6 August
When morning broke, we found ourselves sat in a clatter trap Jeep cutting through the eerie silence along Highway 10, bones rattling, shattering the peculiar serenity of the West Texas badlands. In the rear-view mirror, the rays of the sun curving around the Earth, passing through thicker striations of atmosphere scattered to give us a blazing spectrum of reds and pinks. Marbling in the echo chamber above, the spectrally pure light left little more than a downcast glow in the cabin, hardly illuminating the gauges on the dashboard which had long become uncommunicative. The overhead lamp, given to intermittent blackouts, had rendered the crumpled road map in AG’s hands useless and the utter loneliness of these parts did well to keep our mouths closed. For miles on end, the Boundary Layer ahead of us was engulfed in shadows, nothing appearing on the horizon but an immense, widening sky, intermittently dappled by cloud cover here and there.
furthest island we knew of in this part of the country. This would be the last stop before the final push deeper into the Chihuahuan Desert. Listening to the bleating motor hiss and quaver as it attempted to cool itself, I thought back to the early hours of the day and the harsh fluorescent lighting of the airport basement. With a wink of his beady eye and a shake of his two sweaty hands, the well-pomaded man lurking behind the rental counter had assured us this was the best transport available, custom designed for a 600-mile trudge into the overheated wastelands of the American Southwest. Blind and greedy stare, hollowed out look and mouth always busy, he had all the qualities of a man you should trust. And now, here we were with this vehicle on its last leg and, soon enough, no one around for miles to hear our screams. AG walked the pavement, stretching her legs, keeping an eye on a load of seedy, potato-looking children who loitered about. I filled the tank, leery over both the distance left to go and the tiny-handed man stood at the till wearing only a vest made from the teeth of some small animal.
Outside the dusty windshield, open plains spread out before us. Swaying blond prairieland spotted with Pinyon Pines and Alligator Junipers came and went. As we passed a group of foraging pronghorn antelope, AG pointed nobly to the south. At last, the line on the horizon had begun to change. Far away, crags faintly rose above the ground then disappeared. Any coolness that might have lingered in the air had been melted away into pools of water shimmering just out of reach on the asphalt. And, as Brian Jonestown Massacre played intermittently at the whims of the satellite, we somehow managed to coax the jalopy onward. On these journeys, even the slightest change of scenery can be enough to keep you from topping yourself, at least for a few more miles anyway.
Not long after we turned from Highway 67 onto Route 90, the high hills of the Trans-Pecos slowly began to grow in front of us. Soon, we found ourselves among tall yellow grasses and gently sloping terrain. This was the periphery of the borderlands. Traversing across the plain, it was difficult not to get lost in the powerful vastness of the landscape. From time to time we stopped to photograph the panorama and the unique way the light fell over it all. But, film is never enough. Neither are words. Exhausted from the distance and oppressed from the heat, the vehicle rattled along at a steady, if not tenuous, pace for what seemed like another thousand miles until, at last, coming into view at the side of the road was the first sign that our journey was nearing an end. Subtly breaking up the landscape, a billboard stood reading, “Welcome to Marfa”.
We’d been clamoring along for hours, headed slightly southward, relentlessly upsetting the countryside, stopping only for the occasional service station. Mainly for petrol, mainly for the transitory contact with other travelers making their own tracks along these dirty highways. Well-amphetimined truck drivers careening along, desperate to fill red-eye deliveries of whatever. Schizophrenic drifters tittering about, panic stricken for the next motel and the next nervous breakdown. Chain-smoking salesmen lying in wait, prowling for the next little score to perpetuate a lavish lifestyle of Class B gin and cash register perfumery. On and on, the compendium of delightful characters appeared limitless, each story better than the next. Of who they were at home we could never be certain. But, one thing was certainly clear. Each of them had killed before.
With the tank gasping on what fumes remained, we managed to maneuver the deathtrap to a relative idle alongside the
By now, the sun was making its way well overhead, illuminating everything, burning out the eyes of everyone on the motorways. We had made these two-day suicide drives before. Into the bayous of Louisiana and through the deserts of New Mexico we had trekked, only to make an overnight turn around. But, this one was something different. The road stretching out before us appeared endless. Time passed at a crawl. And, we had abandoned all hope of arrival. When I was young, I despised any and all expeditions into the barren regions. The listless hours of watching nothingness speed by the window, the relentless sounds of 60’s protest music crackling from the speakers, the nauseating smell of overheated plastic. It was all a sort of purgatory. But sometimes, as the past moves further afield, something strange begins to happen. Our ideas about things begin to change and a more hallowed, sentimental quality comes to define our recollections. What was once unremarkable soon became something entirely different. And like that, these arid landscapes had become at once mysterious and nostalgic.