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Last Days of the 20th Century, Part 2 |
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The
Golden Gate Bridge. Courtesy Lever Rukhin. |
I was afraid that I was too small for the passing eighteen-wheelers to see me, so I merged into the slow lane of the freeway. Besides, the small section apportioned for the roadside could barely accommodate Fulcrum. I also hoped someone would stop to give me some gas they kept in a canister in the trunk somewhere.
I screamed at the top of my lungs—An eighteen-wheeler exploded past me, missing me by a few inches. As the massive rig displaced the air from behind me and barreled past, a deafening air-horn exploded so loudly that a stool fell out of my sphincter and down my pant leg.
I stopped walking, eyes peeled wide by fear and a rush of adrenaline geysered through my veins. The afterburner of wind tossed my body around and a mix of road debris and small pebbles pelted me in the back of my head and neck.
Other eighteen-wheelers lined up in Fulcrum's rearview, hovering in the distance like jumbo jets readying for landing, and blew past with their powerful horns. Each time I stopped, shut my eyes and clenched my jaws with the sensation I had fallen off the top of a tall building.
I put Helmet back on my head, cussing at the cretin who had made the executive decision to charge $70 a gallon for gasoline for troubled motorists. Helmet muffled the horns and I could hear the ensuing pebbles pinging off its fiberglass shell. At long last, I reached the top of the hill, straddled Fulcrum's seat and used my exhausted, rubbery legs to Flintstones my way down the side of the road to a gas station.
It was just after midnight when I reached the San Francisco district
of North Beach and climbed up the stairs of the Vesuvio cafe. I ordered
a double Scotch, neat, and crawled behind a corner table positioned
next to two windows that look out on Broadway.
Poetic verses and framed newspaper clippings hung on the walls describing
how the bar was frequented by Kerouac, Ginsburg and Burroughs back in
the day. A volume of Ginsburg's sat on a shelf by the table. I opened
it and read “Sunflower Sutra.”
Did Joe ever know his greasy sandwiches had made it into literature?
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, and watched Fulcrum below
leaning on one leg next to the Kerouac Alley street sign. Bevies of
drunks and tourists toting cameras paraded up and down the street.
Titty-bars lit up the night in dazzling, flashy colors as scruffy, saucer-eyed characters emerged from the front door, patting themselves down with enormous, nervous grins. It was time for me to sleep.
A stench of donut grease and decomposing Chinese food hung over San
Francisco in the morning. I sped down one street and up another after
a night's rest in a nasty hostel, hugging corners, and shifting through
tight alleyways. Over the Bay Bridge in Oakland, I sped around in search
of an exit from the Bay Area, cruising through trashy alleyways, up
boulevards, and along winding streets, but I ended up back in the center
of Oakland.
An hour passed of people pointing different directions, go this way, go that way, go away, until I ended up nowhere. Finally, I pulled into a gas station to refuel.
A large black woman with tubular legs stood at the rear of an old station wagon with faded wood paneling, pumping gas into an opening behind the license plate. She had on a loose fitting dress meant to disguise her heavy figure.
Stacks of clothes poured over the headrests of the back seat and into a rear compartment brimming with paraphernalia ranging from cooking utensils to gardening tools. I parked Fulcrum next to the pump behind her and removed Helmet. The nozzle shot out some gas prematurely and I stared at an oil puddle under my shoe. The plan of having no maps didn't seem like such a great idea anymore.
San
Francisco street scene, somewhere near where Chinatown meets
the Financial District. Courtesy Lever Rukhin. |
"Boy, you got a lotta’ shit on dat bike o' yours!" exclaimed the lady. "Your girl kick you outta’ the house?"
"No. Not this time," I replied, shifting the glasses on my nose. "Hey, could you tell me how to get the hell out of Oakland?"
"You can't take the hell out of Oakland," she replied dryly.
"Sorry. What I meant was, which freeway would you recommend I take to head south-east?"
"Oh, that's different," she answered. "I tell you what, you can follow me to Fresno. From there follow the signs."
Her perfume overpowered the high-octane vapors rising through the warm air. We stood six feet apart, pumping fuel in an odd silence that became increasingly awkward. I feared I may have come across as brusque.
"Are you from Oakland?" I asked. It was a stupid question, but succeeded in disrupting the silence that was beginning to drive me crazy. She lifted her head and squinted at me for a few moments. The graying of her chopped-off hair was at odds with her young, high-cheeked face. A cranberry-colored mesh covered the whites of her puffy eyes. And right before she answered, I saw something nasty that made my grip tighten on the nozzle.
Through the dark complexion of her face, I noticed a fresh, tender bruise the size of a fist surrounding her eye. It was on the eye farther from me, camouflaged by the shadow of her head, which she angled downward. But it became clear to me that she was attempting to conceal it. Her eyes looked exhausted, and full of some indefinable sadness. I released my stare to avoid embarrassing her, and several moments passed before I realized she was speaking to me.
"The minute she took the note from my hand I cursed myself for writing it."
"…about ten years. Oakland ain't as dangerous as they say, but hate exists here too unfo'tunately. It has its nice and quiet areas, though. All depends on what yer lookin' for I s'pose. Hon, I'm kinda like you though. It's time for me to move on as well. There is no more love for me in this town." She removed the nozzle from the wagon and walked away, bending her head slightly away from me. "I'm gonna’ go grab ma change real quick and then, like ah said, you can follow me outta’ town."
She drove slowly, her weight lop-siding the wagon a little to the left. We passed the city limits and I stared at her muffler spewing out a flow of thick, bluish smoke. Two years after my dad's death, my mother woke me and my two sisters early one morning and told us to pack whatever we wanted and throw it in the back of the car.
It was pandemonium, my older sister Masha tearing her favorite sketches off the walls while weeping hysterically, my mom handing furniture out to passers-by, Liza walking about with her security blanket, friends shoving suitcases in the car, an old Volvo, that was idling outside, spewing blue smoke from the exhaust.
We flew away from everything, our world, our friends, leaving behind the only place and people we ever knew. We were going to go live in a different part of the world. We were going to America.
I followed her car for about forty miles. We had passed the city of Manteca when I picked up on the trail of signs leading me southeast to Arizona. I accelerated and pulled up to her door and motioned for her to lower the window, which she did. I yelled that I'd be OK and handed her a small piece of paper on which I had scribbled a few words I'd written in sloppy script while driving.
She took the note as I twisted the accelerator and watched the oversized station wagon dwindle in my rear view mirror. She honked twice, and I replied with my horn.
No room for hate in this world. Everyone should be free to migrate to a life with no fists and peace of mind. I wanted to tell her that in the note, but would have smashed into a telephone pole doing so.
The minute she took the note from my hand I cursed myself for writing it, but I'd seen a woman who was beaten and who was now in pursuit of the better life she believed herself worthy of, doing the same thing as I—escaping a past and driving into the future. Two blares of her horn caught my ear, though, which told me she didn't misconceive my words. I wrote them to her as simply and sincerely as possible: I love you.
Lever Rukhin is a professional writer and photographer based in Los Angeles. His official Web site is www.leverandfulcrum.com.
