The road to Phoenix passed through Los Angeles. 

            One road, I should say. Another route took I-5 south through Cali, passed through Bakersfield, first on CA-58 and then I-40 east to Lake Havasu, then south on US 95 to I-10 E for the final stretch to Phoenix. It added an hour I originally didn’t want to spend waiting to see Larry. 

            If I told you I drove through Bakersfield because of a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character from the 1980s movie The Running Man, based on a novella by Stephen King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, would you believe me? 

            Or would it be more believable that I avoided the path through Los Angeles due to fear of gridlock adding unexpected and unknown hours to my trip? If you have a choice to go directly into the dragon’s mouth, or around it, what option do you choose?

            The things we think about to humor ourselves while driving another 800 miles over 12 hours. The plan was to stop in Bakersfield and call it an easy day before the desert. Stretch my legs around town. Find a park and lay in the grass staring into a sky that had forgotten how to cry. But after a six-hour portion of driving that felt more C.S. Lewis than Tolkien, the signs showing 10 miles to Bakersfield triggered excitement, not weariness. I wasn’t tired, my eyes had reached peak zone-out mode, and the podcasts about movies and offseason football reports were flowing.

            “Hey, James, what did Salt-N-Pepa say?” 

            I felt his eyes roll. 

            “You know the song.” 

            There’s a difference between the silent treatment and gagging at a silly joke. Ah, push it. 

            “There it is! Thanks, buddy.” 

            It’s your circus. I’m just selling popcorn. You know the real reason you’re taking this route, right?

            “Because of that time my buddy Alex called to pass the time during his daily three-hour traffic jam?” 

            That. And thank you for avoiding it. I didn’t want to hear your gears grinding while you sat in it. There’s another one. You’ll get there.

            I thought but didn’t say, “Oh, to think what you’re thinking,” and then had another thought that if I thought that, he would hear it, so I didn’t have to say anything. He was listening, and for a good minute before I opened the windows and cleared my head, I said, “This is how people go insane.”

            I rode with the wind as my music through Bakersfield. I thought about my checking in process, about how it helped me to slow down and process thoughts. How it felt like proper reflection. How my over analytical brain needed time with my intuition, or as Paul used to say to Dad when they wrote songs, “Don’t overthink it. Trust your gut.” How I wasn’t going insane, my internal monologue had just evolved. I had a process.

            I fueled up at a Chevron before hitting a stretch of hills I dubbed the squat mountains of Eastern California. I wasn’t an artist and never would be. My writings, which I was thinking of as scribbles but knew had some merit, if only to preserve memories, needed a map. I’d mapped my course out up until San Francisco, saving the search and image to remind me of the path. It was digital and could toggle between terrain and traffic and friggin’ biking paths if I wanted. What it didn’t resemble was a map of Middle Earth. I thought about that for a good chunk of my trip through the squat mountains, which were really just hills patched with dry bushes. I passed cities with names from 1930s Hollywood: Bealville, Keene, Marcel. The word legacy danced a jig through my mind. 

            The desert greeted me with a 200-mile stretch of tumbleweed and cactus and my horror movie nightmares. Or just under seven hours on cruise control with the A/C blowing. We spend too much of our life worrying about things that never happen, such as, “What if a family of nuclear waste mutated desert monsters tinker with my engine when I stop for gas and five miles down the road I break down and have to flag for help, only there isn’t much traffic at that time of night in that particular stretch of American Highway, and beggars can’t be choosers, so the first vehicle that approaches—a beat-up truck with shovels and rakes and pickaxes and ‘Is that a fucking scythe?’ hanging from a rack in the back like a medieval torture chamber—has a driver with a lip full of dip, a stained trucker’s hat advertising Hank’s Tank’s (sic), with a phone number that appears to guide you to schedule, and pay for, actual time to drive and blast a cannon from a tank in the Mojave Desert, and before the driver says anything, he spits black juice into an overflowing coffee mug, also with a slogan on it – ‘It ain’t broke until you fix it’ – and there’s no cup holder for the mug because it’s too wide, so he sits it on the dashboard, where it sloshes and spills sludge onto the dashboard and speedometer, not that he’s paying attention to it, even if it worked. Only, my car’s kaput, right? The engine made a noise like a choking T-Rex and then blew steam high into the desert night, a night with stars obscured by the haze of the summer, too far away, like safety was just out of reach. Which is my final thought before saying, sure thing, I’ll hop into your truck with seatbelts jiggered with ratchet straps and bungee cords. I ask, ‘How far is it to your uncle’s shop?’ And when he turns to speak, he’s got dip on his yellow teeth, and that’s for sure a boil buried under a patchy beard, white and infected. Not far, the guy says, his long-nailed fingers turning the radio knobs, loud static erupting through the cab, just a ways down the road. Couple of turns. Easy enough to find your way back.”

            Why worry about that far-fetched scenario when I could call Meredith with a quick update?

            It went to voicemail. I laughed at how much I cracked myself up. It felt good to be awake and aware. 

            “Why not,” I said, dialing mom. 

            “Hi, Fender! Happy almost July 4th. How is your trip?”

            I was shocked, not that she remembered, but that she asked about it. “It’s really good. Did you ever visit San Francisco? I forget. Fun city. I met EJ, who runs that Earnest Ernest shop now, for his dad. Cool guy.”

            There was noise in the background, something like a lawnmower or leaf blower. “I did, but not with your father. Bill and I have been several times. His company has an office there. What a lovely city. Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat!” 

            “Don’t remind me. We ate it so much, I don’t think I’ve eaten it since.” 

            The noise grew louder. She shouted to the side, “Bill, baby doll, please, I’m on the phone. What’s that, Fender? Oh, right, right. I’m the same way with Tuna Helper. Although Bill makes his own version, doctored up and just right. What can I help you with?”

            It took me a minute to realize she was drunk. Which made my next statement risky, but as James channeling Salt-N-Pepa said, Ah, push it. 

            “Hey, Ma?”

            “Yeah?”

            “You remember that time you dropped me into the pool at the Andersons?”

            The noise faded. I heard her slurred voice crystal clear. “You mean when you were being a little bitch because you didn’t know how to swim?” 

            “Yeah, that time.”

            “Of course. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” 

            “Sorry about that.” 

            “Nothing to apologize for. You learned how to swim, didn’t you? That’s what my mom did to me. Figured it would work for you.”

            My zoned out eyes needed moisture. Why not help the cause? “I did learn how to swim. And I wanted to say thank you. I never did, and I never do, but you’ve done a lot for me over the years, and I never tell you.” 

            I expected an immediate response, a deflection, a comment about Bill’s tank top.

            She paused, sniffed, and said, “Thank you for saying that.” 

            Meredith was calling back. I didn’t want the moment to end. “I promise, I’ll do it more. Not, like, all the time, because then it loses its importance, but you know what I mean.” I was about to ramble, which neither of us wanted. “Love you, Ma.” 

            “Love you, too, Fender.”  

            She hung up and my heart did a backflip. I hit answer. “Hey, Meredith. Happy almost 4th of July.” 

            “Same to you. Right around the corner. Sorry I missed you. I was preparing some stuff. What’s going on? Did you see EJ? Is his hair still short?”

            I saw something in the desert that couldn’t be. I blinked. It was still there. A bighorn sheep, its horns curved down like two crescent moons. I couldn’t help but think of Tina Turner wearing a set of massive hoop earrings. And down the road, lounging on a metal pole, a sign for Barstow. 

            Pretty cool, right?

            “You should see it,” I said, referring to EJ’s hair, but to all I’d seen and heard and felt over the last week. I was about to ramble on. “I won’t keep you. Just a quick message for Dad.”

            “Of course. I’ll make sure he hears.”

            “Tell him I’m on the outskirts of Barstow, and I’m bringing him his book back.”