Salt 3

Window Rock, Arizona.

I thought the guy behind us was yelling at the black SUV. The SUV drove on but the guy kept yelling. Strange garbled words, some Navajo, some English, it was difficult to say if he was angry. He was smiling all the time.

The words kept pouring out as he bumped into me, wanting to shake hands. He didn’t care for the standard handshake and performed a fist bump/hand wrestling sort of ritual. All the while speaking fast, using unrelated words to string together ideas in an almost-sentence way.

I started to pick up a few bits of the conversation: He called me the N word, but in a nice, brotherly way. At least I think it was brotherly. Then he said that I was in his town then some vague broken bits about cutting people with a knife. “What language are you speaking?” I asked him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said to me and then showed me his drivers license. He was from Arizona.

Tall and good-looking, the guy may have been a great warrior chief in an earlier time. Now, he wanders parking lots jabbering at people in a confused muddle, his skill set woefully out of sync with life in 2019 America.

The guy kept stumbling into me, by accident or by design. It was annoying but he seemed happy as he asked me if I’d like to be stabbed and thrown into a ditch. It was the most non-threatening threat ever. Was he serious? There were a lot of ditches around. I made a mental note to start looking down for bodies.

It dawned on me that the guy was completely bonkers and then he asked me for two dollars. “That’s F-ed up, man,” I told him “I don’t want to be cut and thrown into a ditch.” He didn’t seem surprised at my refusal; I’m guessing his unorthodox panhandling method turns off a lot of potential marks.

We went into the only place open in town, a Taco Bell, the glass door 0f the Taco Bell seemed to frighten him and he drifted away towards the street. Still happy and still wanting to kill someone.

The rain started around 3:00 p.m. and kept a steady pace. It was a cool, 54-degree August day in northern New Mexico. So much different than the hot, dry morning. Now we were marooned with just enough gas in the Husqvarna to make 10 miles. The next town was 20 miles away.

I was waiting at a liquor store/gas station that had no electricity for Mike to return with a can of gas. Mike’s BMW can go 200 miles on a tank. The Husky taps out at around 150 miles. From my perch under the store awning I saw 700 to 800 cans of beer get sold in a few hours. Skinny people, fat people, old people, young people, no one bought less than 48 cans. They carried the stuff out by the armload. Thank goodness the cash register was on battery backup.

The power would come on and I’d run out to the pump then the power would go off. This happened about 20 times. One of the liquor store staff was an adorable woman complaining about menopause: “You don’t know what it’s like, one minute you’re fine, the next you’re on fire!” The power sputtered. All of us, customers and staff, started yelling, “Lights on! Lights off!” in synchronization with the flickering power.

“Would you like a hotdog? Free, I won’t charge you for it. They’re still kind of warm but we have to throw out the hot foods after a few hours of no power.” What a nice bunch of people. Free hot dogs, all the beer you could fit in a trunk, we had a good time, you know?

“Your friend has a funny accent.” said Menopause Woman. “Where is he from?”

“New Jersey, or somewhere back east,” I told her.

“I suppose he thinks we sound funny too,” she said in that rising, musical New Mexican lilt I’ve come to love.

Mike came back with the gas, we dumped it into the Husqvarna and lit the bikes off. Into the rain we motored on.  Gasoline is freedom, man. About 10 miles later we saw a lineman sitting in his truck, rain pouring down. For all I know the power never came back on back at the store. The lives we shared at that place didn’t matter to us anymore, we were back on the road.