Driving To Phoenix, by Tom Dinard

I’ve got a Shell gas credit card, a Visa, a torn road atlas, a bottle of Gatorade, a bag of corn nuts, zeroes in my checking account, eighty-three dollars in my wallet, pocket change in my ripped shorts, nothing but the sweltering, shining asphalt that I’ve come to look for in America disappearing under my hood, and to my right, the moon is indeed rising over an open field.

I’m twenty-two years old and my father is dead. My sister cried with her arms on the rail as I spread his ashes over the Belmont finish line. She told me he’d want me to go back to my desert college. Here I am, obeying her, rifling the gas pedal to eighty-five somewhere in Oklahoma, a Dead bootleg chugging along as I keep an eye on everything in front of me.

Nine-mile skid on a ten-mile drive, hot as a pistol but cool inside.

Cat on a tin roof, dogs in a pile, nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.

I haven’t registered for classes. I don’t know if I will. Maybe I’ll get a job. A buddy of mine has been delivering pizzas near school and might be able to get me in good with the owner. He’s also been playing baseball in a city league. They need a pitcher, and I’m a lefty, so maybe I’ll do that, too. Other friends of mine are descending on Las Vegas to see Dead shows. I’m not sure if I’ll go, although they’ve got a suite at the Hilton with floor space reserved for me. I’ve got a few states to decide.

Back in Phoenix, my friend Roark is waiting for me. I’ll crash at his place while I decide if I’m headed back to Tucson or not. Maybe he can lend me a few bucks in the meantime. Maybe I’ll stay there for good, finish up school there, get a job and a place of my own and figure things out. I’ve got a hundred miles to Oklahoma City. Maybe I’ll get a motel room there. Maybe I’ll get a second wind in the next half-hour and decide to keep going. The music keeps going from the tape deck. It’s the one thing that never stops.

I don’t know, but I been told, if the horse don’t pull you got to carry the load.
I don’t know whose back’s that strong, maybe find out before too long.

Driving through this land of dirt and sky and concrete and little else, I should have good reason to be scared. I don’t know this terrain. Prairie dogs or coyotes or wayward horses could jump out in front of my car at any moment, and with my cruise control stuck on eighty-five, I’d have no time to stop. But I’m relieved. Two weeks ago I went for a walk on an Upper West Side street with a man who used to look and act like my father but had been whittled away to a shaking, staggering imposter who had to turn back after a quarter of a block.

The night he died I fell asleep on a mattress covered by an American flag. I felt weight rise off of me and float for a few moments before disappearing above me into some great void. I woke up sweating and in tears of sadness and relief.

Goin’ to plant a weeping willow, on the bank’s green edge it will grow, grow, grow.

Sing a lullaby beside the water, lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll.

I drive past Oklahoma City even though I shouldn’t. I’m tired. Maybe I can make it to Amarillo? Who knows? I’ve rolled the window down to get zapped by the cold night air and the car fills with the smell of manure as the biggest bug I’ve ever seen splats against the windshield. I close the window.

The Dead show I’m listening to has entered the middle of the second set, the part where the guitars and bass and drums and keyboards swirl into a chaotic crescendo and take off into space before landing again, unraveling and unwinding into a soft, sweet melody of guitar lines that take their time as they climb up scales and fall back gently into the right chords.

Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of God.

Every time that wheel turn ‘round, bound to cover just a little more ground.

Texola. It’s the nowhere town at the Texas border, but I’m there and Amarillo’s only a hundred and ten miles away and I know I can make it all the way after another gas stop and a Mountain Dew. Albuquerque in the morning and Phoenix by late afternoon. That’ll work. The show ends with an encore of a Dylan cover and I pop another one in. I roll the windows down and turn the heat up, because it’s my car. I can do whatever I want.

I don’t have AAA coverage, so I’m fucked out here on the American highway if a belt snaps or my transmission drops or I overheat and come to rest on the pebbly shoulder as the black-throated wind blows by. I don’t have a girlfriend to sing to. I don’t have a father. But I have this car moving forward, and I have Phoenix. Maybe that’s enough.

Fare thee well now, let your life proceed by its own design.
Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I’m done with mine.

***

(Italicized lyrics written by Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow)

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