Long Road to California Read online

  Chapter 5

  Nina Getting Started

  We make it about 20 miles from Dee’s place before I can no longer contain myself. “It’s so ugly here. Oh my God, what was I thinking?”

  Caleb, to his credit, does no more than snicker. We both know of my tendencies for second guessing. He’s driving, watching the road, paying attention to highway signs to put us on the right connector toward Amarillo. We’re still in the outskirts of Fort Worth.

  All I see are cars and trucks, quick exits, giant hideous billboards, dull flat land with tract houses and mini malls. After the syrupy slow days and big bland meals at Dee and Harlen’s place, I was jazzed to get started. Now reality hits me. There’s an unfamiliar bounce in the truck that’s making my teeth rattle. It’s noisier than our car, and uncomfortably warm even with the AC on. Midday sun pounds on the roof, and reflects blindingly from the metal surfaces all around us.

  Distressingly long minutes pass. I click on the radio, am assaulted by a series of country music or fast talking Spanish language stations. Caleb veers suddenly over a lane, and I grit my teeth, try not to brace myself for impact. Another long entrance, and we’re on highway 287. I relax my grip a bit. It’s a long stretch from here until we make the turn off toward Kansas.

  “Put in a CD,” Caleb suggests. “We brought plenty.”

  I don’t want to waste them all just yet. But he’s right – there’s nothing to see here, we haven’t even reached the starting line yet. There won’t be any ball games to pick up until into the afternoon if at all.

  “Maybe grab us some trail mix while you’re digging,” he adds.

  “We just ate.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t…” he fades out.

  It was a very bland omelet, crying out for veggies, herbs, or salsa. Our send off brunch, and neither of us wanted to insult Dee’s cooking any more than we probably already had. “Your average migrant in the ‘30s would have been delighted with that meal,” I mention. Trying to get my head in the game.

  “Come on,” he says, pawing at me while he drives one handed.

  I twist back, straining against my seatbelt, and poke around in our neatly packed supplies, which we’ve set up for easy access. It’s a lot of stuff for just the two of us, I can’t help noting. Thinking of the, what, eleven people crowded into those old cars in the Byrnes crossing.

  Another grueling set of miles, at the truck’s top speed near 70, and we’re past the heavier traffic. Just highway and ugly little stops off in the distance now. Flat, flat land, a little greenery but nothing you could call scenic.

  I glance over at Caleb. Music, a couple bites of nuts and dried fruit, and he looks perfectly contented. Like we’re doing what we set off to do, so all’s right with the world.

  I click up the AC another notch, and aim it toward me. Internally, I keep steaming. Maybe I wish I could be more that way, but that complacency of his can be annoying. The way he can just go into his head and be sitting there, but also a million miles away. How’s it going to be, spending the next two months in this close proximity, I ask myself, and a tiny wave of panic flushes over me.

  We’re right next to each other, but he’s so distant. We’re like the old married people we thought we’d never become. The ones you see in restaurants who don’t talk, who’ve got nothing to say and from their frowns, only negative things to think about each other. Lucia, always our link even in our bleakest times, is pissed at both of us. Mad about the house, bothered by Caleb’s injury, by seeing her strong as a horse dad limping. Upset, and no doubt disillusioned that her parents have proved themselves so fallible with our poor money management and late career difficulties. It rankles both of us, I know, that our paid off house can earn more than we do.

  A new looking Lexus shoots by us, doing 90 at least. Followed by a large SUV, running fast and smooth, leaving the pick up in the dust. Literally, I can see bits of it swirling behind them.

  Think of Grandma Vera, I tell myself. All those people on the road back then, they were right out in the elements. They’d think this little truck was the lap of luxury. We don’t have to go fast anyway. We want to experience the journey. Still, I also think of how they piled together, all pitching in. How it was all new to them, leaving their failed farm behind them and seeking out a better life. Vera, only a teenager, had such a spirit of adventure, you can just tell.

  I wonder if any of them questioned their choices. Sure, they must have had some regrets and all, but did they hammer away at themselves, the way I’m doing, wondering if this was all a mistake? Should we just have stayed home, gotten paid work, gone to do my photography on the weekends? Gone to pretty places, with something actually to put in the pictures other than endless bland flat land? Been assured, at least, of tasty and nutritious meals? The Walmart had all manner of food, but I wonder if we’ll see many fresh vegetables here on out.

  Again, I steer myself back to the Byrnes’s trip, Grandma Vera and her family, Uncle Stan’s family. How happy they would have been at the sight of these neat bags and firm coolers packed with convenient to prepare foods. Maybe not gourmet stuff, but certainly sufficient.

  Grandma Vera doesn’t like to talk about it, but they were malnourished back then, it’s pretty obvious. She said they didn’t have much, but they had enough. But the evidence jumps out in the pictures, in their jutting bones, in their postures.

  “How old was Grandma’s younger brother when he died?” I ask Caleb.

  He glances over, stops drumming the music’s beat on the wheel for a moment. “I don’t know, in his fifties? I was a kid, but I remember we went to a service for him. It was long before Grandpa Walt died, that wasn’t until 1990,” he adds.

  “And Vera’s father died pretty young too, right? It wasn’t long after they settled in California.”

  “Yeah, that’s a lot of why Grannie was such a trooper – she had to pitch right in and help the family from the time she was a teenager.”

  “They were malnourished. I mean badly, it’s amazing Vera came through as well as she did.”

  “Yeah, her younger brother probably was, and her poor little sister that died. But the older brothers did okay.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t have been so poor during their childhood, they were born in, what 1917 and 1919?

  “I don’t know. You have all this charted out somewhere, don’t you?”

  He’s right, I do. The older brothers and Vera, born in 1921, got through their early years before the Depression kicked in. The boys later joined the army, fought in World War II, got veterans benefits and an education. Vera as a young woman found war work when the men were away. But the old and young didn’t fare so well.

  “She’s the last one of her generation,” I say out loud. Her older brothers lived into their late 70s at least, but even one of their sons has already passed away, a heart attack at 60.

  “Don’t get bummed out. She’s had a good long life.”

  She surely did. Her spirit is something that captivated me from the start, something that motivates me to do well on this project. Lived through the Dust Bowl, migrated west, survived hardscrabble years, had a blossoming romance with a boy she had met along the way, cheerfully brought up four kids plus raised vegetables and chickens decades before it became a Bay Area trend. But Grandma Vera is so much more than the few sentences I might use to introduce her in the write up I’m already imagining accompanying my work.

  The truck bounces along. I’m getting used to the rhythm, or so I tell myself. Caleb is right, Grandma Vera made the most of her years, 88 and still going. Despite the loss of her baby sister, and then her father, after the hard times and then faced with the second world war, she found work and friends and romance. And didn’t dwell on the hard parts, just incorporated them. Told stories that made you laugh.

  I’m brooding, just the same. Thinking no one would say anything along those lines about me.

 
“We’re getting toward the turn off,” Caleb says after awhile. Maybe noticing my silence. “We should get gas. Want to stop,” he asks, “take some pictures? Just let me know.”

  The land is more bleak than ever. Caleb doesn’t see it – he just suggests I pick up my camera because he knows it usually shakes me out of a mood. “Let’s just get out and stretch. I can drive for awhile.”

  “There’s a town of some sort where 83 turns off. Probably better gas prices there. Harlen’s right, the mileage isn’t bad on this thing.” He fumbles at the radio. “Can you see if there’s a day game on?”

  The music has stopped. I didn’t even notice, but I take out the CD, scan the stations. We pick up scratchy voices that sound like some kind of sports talk, and that satisfies him. I’m thinking about the turn off. It will add a couple hundred miles at least to drive up to the edge of Kansas and try to locate where the old family farm used to stand. Hours more of these dull unpleasant roads and vaguely uncomfortable jostling. And the farmstead is long gone, we know, all part of some gigantic corporate spread that took over that whole area.

  “Do you really think we should go up there?” I ask. “I know we’ve got all this time, but we could spend more time where it’s nicer. Take a side trip out of Santa Fe instead maybe.”

  “Well, we could,” Caleb says. He’s never very contradictory, he’s good at seeing all sides. “But you’re not going to find anything like the family farm near Santa Fe.”

  “Well, nor up there, necessarily. If it all looks like this, who cares?”

  Caleb is quiet. I can’t tell if he’s contemplating our decision or if his attention has wandered to something they’re babbling about on the radio. It bothers me sometimes, the way I can’t tell. Other times, I just tell myself it’s better when we still offer each other some bit of mystery after twenty years.

  “I guess it would bother me, if I put something fake in there for the very first ‘after’ shot,” I concede. “And we’re so close. It would be hard to tell Vera we bypassed it.”

  “Anywhere near Santa Fe besides your friends’ place would be expensive,” he answers.

  And there we are, back to our standard positions of the recent months. Me standing up for capital A Art, and Caleb stressed about money. All we need to do is start reminiscing about our beloved cats, the second of whom died last winter, to complete the circle. Make us both sad and start an argument about whether we can afford to get a new pair or just make do for awhile longer petting the neighbor’s tabby that hangs out on our steps.

  “Here’s the turn. We need the gas in any case,” Caleb says, slowing, aiming toward the exit and a big truck stop and gas station off to the right. He catches my eye as he turns the wheel. “Oh, man, are you thinking about Scout? Now?”

  It makes me laugh, that Caleb can see that in my face, even when I’m sad from missing that sweet little kitty. “Yes. Sorry. I know, not the time and everything.”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s always the time, Nina, come on. We both miss her. Gemmer too.” Caleb pulls into the station. “Let’s not pick one up on the trip though. That would be too much.”

  “Can you imagine Scout riding back there?” Our little cat was particular about sounds and smells and fixed routines, especially in her declining years.

  The air is searing, outside of the truck’s cab. Waves of heat rise from the asphalt, and the odor of fuel and exhaust is stifling. Caleb pops open the gas tank lid and fiddles with his credit card. I hurry toward the bathrooms and away from the sounds and smells.

  It won’t be this bad, just in a field somewhere, I tell myself. And I need to stand out there, feel the heat, smell the smells, in order to really capture the images. I need to actually go to the places to get the pictures, and to come anywhere near understanding their experience.