Looking out the door, he says, “Is a funny place, Las Vegas. Money, money!”
I was thinking about Steve's words - how he says Las Vegas instead of Nevada: but Las Vegas is also a product of a state that extols the virtue of freedom.
Almost out of North Las Vegas, and an old lady waves at us like something is wrong with the truck. I pull over and a big white trash bag is stuck underneath. I crawl under and I yank it out and I hear a singe sound, the smell of flesh.
Back in the truck I tell Jane that it was a plastic bag and that I accidentally hit the tail pipe with my arm. And she says it’s first degree.
As we pull off the main road, and head north, Jane bandages my arm with gauze and antibiotics as I comment that we have no music for the next 1,800 miles, because of the thieves.
We are for now homeless. The truck is packed with our belongings. The kayak, strapped above, is stuffed with my uprooted cactus and succulent collection. For years I pried cuttings off the ends of succulent plants at the beautiful Huntington Gardens of Los Angeles and regrew the cuttings in small pots. These plants are a reminder of a city that took me fifteen years to love. None of them are native to Los Angeles, but these plants, like the human city itself, are a collection of immigrant hybrids and subspecies and unusual specimens. Wherever I go, I’ll grow Los Angeles with me.
Los Angeles was our home – our friends, our habits, our blue sky . To leave it is to redefine our lives. The kayak makes the truck look like a sailing ship, I like to think. But with our belongings the truck is weighed low to the ground, like a merchant vessel with ceramics, and the seas beyond are of sage.
We head north on the Great Basin Highway – three hundred miles of sun and sage. Tomorrow will be two-hundred and eighty more, west on what Nevada calls 'The Loneliest Road in America.' Together the two roads can amiably be called consistent.
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