We got restless, sometimes. The paradox is that when you travel endlessly, all you want is home, and then you finally reach that long-awaited homecoming only to find that the miles have gotten into your blood. Your body thrums with movement, and staying still feels like clothes that don’t quite fit. The whole rest of your life becomes an attempt to balance these two dissatisfactions. It’s great to be human sometimes. [chuckles]
So, Alice and I, we decided to go on a road trip. This time, we wouldn’t be on any sort of mission to do anything, we could just wander. Or, that was the plan. Plans, right?
We met up with Tanya. We loved Tanya, and didn’t want to fall out of touch with him just because we were no longer in a secret underground organization together fighting for our lives. You know how we can be after that, it’s like a few texts, an email, and then you see a person on Facebook and realized you hadn’t thought of them in years, and we did not want that. So, we bought ourselves an RV, and off we went.
It’s a couple of hours south of Palm Springs, east of Raleigh, out past the Chocolate Mountains, and there is a remote town known for an illegal race out on an abandoned highway that once led somewhere and now doesn’t. The story was that it was a race that allowed the racers to meet God. So...yeah, we went right to that town, obviously.
The place was small, as in, an intersection. On one corner, a gas station. On another corner, a bar. No sign on the bar except a few neon beer logos. We stayed in the RV, although there was nowhere to hook it up to anything. It still felt cleaner than the motel several miles back, and the gas station bathrooms were 24 hours. Having scoped out the whole town by standing in one spot and turning around real slow, we went into the bar with no sign.
There was a group at a table in the corner and a couple of people sitting at the bar. Folks at the bar introduced themselves as Lisa and Luis. No one behind the bar, but when we asked about beer, Lisa went around to the broken fridge and happily sold us lukewarm cans of Coors. I’m not clear she worked there. I’m not clear anyone did.
We asked about the race on the abandoned highway. Both of them got real quiet. Finally, it was Lisa that talked.
“Oh, we take that real serious,” said Lisa.
“Outsiders don’t really get it,” said Luis.
“But if you wanna stay and watch, can’t stop you,” she said.
“Outsiders don’t really get it,” said Luis.
I said that they might be surprised by what we’d get and what we had seen, but they didn’t have much to say about that, and we kind of drank in silence for a while. Which wasn’t bad, all things considered. After the last few years, I’ll take some quiet.
We asked when the next race was.
“Tonight, after dark,” said one of the people in the corner. Said their name was Tito.
I got the feeling every person in this bar, maybe every person in this town, such as it was, took part in these races. I got the feeling that’s the only reason anyone would live out in a place like this.
“Got a specific time?” said Tanya. “Or y’all just kinda go by gut?”
“After dark,” said Tito again. And that was that.
So, as dusk gave into darkness, we sat on top of the RV, parked a few blocks down the road from the intersection that was the town. And we looked out for anything that could be a race. A couple hours before, just about the whole town had cleared out, driving cars out to the north where the desert really gets desolate. Lots of the cars didn’t look like racers. Old sedans, pickup trucks with tires just this side of flat. It felt intrusive to follow, so we stayed and looked that direction. Just waiting for something to happen.
Sure enough, as it got dark, we heard the sounds of engines. We saw headlights tearing across the empty, and then we saw a pillar of flame. It had to be a half-mile high. And then it was gone. A second there, a second not.
“What in the hell?” said Alice.
“Uh…hahaha... This is getting good,” said Tanya, hunching down on his heels.
There was the sound of music, like um...a violin. Only, a violin the size of the world. I felt it in my bones. And then the car engines faded, headlights disappeared, no more violin.
“Well,” I said. “We went looking for weird. I think we found weird!”
Spent a hot and restless night in that powerless RV, and at sunrise, we went hiking. I kept a close eye out for rattlesnakes and scorpions. I mean, the world scares me, but I would argue that this is a rational response to the world.
We came across a cairn, stones piled high up maybe twenty feet, decorated with latex paint and car parts. It was a shrine. We all felt it. Um…a place of worship. Out here, east of Raleigh, near the Chocolate Mountains. The centerpiece was the big hood of a truck, turned on its side and painted like a sign. “The World Makes,” it said. “He Takes.”
“Shit,” I said.
“I’d say this here is a religion,” said Tanya.
“Yeah, I’d say you’re right,” said Alice.
That afternoon, back at the bar with no name and maybe no owner. Same scene as yesterday, Lisa and Luis posted up on stools, Tito and their friends over in the corner.
“That was really something,” I said over the beers Lisa grabbed us.
“We offer ourselves every night,” said Lisa, “and we hope that someday He will take us.”
“Take?” I said.
“Our races are an act of worship,” said Luis. “Outsiders don’t really get it.”
“Most nights, we offer ourselves up on that highway,” said Tito. “And sometimes, the winner, they get accepted.”
“What happens to people who get accepted?” asked Alice.
“The world makes!” said Lisa. “He takes!”
“So… Sometimes the winner of these races, they just disappear?” I asked.
“No,” said Tito. “They are accepted! Someday, we all will be. ‘Til then, we wait our turn. We race until He takes us. And then we don’t have to worry anymore.”
“Woohee, I love this town!” said Tanya.
Back at the RV that evening, we compared notes.
“This is the most entertaining bullshit I have ever seen,” said Tanya.
“Yeah, I’ve seen too much to find this funny,” said Alice. “If they say the winner is sometimes accepted or taken or whatever they wanna call it, then I believe them.”
“What about you, Keisha?” asked Tanya.
[sighs] “I don’t know,” I said. The wind kicked in cool from the west, a memento of the distant ocean. “I just… I don’t know.”
That night, we went out with the caravan of racers, piling into Tanya’s Jeep that we had towed with the RV, following the convoy to the abandoned highway, its asphalt worn smooth by fine grit carried by a wind and tires. The cars and trucks solemnly lined up where the highway dissipated into desert. A single air horn was blown, and off they went into the night. There was no column of fire. I heard no violin song. It was a race between old and beat-up cars. Luis won, I think. He came driving back.
“All of you here?” called out Tanya.
“No one was accepted tonight,” said Tito.
“See, what did I tell you all?” Tanya said to Alice and I. “Total bullshit. I love it!”
The next morning, once more to the bar. What else was there to do? Except leave, I suppose. [sighs] I suppose we could’ve always done that, but we were not the type. We’re the type that keeps pushing until something goes wrong. Speaking of which…
“I want in,” said Tanya. “Let me race.”
Everyone was quiet. Then, Lisa spoke. “We won’t stop you. Everyone has the right to offer, as long as they understand that any offer might get accepted.”
“Kickass,” said Tanya.
Luis shook his head, finished his beer, crushed the can, threw it behind the bar, and left.
“This is silly,” said Alice later as the sun sauntered off the scene. “What if it’s real? We get home safe, and you throw it away for this?”
“Alice,” said Tanya, “It’s not real! And anyway, even if it was, being accepted doesn’t sound that bad. Some of us don’t get accepted that often by anything.”
And then I said, “I want to go with you,” before I knew I was doing it. I had just seen so much in this world, and it had made me greedy, I – I wanted to see more.
Alice didn’t say anything. She didn’t have the right to stop me, and she knew it.
I got in the passenger seat of Tanya’s Jeep, and we joined the convoy one more time. As the dark settled, we joined the lineup. The highway in front of us curved down a bowl of a valley before coming up on the other side. It felt like I could see twenty miles in front of me. The air horn went off, and Tanya accelerated hard off the line. “I love this shit!” Tanya said.
We were quickly in the lead, given that so many of these cars weren’t in any shape to race. Out in front, it felt less like driving and more like falling. We hurtled down the bowl of the valley, and it felt like we would collapse forever into the dark in front of us, and then–
That column of fire. It was so tall, and yet I felt no heat. For a moment, the entire world was alight, and then it was gone. I heard music that felt like it was playing in my bones, reverberating in my skin. Tanya didn’t seem to notice anything; he was set on winning. I looked up, and where before there had been a field of stars, now I saw that the stars had...arranged themselves into a face. It wasn’t a human face, the- the configuration was dizzying and alien, but somehow, still, I knew it was a face...looking down at us. I wanted to scream, but I was afraid that if I did, then the face made of stars would scream back. And ahead, I saw flares on the highway. Markers for the finish line. The only other car close to us was Lisa, and she was a few lengths back. Tanya was going to win.
Sometimes, the winner gets accepted, and then they never come back, and– ok, I don’t believe that. Ok, that-that was just one of those stories that gets told in the places where they never bother to run power lines, but I saw that face made of stars. I knew that I would see it for the rest of my life.
“Slow down, Tanya,” I said.
“Slow down, hell!” he said. “We’ve got this in the bag!”
“Tanya!” I said, and he heard the desperation in my voice, and that shook him out of it. “Tanya,” I said. “Let someone else win.”
And he did. He eased off, and Lisa passed us and crossed the finish line. And what happened next would be hard to describe.
I saw the stars reach down and take her. Not like a-a hand made of stars; the movement was more abstract than that. The entire universe came down to this one little spot in the desert, and it scooped Lisa’s car up, and then snapped back into the infinite. Lisa was gone.
Neither Tanya nor I spoke. When the world says that to you, how do you even begin to say anything back? [exhales]
We returned to the bar. Alice threw her arms around both of us.
“I thought you were gone,” she said.
“I’m right here,” I said.
There was a celebratory mood among the racers. Tito got everyone drinks from the fridge.
“So, where is Lisa?” I said.
“She’s gone!” Tito said. “She got accepted. No one who gets accepted comes back.”
“Will you miss her?” I asked.
“Hell, we’ll celebrate her!”
They cheered, and they drank the warm beer and hugged until the night wore on ‘til late, and they retired to wherever it was that they all slept, because they were going to do the race all over again tomorrow. With one less racer than they had a few days before.
I stumbled out to the intersection, not sure how to understand this bargain that they were making with...whatever it was I had seen. Luis came out after. He had been quiet, the least celebratory. He had been Lisa’s friend, after all. He smiled, put one warm hand on my hand, and said, as gentle as he could, “Outsiders don’t really get it.”
He squeezed my hand once and walked off, and I never saw him or any of them again.
I wonder, now, if I went down to Raleigh and then headed out east past the Chocolate Mountains, would I ever even be able to find that place again?
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
We got back in our RV, drove back to Alice and I’s home, where we lived, where we belonged, where we would build the rest of our lives.
“I love you!” I said to Tanya. “Stay in touch!”
“Stay in touch, shit!” said Tanya, sweeping me into a tight hug. “I’ll be seeing you on our next trip. I bet that RV can carry us to some truly strange places, mm?”
Then, Alice and I stood, arm in arm, watching him drive his Jeep away, and then we were alone. I caught her gaze, and she caught mine, and we laughed. I don’t know why we laughed.
Sometimes, when the universe stares down at you with its cold, alien eyes, there is nothing more human than to look back...and to laugh.
