Road Trip

The summer term was ending, and I was already packing my things. It was easy, really, for I had never moved in so much as "dwelled" in the little apartment. If you didn't count the time I lived in my car, it was the first time I'd been on my own. It wasn't much trouble to put my few belongings into some cardboard boxes.

At the end of the term, Vladi called. "Let's take a road trip," he said. He'd just finished up his sememster at another college as well, and he had a new van that we could take.

"Where are we going?"

"New York."

But we weren't going to the city. Vladi wanted to go camping. So I borrowed my father's tent and sleeping bag and a cook stove and we headed for the Adirondacks.

By now, we both had very long hair that hung below our shoulders and I had let my boy's wispy beard grow as well. Two hippies in a van. We knew that anywhere we went, this would be 'Probable Cause." But this was America, right? Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. That was us. We were in college, goddamnit, part of America's Best and Brightest. The Pride of the Land. We were The Nation's Future. You could count on us.

So we packed up and headed for the mountains. Vladi drove. We would go nonstop through the night. It was no problem. When Vladi got tired, he would just climb in back and lie down to sleep while I drove. We had taken out the back seats, so the van was a giant rolling bedroom. We'd travel just like the truckers.

Vladi, who hadn't grown up as I had surrounded by half-wits and drug addicts, had become fond of smoking pot, so he lit a joint first thing. "It makes the driving easier," he said. And then he began to talk. Pot made him chatty. He told me about school and then about his girlfriend leaving him and then about his family. I didn't say much. He was going to a private college that had some loose religious affiliation, so on Sunday's, they were all required to attend chapel. What?! I couldn't believe this, I told him.

"What happens if you don't go?"

"They write you up," he said. "If you get written up enough, they kick you out of the college."

How in the hell could they do that, I wondered? How could Vladi go there? Vladi attending chapel? I didn't get it, but I'd have been smoking it up, too, I thought, if I had to go through that.

I didn't say much about the rest. I'd always had a sweet spot for his girlfriend and had seen her around since Vladi moved. We talked as friends and then more intimately. She was a pretty girl and was getting more than her share of attention, and with Vladi gone but for weekends, things were changing. She liked the attention, I could tell. It was something new and delicious, and though she liked Vladi and his "station in life," I could tell she was liking something else more. Vladi must have had a hint of this, too, for he had become more demanding of her, more suspicious, as he tried to assert some non-existent authority from afar. She was happy enough, I thought when I talked to her. Everything was changing for us. It was true. We were all happier.

A little while later, Vladi re-lit the joint and smoked up some more, and it gave him another burst of chattiness. His mother and father were not happy, he said. His sister was causing them problems, too. I didn't know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. His whole family was nuts as far as I was concerned. His mother and father were foreign, having lived most of their lives in Yugoslavia, so I chalked up their random craziness to that, to something I didn't know. Besides, his mother was nice enough even if she talked as if she were losing her mind and we were both deaf, her voice always reflecting some sort of internal panic. His father didn't bother with the family much at all. He was a doctor and hid himself there, in that place where he was godlike, an authority and a healer. He seemed to have little use for the rest.

And his sister had been "institutionalized a little." Funny, I thought. Just the right amount. You wouldn't care to be institutionalized too much. But she was out now and on her own. She had an apartment and a big boyfriend named Bear. Her parents were paying for everything, so she had plenty of time for madness. And she liked to take advantage of it. She was a big girl, almost pretty, really, but her eyes never seemed to focus on the outer world for very long. They would dart about as if she had just woken up in a new place, and her voice would grow shrill and manic, then her eyes would go still, looking inward to the familiar place she had grown accustomed to. And maybe that's why her mother talked the way she did. Maybe she had grown used to shouting from the distance trying to reach her daughter as she receded further and further from her.

We had left town just before sunset and now it was late. We watched the highway and the headlights until the big van had sucked up all the gas. We were still in Georgia when we pulled into a filling station to gas up. It was redneck country full of the sort of fellows that shot Dennis Hopper at the end of "Easy Rider." We would have to be careful.

"Go up and give the fellow some money," Vladi said.

"You go up."

"C'mon, I'm pumping the gas."

Just then, a police car pulled up on the other side of the island. We both watched silently as a big fellow got out of the car.

"What're y'all boys doin'?" he asked.

We looked at him for a minute trying to figure out what he meant. And then Vladi answered him literally.

"Getting gas."

Long pause. Vladi and I looked at him, waiting.

"Where're y'all boys headed?"

"New York," I offered.

"It figures," he said, and he stared for a little bit. It was then that I thought of the big bag of pot Vladi had wedged above the visor while he was driving. Shit, shit, shit. Vladi was a moron, I thought, the sweat forming under my arms. I bit my lip. Vladi must have been thinking the same thing.

"Well," the officer finally said, "I guess y'all boys aught to be moving along then."

Yep, yep, both our heads bobbed up and down in exaggerated agreement. The pump handle clicked and Vladi put it back in its cradle. We both hurried into the van and Vladi started the engine and slipped the shifter into gear when I remembered.

"Stop, you moron! We haven't paid."

Vladi hit the breaks with a sudden violence that threw me into the dash.

"Go pay. Go pay," he told me. My legs were a little mushy as I hit the pavement, then stiff at the knees as I walked across the lot through the puddles of light. The cop watched me all the way.

"I thought y'all boys were gonna leave without payin,'" said the man behind the cash register with a sinister little laugh that didn't have a drop of humor in it.

"Oh, no, not us. We're not like that. Here." I held out a handful of good American money to him as a token of our good will to his people.

"You're an idiot," I said when I got back in the van. "You need to hide that shit. All we needed was for that cracker to see that. Shit, man, they'd never let us out."

"Yea," he said. "That scared the shit out of me." He looked around over his shoulder a little bit when he lit up a joint as if someone might be watching him.

"I'm going to climb in the back and go to sleep for awhile, OK? Call me when you want me to drive."

I was hoping he wouldn't wake me until we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.