Diesel
memoir part 9
(This is part 9 of my ongoing memoir-in-progress. Here is the first chapter: The Trick is to Drink it Quickly, and the next: Cheers)
We drove for hours, looking for a good spot to stop. We hadn’t been having much luck with our camps lately. The towns near the Portuguese border had been especially unfriendly. The local police hadn’t been too keen on buskers and we’d been kicked out of the last town before we’d even tuned up. We decided to take a break for a while—find a good place to park the van and hang out for a couple of weeks. In the far west of Spain, just past the town of Talavera, we saw a sort of hill. There were a few oak trees at the bottom of it. We parked the van there.
It was with a feeling of relief that I pulled the table and chairs out of the van and set them on the ground. I stretched and looked up at the sky, bright and blue. It had become a good thing to see again, now that we had the trees between us and the sun. Jesse smiled at me. “This is more like it,” he said.
In the morning I took Wogart and headed toward the highway. Dust rose from the ground as we kicked our way along. There was a diesel station a couple of miles away. I figured I could probably use the bathroom there without drawing too much attention.
We got to the station. A few men were working inside the open garage, peering into the undersides of a car that had been hoisted into the air. They nodded in greeting as I passed, then turned back to their work. I looked at them and remembered going to Steve's garage when I was a kid. It was where my parents always brought their rusting, derelict little car that had made me so ashamed until they came into some money and bought a new one—and after that I had missed it.
I looked at the mechanics working, and at the empty oil cans that sat everywhere, rusting in the dirt, and remembered those things. I liked thinking about them. I liked the garage, the smell of diesel, the dust, the choking scent of hot asphalt. The bathroom was around back. I went behind the garage and tried the door, but someone was inside. I waited, leaning up against the wall in the shade, and after a minute the bathroom door opened and one of the mechanics came out. He was around my age; had dark hair and a handsome face and crooked teeth. He stopped when he saw me.
“Hola,” he said, smiling.
“Hola,” I said. “Buenos días.”
“You speak English?” he asked.
“Si.”
He laughed.
“I’m Pablo,” he said. He smiled again; a wide grin that made him look even more handsome. I hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Jesse for weeks. I felt my face flush, looking at him.
“Are you American? Tourist?” he said.
“Yes. All over Europe, camping.” I swept my arm out in front of me to indicate the extent of it.
“Ah. I love to travel like that, but must work here.”
He was quiet a moment, looking at me. I didn’t mind.
“You want to use toilet now, so I go back to garage, okay?”
I laughed.
“Okay,” I said.
“See you,” he said, grinning.
I let myself in and shut the door. Except for Wogart I was alone, the door closed now between me and anybody, everybody else. Alone was a hard thing to get, traveling the way we were. Hurriedly, but still reveling in it all—the running water, hot and cold—I washed up and brushed my hair. Fresh then, and clean, or cleaner, I walked back out. I looked for Pablo but didn’t see him. I passed by the garage and ventured to smile at the mechanics. I could feel them watching as I walked away. I knew that I was getting a free ride, that they were letting me use the bathroom like this because I was young and female, and I felt the luck of it—it was a good thing to be, mostly.
Jesse had lunch ready when I got back to the van. Bread and cheese and beer. After we ate, I spread a blanket out on the ground and sat down with my book. Jesse lay down next to me and put his big straw cowboy hat over his face. After a while he fell asleep. I watched his chest rise and fall until I began to feel sleepy myself. I decided that I would go on a walk. I closed my book, adjusted Jesse’s hat to cover his face a little better, and stood up. I wanted to explore. Maybe I’d find something cool, and then we would go check it out again later, together.
I walked up the hill behind the van. Wogart loped ahead. We got to the top and I looked down to the other side. There was nothing much there; it was as flat and barren as the rest of the country, except for one area that had been turned into a motocross course. The track rose and fell and looped around, crisscrossed with lines where the bikes had made welts in the dried mud. It was empty now, a little forlorn—the off season, I guessed. I threw a stick for Wogart—he leapt and twisted in the air, a fluid motion, and caught it on the rebound. Suddenly I heard a faint, rumbling buzz. I looked down at the track. There was a guy there now, getting ready to ride. He sat on his motorcycle and kicked the starter. I heard the tick of the tiny engine. He rode slowly at first, then faster, the dust flying. I watched the bike circle around the track, the rider leaning in so hard on the curves that his knees almost scraped the ground.
I watched him and remembered going to watch motocross at Hangtown in Prairie City, California, when I was a kid. It was the first time I'd seen motorcycles fly. I loved the speed and the dust, and I loved watching the beautiful long jumps, the riders crouched over–when the bikes would arc in the air and seem, for a moment, to float. I felt cool watching them, as if the noise and the dirt and the danger of it all rubbed off on me somehow.
My older brother, Mischa, had had a motorcycle, but I wasn’t allowed to ride on it. Mischa was cool—he was a teenager and smoked pot and played the guitar and listened to The Clash and rode a skateboard. I wanted to skate too but my mom wouldn’t let me. You could get hurt, she said. Mischa had already broken his arm, twice. If you broke your arm then you couldn't play the violin, my mom said, when I protested. I wasn’t sure that sounded like such a bad thing.
I wanted to be cool like Mischa. I talked like him and dressed like him and listened to the music he brought home and wanted nothing so badly as to skate like him, but that wasn't going to happen so I decided I would become a motocross racer instead. He said the riders at Hangtown had been training since they were pretty young so I knew I’d better get started. For my birthday that year I asked my parents for a BMX 24—which was a bicycle, not a motorcycle—but still, a good way to ease in. To my surprise, I got one. I rode it a lot at first, tearing around the neighborhood, pretending I was on a race track. After a few weeks I realized I'd never be like those guys at Hangtown. I’d never be an MX racer. I was too cautious, too afraid of getting hurt. It didn’t matter either way though because one night not long after I got the BMX Mischa and his friends took it out of its hiding place under the hedge in the yard and sold it to buy Heroin. That was before he got caught using and sent to juvenile hall. I became confused about how to admire or emulate him after he got sent to Juvy. I remember how sad he’d looked when I went with my mom to visit him. He got out of there before too long but my bike was still gone.
I watched the motorcycle go around the track. After a while it slowed down and came to a stop right beneath the hill. The rider took off his helmet. I recognized Pablo from the diesel station. He waved up at me, grinning.
“Hola! Que pasa?” he shouted.
I smiled and waved and began to walk down the hill toward the track.
Excellent read!
I'm hoping for a wild affair with Pablo...