Tiny Americans by Devin Murphy

Author:Devin Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

9

John Parks, 2000

I had packed the Land Rover and Thule roof rack for an escape, a full break from the world, and while doing it, had imagined going without her. There were full blue water jugs and red plastic gasoline cans, a tent, mosquito net, folding chairs, tarps, rope, a rusty machete I’d gotten at the flea market, sleeping bags, books, maps, water filters, tools, mess kits, pots, a Coleman propane camp stove, and a lamp with a box of extra propane tanks. I had a telescope, rain and beach gear, dried and canned fruit, an ax, fishing poles, guidebooks for identifying fish, waders for surf fishing, and tackle boxes I’d slowly assembled, adding lures and weights from every gear shop across the county. There were liquor bottles and two ice chests. There was an air compressor to let air out of the tires so they would grip better in the soft sand, and then fill them up again for harder surfaces. I had winches, cables, binoculars—things I’d bought at REI, North Face, L.L.Bean, and West Marine. There was enough to start my own crisscrossing line around the globe. I was in full-blown daydream mode when Jamie came out into the garage and tossed a box of her favorite candy in the back, Mamba fruit chews, which she ordered by the case online.

We crossed the border in San Luis, Arizona, and during our first several days of driving we passed soon-to-be ghost towns with their turquoise-, red-, and green-painted taquerias filling the air with the scent of fresh tortillas. We stopped at a roadside restaurant, sat on Naugahyde seats, and ate flank steak covered in hot mole sauce that we squeezed fresh limes over for breakfast. We bought Cokes from a faded red vending machine, and when we finished those, Jamie wanted an orange soda from the illuminated cooler behind the counter. She was thirsty from our dusty drive, during which we kept breathing in the fine dirt in the air until it crusted at the corners of our mouths. The woman behind the counter poured the soda into a plastic bag, put a straw in, and twisted the bag around the straw so she could keep the bottle for the deposit. Jamie drank from the sack of orange fluid like it was some kind of neon IV bag.

After eating, Jamie drove and I watched each weedy road disappear into the shimmer of the surrounding desert. We drove in silence, passing acres of poor, red soil webbed with cracks and deep ridges full of long scratchy blades of grass that swayed, bent, and cast shadows, but were worthless to everything but stray horses. At the edge of the small towns on the map, we passed shacks made of scrap metal and rotting lumber with corrugated sheets of tin and frayed brown tarps for walls tucked away in the trees. Feral hounds dug in the ditches. Men with tooled leather cheeks and thick black mustaches scissor-trimmed into neat little tents for

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