Road Fever Read online

  “Sounds like marimbas,” I said, but Garry didn’t reply.

  “What?” I asked, and he didn’t reply. “What?”

  “That telex about the boat in Colombia,” Garry said.

  “Yeah?”

  “It said they had a container for the truck. It’s a containerized ship, right?”

  “Right. Everything packed in metal crates.”

  “Well, it said that they had reserved a twenty-foot container.”

  “So?”

  “Truck’s twenty-one feet long,” Garry said.

  It was probably that little uncertainty as much as anything that kept us up, moving, driving until dawn, and then until dawn the next day. It would be much colder at the end of the world and I had been in Buenos Aires long enough to absorb a bit of its style, its mad tango of self-dramatization. The way I saw it, we were running backward in time, out from under spring: we were running directly into the howling heart of winter itself.

  ZIPPY’S DISEASE

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  September 26–28, 1987 • Ushuaia, Argentina

  IT ONLY SEEMED like winter over the rugged mountains north of Ushuaia, where eighteen-wheel trucks, unsuited to the narrow earthen track, lay on their sides in the snowbanks lining the side of the road. Jackknifed semis blocked the sparse traffic which consisted, for the most part, of other semis waiting their turn to take a spin through the ice and mud and snow. The big Scania trucks were taking a gamble on a quick plunge over deadly drop-offs so they could unload vegetables, then pick up a load of Sanyo television sets and Philips stereos manufactured in the most southern tax-abatement zone on the face of the earth.

  The people of Ushuaia live on a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the Beagle Channel. Ushuaians take an inexplicable pride in the fact that, while they may look up and see the Andes every day, they are not, in fact, an Andean town. “We are situated,” one proud resident told me on my last visit, “at the very base of the spine of the continent.” I did not say that the metaphor seemed unfortunate. I like Ushuaia very much and the anatomical feature located at the base of the spine is an inappropriate appellation for this graceful little town at the tip of South America.

  The road over the last of the mountains into Ushuaia was lined with snow, but spring temperatures, during the day, rose to well above freezing, so that slush and mud made driving immoderately provocative. At twilight, our headlights shone off puddles the size of small ponds, and the ponds themselves took on the sunset color of the sky above, so that our truck threw yellow tracks across sheets of bloody pastel.

  I was driving, and after we shifted into four-wheel drive to skirt another defeated truck, we found ourselves alone on the road. It felt like a good time to push the Sierra a bit, to see how it would handle in mud and slush in an environment where a mistake could be highly unpleasant. Garry seemed fairly relaxed about this.

  Our rule was that backseat driving was allowed and indeed encouraged. If one of us felt that the other was taking chances, he should say so. The driver was obliged to desist. It was a promise we had made to each other.

  The truck took slushy corners on track, and it was difficult to get the back end to come around in a power slide.

  “Try the brakes,” Garry said. “Get a feeling for performance characteristics in extreme conditions.”

  We were cruising down a straight, flat road in the saddle between two peaks and there were no drop-offs to consider. I slammed into a full-panic stop, and the truck stopped dead in its tracks. It felt as steady and sure as if it were on rails.

  “Antilock brakes,” I said.

  “Don’t think I’ll ever buy another vehicle without them,” Garry said.

  “You want me to push it anymore?”

  “No. Take it easy.”

  “I drive a lot of this kind of stuff in Montana,” I said.

  “You have a pretty good sense of it.”

  I had once owned a three-quarter-ton pickup, a Dodge Power Wagon, with full-time four-wheel drive. It got eight miles to the gallon—a real insult to the energy crisis—but it would motor right up the side of a cliff. “I know what I’m doing in a pickup,” I said.

  “You’re pretty good with it,” Garry said.

  “Pretty good?”

  “Yeah.”

  I thought about this for a time. Pretty good? In ice and snow and slush and mud in a truck? I’m damn good.

  “In what way,” I asked, “would you suggest I could improve?” I felt aggrieved.

  “We don’t want to get into arguments about driving,” Garry said. “We haven’t even started.”

  I drove in silence. We were passing a huge mountain lake, Lake Fagnano. It was seventy miles long and surrounded by snow-covered peaks. The last of the sun glittered across the water in a long, glittering, golden track.

  “What it is,” Garry said, “you’re used to a three-quarter ton. This is a one ton, and we’re carrying almost a thousand pounds of diesel. So it’s heavier than your old truck. You have to drive further ahead than you do because with this weight, even with the brakes we got on her, she’s not going to be able to stop as fast.”

  “There’s ruts in this road,” I said. “Potholes that have lakes in them.”

  “You’re still driving too close. Look out further ahead. Believe me, you’ll see the ruts and rocks and potholes. It’s really tiring to drive close. Things seem to be coming at you faster. You have to make decisions faster. It wears you out.”

  The sun had set behind the mountains, but there was still a last glimmer of silvery light in the sky. Another lake below the road—there was a sign that thoughtfully identified it as Hidden Lake—was shiny black below the pine trees that ringed the shore. We were surfing down a slope in the mud, and there was now a skim of ice forming on the surface of the pothole lakes.

  “Another thing,” Garry said.

  “What?”

  “I’m not criticizing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We have an extended cab, right?”

  “You mean this area directly behind us where we’ve been sleeping? Is that what you mean?”

  “The extended cab, yeah.”

  “I can really see what you mean now, Garry,” I said. “Why hell, I should have thought of this before. We have an extended cab. Affects the performance characteristics. Any moron could see that.”

  “Didn’t we agree about the backseat driving?”

  I had to admit that we had.

  “And I do this for a living, right?”

  I took a deep breath. “I think …”

  “You’re sensitive about your driving.”

  “I think I’m pretty good.”

  “You are. That’s why we got into this in the beginning. When we drove that ALCAN 5000, I could sleep when you were driving. You were steady and didn’t take chances and didn’t try to push it too fast. I mean, you know what usually happens on a trip like that one? I get people from the automotive press, I let them drive, they want to impress me. They push it. They have no regard for the vehicle. And I feel like I have to watch them every minute. But I feel pretty comfortable with you driving. I think I’ll be able to sleep when you’re driving.”

  “Yeah, but you start telling me about the extended cab, like it would have something to do with performance. I almost get the feeling I’m being picked on.”

  “Because you’re sensitive about your driving.”

  “I’m a pretty good driver.”

  “Do you know any American male who doesn’t think he’s a good driver?” Garry asked reasonably.

  I didn’t. Every American male who owns a car thinks he’s hot behind the wheel.

  “Any male who owns a car anywhere in the world thinks he’s good,” Garry said. We were coming around a fairly sharp corner. “Take it into an easy power slide up here and stop.”

  I came around nicely, in complete control.

  “Let me show you something,” Garry said. We both got
out of the truck and followed our back track through the icy mud. The tire track on the inside corner was only inches away from the edge of the road, where there was a small ditch.

  “You’re used to a shorter truck,” Garry said. “You’re used to a truck without an extended cab. So what you’re doing is, you’re taking these turns too tight, and pretty soon you’re going to drop the back end off the road. I mean, what if this ditch was a cliff?” Garry kicked at the tire track nearest the ditch. “About, what, three inches?”

  It’s extremely irritating to have some jerk denigrate your driving ability which, of course, means your manhood. A wise man, confident of his own virility, should scream back spittle-spewing insults at the top of his lungs. He should stop the truck and say things like:

  “Okay, Mario goddamn Andretti, get out of the truck. It’s go time.”

  Unfortunately, when the jerk in question can prove that he is entirely correct—three inches from the damn ditch—the proper response is much less satisfying. A wise and virile man is obliged to drive in silence, to fume and sulk for about half an hour.

  Garry Sowerby, big-deal endurance driver. The guy, all he can do is drive. Never went out for sports in school. You ought to see him try to throw a football. Canadian beaver-brained butthead. Dink. Shit weasel.

  After passing the obligatory half hour in this way, it began to occur to me that Garry had perhaps a small point. He was, after all, a professional. Maybe there were a few small things I could learn from him. The truth was: I was cutting the corners a little too close.

  “You know why I feel confident about this drive?” Garry said after a time. I knew he was trying to mollify me. “I’m confident because we get along. We aren’t going to have any ego problems. I mean, you listen. You’re taking the corners wider now. And I know you can tell me things and I’ll listen. Really. The way you took a little mild criticism: a lot of guys would have gotten mad, started yelling. Seriously. I admire the way you listen.”

  “Thank you,” I said, stiffly, bitterly.

  WE ROLLED INTO USHUAIA on a street that parallels the Beagle Channel and pulled up in front of the Canal Beagle hotel. Most of the logos on the truck were covered with mud, and there were clots of solidified glop hanging out of the fender wells. It was warmer here, below the Andes, and a cold rain was falling. We’d driven about two thousand miles and accumulated what appeared to be several tons of frozen black mud.

  “You thought of a name for the truck yet?” Garry asked. The Volvo he drove around the world was called Red Cloud. The Suburban that had gotten shot up in Africa was Lucy Panzer. Garry, I knew, loved the truck and the way it handled. I glanced at the filthy Sierra and, in an ungenerous attempt to annoy him, said, “This truck’s name is mud.”

  “Wait,” Garry said, “the truck will take on a personality. I guarantee it. We’ll give it a name then.”

  The only logos and markings on the truck that were not covered over with filth were the two large signs along both the side windows of the camper shell. The signs—English on one side, Spanish on the other—read ARGENTINA TO ALASKA IN 25 DAYS OR LESS.

  We checked into the Canal Beagle hotel. In the dining room, which was quite busy with international customers, we suffered the attentions of a waiter wearing a dark pompadour that was combed straight back from his forehead and that seemed all of a piece. Perhaps Bela Lugosi was his hairdresser. He wrote his orders rapidly and virtually ran between tables. He gave us a menu and stood there, tapping his pen impatiently on his order pad. He expected a drink order and a food order all at once, right now, hurry up for Christ’s sake. Garry and I named him Zippy.

  We wanted scotch and water on ice. Okay, sure, you bet, whiz, zip, he’s back at the table. There is no ice. We were stunned, speechless. No ice? Seven hundred sixty miles from Antarctica. C’mon, c’mon, Zippy seemed to say. He was shifting about like a man with a bladder problem. Uh, beer, then. Fine. Zip, he’s gone. Zip, he’s back.

  Your beers and now to eat?

  Garry and I stared at our drinks. Not beers at all but scotch, without ice. Zippy moved with incredible rapidity and he got almost nothing right. We felt that if we mentioned our little problem, Zippy would be off in a blur of action that could result in something worse than scotch without ice.

  A German family at the next table—a handsome and distinguished-looking gentleman just going gray in a way that flattered his looks, his younger wife, and a teenaged son taller than both of them by a head—struck up a conversation. They had seen us come in and had read the truck windows. “Twenty-five days or less,” the German woman said as if the concept made her angry. “You will not see anything.”

  It is a comment Garry hears often about his work, and it annoys him endlessly because he must explain that one does not simply bring the family sedan to one of the most remote regions on the face of earth and begin driving, as if on vacation.

  Garry and I had contacts in thirteen different countries, people we knew and trusted, people we had sought out and who were enthused about the project. We knew tourist officers, ministers of transportation, garage owners, government officials, auto-club executives, automobile executives. We knew the communications matrix in each country: where telephones worked, where telex was best. We had studied the roads, the security problems, and the political situations as they applied to each border and to our personal safety. We knew a lot about each country and about how that country worked and about the people in it.

  The drive itself would be a physical challenge, but we would also have to have our papers in order, and deal with the inevitable obstacles. There would be nasty surprises, which are always a good way to learn about different cultures. The tourist brochures seldom say things like:

  Dodge gasoline bandits for fun and profit!

  Outrun drunken bus drivers on slippery mountain roads!

  Thrill to mind-numbing poverty and desperation!

  Zorro Uzi-toting terrorists in remote jungle locales!

  Enjoy the staccato sounds of exotic war zones!

  Joke with armed teenaged soldiers!

  Experience the excitement of an automatic weapon at your neck!

  Join the gay, mad festivities inside typical Peruvian jail!

  “There is a song in English,” the German woman said, “about how you must always stop when there are roses to smell.”

  “That’s a real good song and a swell philosophy of life,” I said earnestly.

  She was right of course.

  On the drive down from Buenos Aires, for instance, we had passed through a town at the edge of the pampas called Bahía Blanca at about three-thirty in the morning. The night had turned a bit chilly, and there were people bundled against the wind, pedaling bicycles all over town. What were they doing? They weren’t all going in the same direction: they were scattered all over the city and some passed others going in opposite directions, so, I imagined, they weren’t all going to work in one place. They weren’t carrying goods to or from market. It did not seem like a middle-of-the-night joyride: people rode stolidly, as if sentenced by fate to pedal on against the night for no good reason.

  The phenomenon occupied my mind for hours: the mystery of the night riders of Bahía Blanca.

  “Tomorrow,” the woman told us, “we will take a boat ride down the Beagle Channel.” She said this as if it were the only thing that reasonable people should consider doing. She did not know, of course, that we had seen the same sights a few months ago on our visit to the end of the road. We were, she implied, philistines, boobs.

  If I had been peeved with Garry earlier, this woman’s comments brought us together in a small spate of seething anger. It annoyed us to have a tourist tell us our business.

  Travelers without some goal, some small quest, a bit of business to accomplish, are tourists. It’s not a bad way to go, but I find, as a tourist, that I tend to fall into easy patterns: the hotel, the fellow tourists from my own country, the hotel dinner, the guided tour. You see much, but suffer some restricti
ons. You seldom, for instance, meet local people not involved in the tourist trade.

  Garry said, pleasantly enough, “I am not on vacation. This is my job. It’s what I do for a living. It’s better than sitting in an office, don’t you think?”

  The distinguished gentleman blanched. Clearly he sat in an office most of the year and did not want to consider the ramifications of a mid-life crisis in some dining room at the end of the earth. He took Garry’s comment as a personal affront and grunted at his family to leave us alone.

  Zippy whisked our food off the table half-eaten. We stared at our empty places in bemused silence.

  “It’s a disease,” Garry said. “Zippy’s disease.”

  We obediently paid our bill and stumbled off to bed.

  * * *

  AT BREAKFAST in the dining room the next morning, I lingered over my coffee for an hour and caught up on my notes. The young German boy, who had not said anything the night before, sat for a moment to chat. The Pan-American project, he said, was exciting and he had thought about it all night. How many jungles would we see? How many mountains would we cross? Would there be snow in the north? How does a person get a job driving all over the world?

  The boy’s mother and father took a seat in a far corner of the restaurant. Presently, the mother walked to my table and told her son, in German, to leave me alone. She did not speak to me. The son gave me one of those helpless, embarrassed teenaged looks. My parents, man.

  An Argentine lady in her middle years approached the table and asked if she could sit with me for a while. She wore a flowered dress and her fingernails were painted green. We spoke in Spanish. Was I a writer? She herself was a writer as well. More or less. She lifted her right hand in a gesture of a leaf falling to the ground. Still, she would like me to have a copy of her book of poems, Legitimate Creations. She signed it for me: “To Tim, on a chance encounter in a far region of my country.”

  I glanced through the book. The poems were entitled “Equilibrium,” “Sibology,” “To My Son.” My Spanish was not at all good enough to tell if the poems were any good.