Trying to leave Los Angeles.  Fight my way out.  Months of preparation somehow.  Heading east for the winter.  Still a lot to get out of this apartment.  Filling up the car with what I'll need.  Barb, the librarian I've lived with will be sad and relieved upon arriving home from work and finding I've finally got out.  So will the neighbors without the sad.  Another foray into the hinterlands in questionable vehicle.  Ahh, this piece of Kraut machinery won't break down.  It's got around a quarter million on it but that means, for kraut machinery, it's barely broken in.  Some guy in like Istanbul, a cab driver, just drove the same model two million.  It's going to be hot crossing Arizona and it's that Mexican twenty-eight dollar tire I'm worried about.  I've done my eyeball string line front-end alignment (I've got it down, I never hire mechanics or anyone for fifty dollars an hour) but I think a suspension bushing or two may be cause for worry.  Moneywise, I've got a pocket with a wad of hundreds in it because I sold a painting to a guy in New York this week.  Bills have been flying out though in preparation for this run.  How much is left?

I never know how much money I have exactly because I don't have a bank account.  I keep all my money in my right front pocket and when it feels thin down there I go and try to get some more.  Jim F. and Jay call as I am packing the car.  They're at the LAX.  Something about flying to Dallas, borrowing a plane, entering Mexican air space, flying to Puerto Vallarta.

In the midst of packing hundreds of pounds of books, broken computers, tools and unwashed t-shirts in a sweaty uncertain ethyl-reduced state, I pause to inquire who has the pilot's license.  Jay says: "taking off will be Okay, it's the landing I'm worried about..."  The line breaks up and contact is lost.  I stumble out of a storage space with a box of paint, throw it in the car and think... what are they going to do?  They're just being funny.  Sounded sort of serious though.  Jay also said something like: "do you think we'll get in trouble trying to land down there?"  Which added some legitimacy.

On the road now.  Traffic is rolling along.  I look up and wonder if I might be able to see their plane heading to Texas as I am headed in the same direction.  In fifteen hours I will be in the high plains of west Texas -- Marfa Texas, Donald Judd's (the minimalist artist) town where the Chinati art foundation is based and where they shot the movie "GIANT" and where my friend, legendary artist Boyd Elder lives on the prairie.  Down the 10 now.  Out past whatever towns you pass in eastern California.  Into Arizona.  Light fading, everything going well.  I stop to check the front tires because the highway surface has been particularly rough... they're doing... okay.  A text from Jim and Jay: "in Dallas."  They're really going to do something here...  What is their condition?  Driving thirteen hours... fourteen hours... grinding it out, into the night.  I'm not really tired.  More calls and texts come in.  I use the glow of the phone light to check the speedometer because no dash lights work.  This car was free, donated by Allison MacGuiness.

Arrive in Marfa or really the next town up and if you can call it a town: Valentine... predawn driving dirt roads attempting to find the one leading to Boyd's house.  Blackness.

A decade ago, last time I was here, I remember making it back home here, on foot, a day after a botched afternoon... the episode having involved this type of darkness, booze, homicidal Mexicans, sun, walking, hitchhiking, unending stretches of highway, forty mile panoramas, dehydration, fast moving freights, a bull on the railroad tracks, an encounter with a windmill (it's how they get water up here) and a dominatrix but that story's for next time.

Here I am at Boyd's.  Pulling up to the familiar house.  Shut the car off, step out onto the prairie yard under the squeaking windmill.  Sounds like the one in beginning of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" where Jack Ellam traps the fly in his six-shooter...

"Thirst." Or "An afternoon drinking in Texas can lead to extreme hardship the next day."

Arriving in Valentine.  West Texas.  Left LA early afternoon...
Drove seventeen hours.  Dawn.  A friend’s house on the prairie...
a squeaking windmill reminds me of a day here many years ago...

This particular day, myself, a girlfriend (with whom I’d driven out of California in a 70 Cadillac), my artist friend Boyd, all head to Alpine: a town fifty miles south.  A fine afternoon and drinks at the bar with the locals. Upon leaving some previous dispute between Boyd and a guy who owns something like 900,000 acres is ironed out.  No big deal.  People in Texas are different.  Respectful of each other; not a lot of pettiness you find almost everywhere in the country.  But Boyd’s tipsy and ornery;  heading off in his car he says: “you were rude to the bartender Rich.”  I say: “stop” angrily.  The car screeches onto the shoulder.  I open the door, step out.  Boyd guns the accelerator, off he goes with my girlfriend.  The car getting small quickly.  I turn back toward the bar.  Entering I ask the bartender if I was rude, “my friend said I was rude.”  “He’s out of his mind,” the guy says.  Evening rolls around and everything is good.  Everyone is friendly and the guy with the 900,000 acres is having a party and I’m invited. Plus, he offers to drive me home in the morning.

Twenty-five people at the party. One guy is an environmentalist from Colorado or somewhere. He’s here to reestablish the wolf in this part of the country and this cattle rancher is open-minded.  Someone plays “Willin” by Little Feat and people sing along.  It’s enjoyable. I go outside and stand there looking down at the lights of the town; fogged mind, how far is it again?  It looks close.  Railroad tracks and freight train passing down there... goes right where I’m headed.  I began to walk. Can’t see my feet it’s so dark.  Stumbling into jagged mesquite... onward.  The town lights not getting any closer.

And now, black shapes... Cows...  Stopped abruptly, snagged in the chest -- barbed wire.

It takes a long time to make it to town. Hours.  Dusty, prairie town.  Dogs bark as I pass through under old yellow-bulbed, telephone poles.  Here’s the railroad tracks finally.  No trains.  Then one moving fast, way, way too fast to catch and I’m fast... though I’m wearing huge engineer motorcycle boots -- I’ve run in them in moments of necessity surprisingly fast.  Waiting for trains, I sleep in the gravel next to the creosote ties in a gulley under a small bridge.  Wake up with the sun beating miserably down.  Here’s another train.  Laying there I wave to the engineer so he knows I’m not dead.  Make it to my feet.  Look back through the town.  The main highway on its other side: route 90.  I look up the tracks. Fifty miles home -- let’s make this even harder... start walking.  Feet blistered, sore as hell. Pull a long mesquite thorn out of my thigh. Walking. Sun blazing. Thirsty. A plastic water bottle, sun-blanched, half full; thrown from an engineers cockpit no doubt; maybe years ago. The water tastes like plastic. Walking on, a too-fast train again.  Jogging maybe, that’s smart.  I take off my boots -- I used to be good at running on the tracks when I was little. Not smart. Miles from town now; trains are all too fast. Parallel running highway 90 has vectored off somewhere. Out here far from anything. More jogging.  A Bull up ahead. I don’t know what kind; light-colored, huge, just standing there right on the tracks. I scramble up an incline and pass his area then return to the tracks. Four or five miles out of town now.

Sun, thirst... thirst like never before. This was another mistake. I head up a hill through a rocky pasture but my feet are a mess. I can barely walk. The top of a hill, looking for the highway. It’s not there. Looking back at the tracks. A slow-moving train hauling chemicals or something. Damn. I lie down under a mesquite bush. The sky, through the branches, mottled above me. I fall asleep. Wake up. Another chemical train. Get up and run down the hill but not fast enough. The last of my energy, dehydrated. Across the tracks, a small red house... an abandoned little house; windows broken. A windmill with an ancient cement cistern. Algae growing from the fill pipe which hangs out over the cistern. The apparatus is still pumping water out of the ground, but no wind. I look around in the dirt and find an old bell jar, get up on the edge of the cistern and wait, hand outstretched, for wind. The windmill squeaks around and water drips out of the pipe. I fill half the jar. Drink. Make it back up the hill toward the highway. Not enough strength. How far is it? I go back for more water.

Later after a long trek I find the highway. Immediately get a ride from a student who takes me halfway home to Marfa, the artist community. I eat and drink at Dairy Queen. Best meal of my life. It’s Sunday. At the edge of town I stick out my thumb but the townspeople are on their  Sunday drive and going only as far as the edge of town before they turn back. I’m here a while and have seen some of them more than once. They look embarrassed. Trucks go by but they are not interested in riders. Dusk. I look back a ways and see a convenience liquor store. Go to it. A pickup truck with two Mexicans with crazy teeth. Yes they look dangerous and they are. “I’ll give you,” checking my pockets, “$19 and six pack to drive me twenty-five miles to Valentine. I go in the store and get them the beer. Coming out, I tear one off for myself, hand the rest into the truck cab. They want me to get in the truck between them. No, I’ll ride in the bed... does this piss them off?
  We’re on the road quickly and quickly up to over ninety. I can see the speedo through the rear glass.  This truck is a bent heap, with the tail pipe dragging, shooting sparks up at the bottom of the truck bed which heats up so bad I have to get up and seat on the wheel housing. These guys are going to kill me.
  Brilliant, glowing, banded sky. Sun going down. And here’s the house façade where they shot the movie GIANT, miles across the prairie, where James Dean took a piss in front of hundreds of locals who were watching filming to embarrass himself so he would be over it and act without shyness.  The mountains twenty miles beyond; Rio Grande and the border after. Barrenness. Empty highway in front and back.  No cars as far as the eye can see. If they pull over there’s nowhere to run: no trees, nowhere to hide. We make Valentine. I hop out before they stop and hand them the $19 with a “thank you.” I vaporize into the black night as they yell for more money. I hide and wait as they drive back and forth searching for me. They leave. I feel my way back to Boyd’s little ranch house where he and my girlfriend are watching TV. I step quietly in into the TV glow. They look up calmly. Boyd says: “well hey Rich.”