Lost Chance (3) “Yeah, but it’s the long way and you might not want to do it,” Cathy answered. Cathy went into the store and came back out with a map. Chris looked at the map and decided to leave by the north route on a dirt road. They would eventually pick up a paved road that would cut off some miles to Seattle. Once they hit Interstate Five it would be a straight shot home. Chris walked across the street to the car, got in and rolled the car down the incline to the gas pump and bought a half tank of the expensive gasoline figuring that it would be more than enough gas to get them to a cheaper station. “How come everything here costs so much?” Chris asked. “Because everything has to be trucked in,” Cathy answered. They drove the short distance to the hotel and got their luggage and with a final farewell to Cathy they were on their way. They drove over the bridge that crossed the river and took the dirt road to the left and drove up past the old sawmill area which was on their left and the mill workers old red cabins were on their right. “If we hurry we might make it to work on Monday,” said Chris. “Whoop de do,” said Laura unenthusiastically. There were a lot of pot holes on the dirt road and small ruts like washboards that made the car bounce and shake. The road slowly climbed in elevation as it vaguely followed the river downstream. The dust from their tires circled around and came in through the open windows. Chris wanted to put a few quick miles between himself and Lost Chance so he sped up trying to drive fast enough to out race the dust and slow enough to avoid the pot holes. The car slid through some of the turns on the thick dust on the serpentine road cut from a steep mountainside. What with the poor condition of the road, the dust and the slow going Chris was having second thoughts about driving the next 30 miles on dirt roads so he drove a little faster. “Will you slow down?” yelled Sandy. “Are you crazy?” They approached a sharp curve that they could not see around and suddenly a pack of speeding motorcycles, holding to the inside of the curve, were heading right for them. The riders were all wearing helmets except for the leader whose red hair was flying. “Oh my god!” yelled Laura. The motorcycles were taking up most of the road so Chris reflexively turned the wheel sharply to the left away from the cliff wall and away from the bikes. Now they were heading for the drop off so he hit the brakes. The dust from the motorcycles enveloped them at the same time that their dust caught up with them and they were momentarily totally blind. Chris turned the wheel again away from the drop off toward the other side of the road and hit one deep pot hole and passed over it. Then they ran into a second one and the right front wheel hit hard and they stopped. The dust cloud slowly dissipated along with the roar of the motorcycles. They sat and coughed for a moment and got their nerve back up. Everything inside the car was covered with a thin layer of dust. Chris backed the car up out of the pot hole but when he started to go forward there was a loud thunk and Laura said she felt something hit the floor. He continued on a little farther and they heard thunk! Thunk! Thunk! He stopped the car and got out to look underneath it. He could see that the right axle mount on the front wheel drive automobile had separated from the car body and the trans axel joint was swinging around and hitting the frame as the axel turned. He was afraid that it would hit the oil pan and put a hole in it and all the oil would drain out and ruin the engine. Laura tried to call for help on her cell phone but was unable to get a signal. Chris tied the axel back up to the frame with his socks and with some wire he had ripped from the rear car speakers. “Desperate times require desperate measures,” he said to Laura who was not amused at the damages to her car. Chris was angry at the bikers because of the broken axel. He was angry that his clothes were all greasy, dusty and still wet in places. He was angry at himself for disappointing Laura, but what really pissed him off was that he could see Lost Chance in the valley far below from the side of the road. They had basically made a big loop and were across the river and up in elevation from the town. He found that if he drove backward the axel hit the car body less hard but the car would only move at about three miles an hour. With a thunk, thunk, thunk they drove in reverse back to Lost Chance. Over an hour and a half later just as they were pulling up backward to the front of the hotel the axel separated from the transmission and there was no more power to the drive wheels. Chris was amazed that the sun had gone behind the mountains so early. The whole town was in shade and it began to get cool. His greasy, dusty, damp clothes were now making him cold. They checked into the hotel again and took everything out of the car. Once every thing was in the room Chris changed into less dirty and dry clothes. Chris found that the coin phone was jammed. Laura found that her cell phone did not work any better in town. They could not call a tow truck. “The mountains block all the signals since were down in this valley,” Cathy explained. “We don’t get any TV or radio stations to speak of.” They walked into the bar and found Moran and the motorcycle guys having a cold beer. “Hey what’s goin on?” asked Moran cheerily as he looked over Laura. “A certain pack of motorcyclists just about ran us off the road and I broke an axel trying to avoid them,” said Chris a little hostilely. “A man needs to know how to handle his own vehicle,” he said looking at Chris. “I swerved to avoid hitting you and then got blinded by the dust,” said Chris. At the bar Moran said, “I won’t say it’s entirely my fault but I guess I did have a little something to do with it.” “Oh?” said Laura. “You didn’t even stop,” she sounded exasperated. “Well maybe I am a little guilty,” a crazy look flashed across his face. “Hey, I'll get it fixed,” Moran said almost defiantly. Moran walked home and came back with some ancient four wheel drive vehicle with huge tires that looked like it was left behind from WWII. After attaching a chain to the Fiesta they slowly towed the car up the dirt road past Catty’s house. They went up in elevation to the yard of an old but serviceable house that had wenches, giant pulleys, big saw blades, rusted cable and other detritus of the defunct mining and logging industries. Chris noticed that Moran’s house had a new porch and welding equipment sat outside of a shed. They left the car with Moran much to Chris’s doubts. Chris and Laura went back to the hotel. “Where can I wash my greasy clothes,” Chris asked Cathy. “Use the river,” she answered. He went behind the hotel and beat them with rocks in the water and got his shoes and pants cuffs wet. He went back to the room and sat around for awhile with Laura. “Are you hungry?” Chris asked. “Yes, I’m feeling a bit peckish,” she answered. He offered his arm, “Shall we retire to lounge and see what we can find?” “Ok!” Saturday night Back at the bar two guys put twenty five cents in the coin slot on the pool table and played a game. Chris and Laura ordered beers. “Got anything to eat around here?” Chris asked Cathy. “You know, we have a dining room here.” They took their beers to the dining room and left behind the clack of pool balls. The waitress was surprised to see customers, “I think we have a few dinners left,” she said. Chris had the pasta and chicken dinner at the hotel, the sauce was thick with spice. After dinner Chris and Laura walked back into the bar. Cathy, Spike and Calvin sat around a table on the back porch and they invited Chris and Laura to join them. From the porch they could see and hear the water rushing by below. It was Cathy’s night off, a Chinese girl named Sabrina was working the bar. The guys were wearing cleaner clothes. “What’s with the fancy Dan clothes?” asked Chris. “We were working yesterday, but today being off we had a chance to clean up a little,” said Spike amiably. “Where do you work?” asked Chris. “There’s a mine still in operation near the top of the ridge.” “Do people still find gold here?” asked Laura. “It’s pretty much panned out but people still find some. People with dredges come through and vacuum everything out. Wish they wouldn’t do that, it changes the river, makes it run faster and big rocks fill in the swimming holes. The best time to look for gold these days is after the floods” said Cathy. “Moran found a large nugget after the last flood,” said Calvin wistfully. “At least he said he did.” “It floods here? They were building cabins along the river at the campground,” says Chris. “Which will be washed out in the next big flood,” said Spike. Turtle walked onto the porch and leaned on the railing and set his glass on it. “It's very dry, I saw a lot of dying trees,” Chris stated. “California golden pines,” Cathy calls them glibly. Calvin says, “Trees are the main cause of forest fires, I paint on trees for loggers, this one lives, this one dies. I’ve done helicopter logging. I do house foundations, then I get paid off and laid off. I finish the job and they won't let me live there. Don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.” Turtle knocked his glass off of the hotel railing and they heard breaking glass. “The gravity is strong tonight,” he said. Turtle wandered off. “Want to come over to my house?” Cathy asked Chris and Laura. Chris and Laura looked at each other. “Sure,” they both said. While walking to her house Cathy said, “Calvin did the foundation of the house and now I am doing the bathroom.” “Cath’s house is only 108 years old, it's still settling,” said Calvin jovially. Chris looked up at Moran’s house, it appeared to be dark and empty. “Do you know where Moran is?” asked Chris. “He usually goes to town to play pool on Saturday nights,” said Calvin. Chris felt totally frustrated. He looked over toward Cathy’s two story wooden house. Laura noticed the big old apple tree in Cathy’s yard. “What a beautiful tree,” she said. “Yeah, it’s kind of a bother. This rose bush is over 100 years old,” Cathy pointed out. “Wow!” exclaimed Laura. Cathy’s house was small and crowded inside, antiques and old fashioned bric-a-brac hung on the walls. “The place needed a lot of work. I had to tell the kids when we first moved in not to jump up and down so they wouldn’t go through the floor,” Cathy said. After everyone was seated Cathy carried in from the kitchen a simple three tiered cake. “This is for Chris and Laura,” Cathy said. “They just got married and haven’t had their wedding cake yet.” “What a beautiful cake,” Laura sounded excited and amazed. “How did you find the time?” “Oh it was simple. I just baked a large square cake and then cut it in half and then cut one half down so it fit on the other one and then used the rest to make the third tier.” She had covered the cake with white frosting and one of her boy’s super hero dolls stood on top next to a girl doll in a white dress. “The bride and the groom are a good touch,” said Laura. Cathy cut the cake and passed it around on paper plates. “This is so good,” Laura said and Chris agreed. “Sorry about your car, Lost Chance is kind of a black hole for machines,” said Cathy. “But we can manage to get along without them for the most part,” said Spike in a booming voice. “Lost Chance is the center of the universe,” said Calvin. ‘Yes that’s the myth that every small isolated tribe has about the land it lives on’, thought Chris. “What was that thing Moran was driving?” asked Chris. Calvin lit up and said, “That? Oh that was a Dodge power wagon, they are the gold standard here, especially the ones built between 1947 and 1968. Big 230 horse power engine, uses a lot of gas.” Calvin took a bite of cake and continued talking with white frosting on his mustache. “They don’t break down much and they are relatively easy to repair. Put a 10,000 pound winch on it and they can go anywhere. They can go places modern SUV’s can’t touch, they are real slow though. The reason you don’t see many of them around is because they are all way up creeks and such. Occasionally you do find abandoned ones with broken axels and such that are just too far a field to be worth salvaging. You could do it with a helicopter though.” “What are the politics like here,” asked Chris, “is there a city hall?” Cathy said, “I ran for mayor on the ‘Cathy is natty’ ticket on the Fourth of July. The votes cost a dollar each, the money went to charity. Ken, the guy who owns the store, bought the mayor ship for himself, which I didn’t think was fair but the money went to a good cause.” “Electricity is expensive,” volunteered Calvin. “You know if you gave everyone a tax break to put electricity producing cells on their roof tops we could lower the price of electricity and be less dependent upon the grid.” “Are there police? A fire department?” “The cops just come here from the city to drink on weekends sometimes. We are trying to refurbish an old donated fire engine someone donated. There is a municipal water system.” “So everything is fine here, there’s never a problem?” Laura asked Cathy. “There was an out of control tourist at the hotel last year rampaging breaking doors and windows and then he attempted a rape that my son and some others stopped,” Cathy said. “We had to hold him till the cops came. It takes them a long time to get here. Things can happen when people who don’t know the place drink too much, the locals are ok though. There is a shortwave radio at the school but we’re not supposed to use it except for emergencies.” “There was a con artist who had arranged with some people to 'fix' the hotel,” Cathy said. “I suspected him from the start. He put a kind of winch, called a come along, attached to a tree across the river illegally and onto the hotel to pull it back. He took money for repairs never done. We had to have the hotel condemned to stop him and a town meeting to expose him. He was a career criminal who had been farmed out for rehab.” “Your government in action,” Calvin said ruefully. “What’s the school like?” asked Laura. “In the old days everyone was in one room and there was one teacher. Nowadays from the seventh grade on they get bused to the city.” “What kind of house do you live in Seattle?” Cathy asked. “It’s a fairly big place, there are woods out past the back yard,” answered Laura. “The house payment takes up most of our income.” “We paid $250,000 for it. We have a driveway so long that we have our own telephone pole,” Chris stated. “That’s about what this place is worth now believe it or not,” Cathy said. “I bought it some years ago before the local real estate boom hit for about a tenth of what it’s worth now.” Spike pulled out a small pipe and stuffed the bowl with cannabis bud. He lit it and then passed it to Chris who took a toke and passed it on. Everyone in the room had a toke. “It was funny,” Chris said, “when we were driving up from Reno there was a giant billboard that advertised a $5,000 breast augmentation operation. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” “I could use that,” said Cathy. “Oh that’s not true,” said Laura who giggled when Chris snapped his head around to look at her. Chris had another toke when the pipe came around again. Then it caught up with him. He was frightened all of a sudden, his head felt like a muzzy fire and his thought processes were not that clear and it made him feel insecure. He began to feel paranoid and felt like he was having a panic attack. He was afraid of being arrested, he felt like hiding but he decided to ride it out since everyone else seemed to be all right. He looked around the room and everyone seemed glassy eyed with intense thought storms. “Pot’s going to be legal soon, don’t you think,” suggested Laura sounding distant. “Yeah sure, I remember in the 60’s people saying it would be legal in five years,” said Calvin sounding cynical. “The pot laws are all screwed up,” Spike said. “Medicinal pot is legal in this state but the federal government says it’s not legal. So even though the people voted for it to be legal it isn’t. So much for democracy and states rights. I don’t know who these people think they are that make these decisions. What right do they have to tell me what I can put in my own body especially if I’m not hurting any body? ‘You can grow it,’ says the state, ‘because it is medically efficacious’. But the feds in the Drug Enforcement Agency say ‘you can’t grow it or use it because there is no proof that it works as a medicine’, even though it’s been used that way since forever. Ronald Reagan with that ‘just say no’ to drugs bullshit got the government right off people’s backs and right onto their genitals for a drug test. Cannabis is something that needs to be decriminalized but the drug manufacturers are against it because you could grow it in your own back yard. The tobacco companies are against it because they want to have a monopoly on what people smoke even though their product is only good at getting people addicted and then giving them cancer. The pot lobby doesn’t have the amount of money the drug and tobacco lobbies have, they can’t pay as much in bribes to the corrupt senate. And what is the FDA doing now? Making some vitamins and herbal remedies illegal.” “Do they have the same problems everywhere?” asked Laura. “They’ve made several vitamins illegal in Europe already but pot is legal in Amsterdam. I’ve been there, the city isn’t falling apart just because cannabis is legal. The rest of Europe is unhappy with the drug tourism. People just make to big of a deal over something so simple. You should read Andrew Weil’s book the Natural Mind someday. He studied the use of plants by natives. He noticed that some people in the cultures he studied got high. He explains that everyone needs to get out of their ordinary reality occasionally, but in our current moral climate this is not a popular issue. The cops are making too big a profit busting people for pot and then confiscating their property and money. The government should privatize cannabis, they are trying to privatize everything else but when it comes to cannabis they want to control it. Actually they want to control you, fascism comes from total control.” “Look Spike,” said Calvin, “nobody cares.” “And that’s the problem,” retorted Spike. “If everybody cared we could make a difference.”
Copyright © 2007 Michael Potter |