nearby, dump trucks and pickup trucks moved in and out of traffic, with the logo of some mining company from Jerome where they dug up copper, or the Bradshaw District where they dug gold or silver. I even saw some companies from the provocatively named Vulture Gold Mine.
We passed signs for The Walnut Canyon National Monument, and again, someone read from their guide book about some ancient Indian dwellings there, though I did not catch much, except that the dwellings supposedly hung on the sides of cliffs.
The power of the sun was not lost on us, despite the humming air conditioner that had not ceased pumping cool air around us since we crossed into Arizona. The light through the window warmed my legs, making me sweat.
Further on I saw signs for Clarkdale with a marker claiming another historic monument was housed there, something with the unpronounceable name of Tuzigoot. My travelling companions with the guide book either missed this or chose not to look it up and I learned very little about what might be found there.
Still further on, we not only saw signs of another national monument, but could not help but see the monument itself, a grand spectacle so magnificent, it floated over the eastern side of the highway as if men had built it instead of nature.
Montezuma Castle and its surrounding acreage was more alien that nearly anything we'd seen so far, and the hostess talked about some of its history, and how people had lived up in the cliff dwellings during some ancient time, and that until a few short years ago, visitors were allowed to climb up the reddish stone paths to the stone facing for which the natural carved structure took its name, but not anymore, vandals and knick-knack collecting tourists had damaged the place so much, the authorities put it off limits.
Rapidly, we closed in on Phoenix, that significant marker that would turn the bus west again, and put us on a road that led straight to the heart of Los Angeles, and I felt myself agitated, the way I sometimes did on the subway when I knew my stop was coming, glancing up at my bag in the rack above me, as if we would slide through the last 600 miles in minutes rather than hours.
I couldn't get the old Peter, Paul and Mary folk tune out of my head, counting down the miles the way they did in their song. Again, the landscape changed, signs for lakes appeared. We crossed a river, then the outskirts of town, we arriving in what historians called "the miracle city" like dusty cowboys straight off the trail.
If I had seen the touch of Spanish in the landscape before, I had missed it, yet here clearly as we came through the flat streets, signs of it were everywhere, clay tile shingles covering stucco-walled buildings in a non-stop parade of tiny Spanish ranches condemned to 100 by 100 foot lots.
The bright sunlight streaking through the bus' dusty windows, giving the city the strange effect of a ghost town.
It wasn't.
It was then as it would be many years later, one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
Yet I couldn't shake the feeling of emptiness as we floated through the flat streets.
I had looked forward to coming here since picking up that novel back east which I had learned from reading was based on supposedly real events occurring here.
The book sat on my lap as we moved through the streets, and I peered out, trying to see if I recognized any of the scenes described in its pages. I even looked at the faces along the curb for one any that might look like Anthony Quinn.
The drawing on the cover showed an Anthony Quinn figure dressed like an indian riding a horse across the dessert flats -- flats north of the city that I had seen glimpses of on our way in, stretching out nearly into an infinity that was only contained by distant mountains.
The city disappointed me in several ways.
It seemed to be under nearly constant construction with the center of the city seeing most of the activity. They had built a wooden wall around a central district, the way construction crews did in New York, only someone -- perhaps the same people who had built it -- had painted over the outside of it with images of the west, bright colors that I later learned fitted the Navajo scheme of design and other smaller tribes. I would see the same pictures on blankets and pottery later in my journeys west.
The wall seemed to contradict the message the book had made about how cheated the indians had been with the founding of Phoenix, how the white masters of this place had made false agreements with the indians, knowing nothing would come of the agreements later. Yet on the street, the town seemed to celebrate its Native American culture, boasting of the fact that this land had once been home to a noble race of people.
I had run into similar contradictions with my friends in New York, who had professed to love peace but battled cops on the streets of Chicago as if warriors. I kept searching through the book for some clue to it all, and found it near the front in what was called a disclaimer.
This book was a product of fiction, the author claimed. The hero did not exist. The circumstances detailed in the story were entirely made up. There was no such city as Phoenix.
The bus stopped for a half hour break in this non-existent city, and the passengers climbed off into the heat.
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