The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [70]
Car tires on asphalt, skid marks on the median. The road ribbons up the wild coast, clinging to rugged cliffs where land meets sea. Eastern hills the color of wet jade rise over my right shoulder. Sheer overhangs made of clay, just waiting for landslides. A single slip of the wheel could send us careening over the edge into power-mad surf. I keep my eyes on the yellow lines even as the Pacific crashes breathtaking indigo foam white.
Is there anything in this world so heartbreakingly gorgeous as the drive up from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, through Las Cruces and Guadalupe, past San Luis Obispo and San Simeon, toward Santa Cruz and San Francisco? No wonder this land has been stolen a thousand times. It was mine once—I took it. Then it was taken from me.
In a sandy lot that smells of eucalyptus, we pull over to feed the birds. We’re seagulls and geese, lighthouses and salty air. It’s just Barbaro, Pia, and me heading north in the painted caravan. We’ve left our fellow travelers in southern California, left Tony and Lupe with most of our money to help through Manny’s recovery, left Paula and her lady friend waiting at a Green Tortoise stop for the bus that will take them south, far away from Baltimore, left Magdelena with her platinum dreams of stardom—she’ll fly across grand circus stages like a bird in the firmament.
There’s a good wind off the ocean as we pile back into the truck. I’m in the driver’s seat, Pia next to me, Barbaro juggling oranges in back. Even with my foot aching tender and bandaged, I’m still the better driver. In San Francisco, we’ll leave Pia and her truck at a punk house in the Mission District, where she knows someone who knows someone. We’ll spend the night at the hostel pinch-faced Sister Mehitable started after she finally retired from All Saints K–8. And in the morning, we’ll crawl up Van Ness to the Civic Center, then take a Muni bus to the giant passport office, which probably won’t look so giant to me now.
Pia smiles at me. She’s wearing purple lipstick and a big white wedding dress she bought at St. Vincent de Paul in Los Angeles. “We’ve come a long way together,” she says.
Seven years.
She slips a Loretta Lynn tape into the player.
“I bet you never miss Mesa.”
“Sure,” she says. “I miss every place I’ve ever been.”
“Even Sacramento?”
She winks at me. “Even Sacramento.”
I think of what Dorothy said: We’re all Christ and we all get crucified. In school they taught me that Jesus died for my sins, but I guess it’s a little bit more complicated than that.
“Listen,” I say to Madre, “do you mind if we stop at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Santa Cruz?”
“’Course I don’t mind, hon.”
So we exit on Soquel Avenue, take a left on Seventh.
The sun is doing its setting thing, turning the city into a vast bouquet of roses.
Pia and Barbaro offer to come inside with me, but I shake my head no. “I won’t be long,” I promise.
The mausoleum complexes loom, dark gray crosses and colorful murals depicting the life of Christ set into concrete-gray walls. My parents’ bones are in these crypts, filed away like old tax forms.
On the far side of the third square structure, I easily find their plaque, stand silent before their names. Ghosts the color of moonlit water and tangerine-scented regrets huddle behind me, and I can feel all my blood coursing through all my veins.
I say, “You know, guys, that was a dumb thing to do, crashing the car. But I know how it is sometimes. A single slip of the wheel. No warning signs beyond that creeping road weariness you ignore. They never told us how faintly prophecy could whisper. I always imagined the voice of God would come booming from some pulpit in the sky, but it