72: getting ready to leave
Dan, of course, thought we were both crazy.
And he raised doubts about traveling east together
hitchhiking.
“Nobody’ll pick up the three of us, or at least not many
would,” he said.
“We can take a bus,” Louise suggested.
“I don’t like that idea either,” Dan said.
“You mean because Billy might be watching the bus depot?” I
asked.
“That and the cops,” Dan said. “The heat is on. And the fuzz
will be hassling any freak that tries to come or go by public transportation.
They’re even hounding people on local buses.”
Louise, standing near the counter between the kitchen and
the area with our large throw pillows and low table, took on a dour expression,
her hopeful glow that had been in her eyes earlier, faded into disappointment.
“What other options do we have?” I asked.
“We could borrow a car,” Dan said. “Provided anybody would
trust us not to get busted with it.”
“Do we know anybody like that?” Louise asked, a slightly
more hopeful note in her voice.
“Not anybody who would trust me these days,” Dan said. “Not
with Billy on my trail.”
“Maybe we can rent a car,” I said.
“Using your fake license?” Dan said. “Do you feel that
confident it’ll hold up under scrutiny?”
“What else is there?”
“We could buy something,” Dan suggested.
“Buy a car?” Louise said doubtfully. “Do we have enough
money for that?”
“Maybe a van. I’m pretty sure we could get something pretty
cheap.”
This wasn’t definitive, and I caught a doubtful note in
Dan’s voice as we both glanced around the apartment, at all the things Louise
had collected since our settling in here, far from the suitcase I had come
across country on the bus with – not to mention the cats.
Louise articulated it.
“What about my stuff?” she asked.
“We’ll have to leave some of it behind,” I said, looking
away from her, not wanting to see the intense disappointment in her eyes, and
resentment, being caught between two desires, much in the way she had been when
I recovered her from Denver, needing to go, and yet knowing she had to leave
part of herself behind – as she had in the old motel when we stuffed the extra
stuff in a closet for the next guest to find.
But this was not a motel and much of what she had collected
here, she wanted to keep, and when I looked at her, I saw the question: “how do
I choose?”
“We can take some of it with us,” Dan said. “I figure if we
get a van we can construct a platform for a bed in back. We can store some
stuff under the bed.”
Louise’s despair quickly turned hopeful.
“We can put the cats in carriers, or let them wander around
in the van,” she said.
“We’ll have to do this pretty quickly” Dan said. “Things are
hot. We want to be out of here before the cops catch onto us.”
“Wouldn’t the cops be looking for Billy or the others?” I
said, panicking a little, knowing that the phony ID I had purchased from Free
Press Bob would not hold up under intense scrutiny, especially if they ran a
check on my fingerprints.
I had a record back home. Even then, they could trace me
through the Army.
“Let’s just do it then,” Louise said.
She didn’t look at me, although she knew I wasn’t gung ho
about all of it, going back on the road, especially going to Denver, where she
hoped she would find Tim, while I prayed she would not, and wished we could
pick some other destination.
Maybe her idea of going to Alaska was a good one, only she
wouldn’t take that trip until she was certain there was nothing left in Denver
for her.
Dan and Louise waited on me. Finally, I gave a nod.
“Why not,” I said, keeping the rest of my reservations to
myself.
“I’ll go get a Free Press,” Dan said, taking a step towards
the door when I grabbed his arm.
“No, we’ll all go together,” I said. “If there’s a van,
we’ll want to look at it. Let’s not waste time. “
It was an odd escapade, the three of us dedicated to a new
mission, although deep down, I felt concerned, partly because of Louise’s need
to revisit her old haunts in Denver, but also something closer to home,
something I had suspected earlier, now blooming inside me like a rotting rose.
From the first time we met Dan, I knew Louise felt attracted to him, sizing him
up the way she had me back at the Print Factory and later when I came to fetch
her in Denver, as if she evaluated him as the possible next stepping stone to
some other life, one without me.
She seemed closer to him than ever, and perhaps saw him as
someone who might rescue her from her drab existence with me.
Bob wasn’t at the Free Press office when we got there; his
wife was. But she was too busy dealing with some her street people to ask what
we were up to. We brought a paper and then settled on the stoop outside to
peruse the want ads. Page after page greeted us, some private owners, some
local dealers such as Williams, the late night king of car deader, which we
largely avoided.
We were looking for a small truck or a van, which were in
vogue these days, crash pads on wheels, that hippies used for treks up and down
the coast.
Dan being more knowledgeable on such subjects circled a few
of the better options, and led us to a phone booth where we could make the call
of inquiry. The first two were far too expensive, decked out as full campers
with stove and sink, as well as bunk beds – very tempting, but beyond our
budget.
The third one – a 1959 VW van – fit our budget and so we
arranged to go have a look at it. We even took a cab, proving just how
desperate we were to get out of town.
The house in question sat a rundown lot a few blocks east of
Echo Lake Park with an equally rundown ten year of VW sitting on the scraggly
front lawn, a faded for sale sign propped up on its windshield.
The owner had used it for his carpentry business, gutting
nearly everything in the back including seats in order to accommodate tools and
lumber. The front seats showed significant wear as workers climbed in and out
of it over the years.
“It looks pretty ragged,” I said. “I mean there is nothing
in the back.”
“All the better for our uses,” Dan told me. “We’ll build
what we need.”
The owner, wearing a wash-worn, faded blue work shirt,
carpenter’s pants (with a hoop near his hip for where a hammer or other tool
might go) and unlaced tan work boots, pushed open the door from the house and
paused on the sagging porch for us to approach. He was about the same age as my
uncles, but heavier, his large belly bulging from the bottom of the shirt he
could not button. Gray stubble gave his face an aged look, though I noticed the
U.S. Marine Corps emblem tattooed on his forearm, suggesting he had been in one
of the fronts during WWII.
From the way he stared at Dan, I suspected he did not like
hippies, but since I still had the remains of my military crew cut, he seemed
less hostile to me.
Still, I let Dan negotiate the deal, his savvy Wall Street
experience shaving a few extra dollars off the sales price as he pointed out
the vehicle’s flaws.
The owner huffed and puffed, but eventually caved,
especially when he saw the cash, and we drove it back to McCadden, taking a circulars
route – on and off the freeways – for Dan to check out the mechanics, after
which he seemed content.
“It’s perfect,” he said as we pulled into the driveway,
where we disembarked.
Louise ran her hand over the side, bits of the original
paint coming off on her palm. Indeed, the vehicle looked a bit shabby against
the stucco backdrop of the Hollywood apartment building.
“Do you think we could get it painted?” Louise asked, likely
thinking of the discount auto painter frequently advertised on late night TV.
“We could do that or we could paint it ourselves,” Dan said.
“Ourselves?” Louise said.
“Why not?” Dan said.
“Could be paint it red, white and blue, like Easy Rider?” I
asked.
Dan’s grin broadened. “Yeah, that would be cool. Only I don’t
think we could trust the discount place to do that for us.”
It was fitting, I thought, since we were splitting LA Easy
Rider-like only I hoped for a better ending when we got to where we intended to
go.
“Maybe we can write something on the sides,” Louise said,
looking at the faded lettering the plumber had printed.
“Like what?”
“North to Alaska,” Louise suggested. “Isn’t that where we
want to eventually end up?”
“You two maybe, but I’ll settle for us reaching Denver in
one piece,” Dan said.
“I have a suggestion for something on the other side and maybe
the back,” I said, thinking of that time at the Bitter End when Arlo Gutherie
performed a song that included the term “Multi-colored rainbow Roach.”
Dan frowned. “That would be a little obvious to the fuzz,”
he mumbled, then smiled, “But I suppose it’s fitting. We don’t have a bug, we
have a roach, and it will be multi-colored one at that.”
This required a trip to the hardware store downtown.
Dan’s proposal was to construct bed and shelves in the
gutted real of the van, raising concerns with me privately about the weight.
“We can’t take everything with us,” he said, out of earshot
from Louise.
“I’m not sure I can convince her to leave anything behind,”
I told him.
“What about the cats? We can’t travel with four cats. A dog
maybe, but not cats.”
“What would you have me tell her?”
“The truth. Surely, she can get someone to take them, or
maybe you can get someone to take them temporarily until you get settled
elsewhere and have them sent to you there.”
It wasn’t a subject I would broach after the loss of Bitzy,
though I told Dan I would bring up the matter, each time I tried, I chickened
out.
Meanwhile, we had lumber to purchase, and carpet tiles we
intended to line the metal walls of the interior with in order to keep it
warmer.
“We’ll be in the mountains where it’ll get very cold,” Dan
said. “The tiles will provide some insulation.”
Buying the paint was a challenge. We looked at the cans of
enamel, but Dan said these would be more bother than they were worth. We settled
on spray paint even if the white looked a little too ivory. But Captain Max of
the Boulevard with cans of spray paint in each of his pockets like pistols
would have been proud of us.
For privacy while sleeping and perhaps while driving as
well, we installed a curtain rod just behind the two front seats with a curtain
that could be drawn across to keep unwary eyes from looking in the back.
When complete, it was hardly a masterpiece. But Dan figured it
would get us to Denver.
“I have my doubts about Alaska,” he said, again out of
earshot from Louise, who wanted to go there because it was the only state she
and her parents had not visited during their various summer vacations.
Dan was more concerned about the rough roads, even though he
intended to abandon us the moment we got to Denver, hoping to teach me to drive
during the first leg of the trip, one of the many aspects of this I had grave
doubts about. Despite Louise’s excitement, and my desperate need to get her out
of LA and away from the porn scene, I would have preferred staying, even if it
meant confronting Billy Night Rider again.
Denver and Alaska were distractions, metaphors for something
dangerous, inside and outside myself, which I was not yet ready to deal with.
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