keep on Truckin'

           “Where’s my purse?”  It was the fifth time she had misplaced the thing in the last hour.  I did not get up this time to help her look for it for two reasons: I knew in her drugged haze that she would find it again, and promptly lose it, and second I was falling into a lethargic delirium from the fog of stale cigarette smoke that formed a filmy blanket, creating the illusion of visible air.  Fresh cigarette smoke, hung in wisps on the gray cloud that enveloped us in the large, yellow school bus that was our transportation to The Grateful Dead show hundreds of miles away from home.  A friend of my boyfriend had scored us a ride with a dead head couple.

            Apparently, Frank and Alice, as they were called, started dropping acid in the sixties, and had not missed a day of altering their reality in some fashion since.

           “Cowboy, have you seen my purse?” Alice asked, looking under the musty fabric that hung below her sink, and housed, I was not sure what.  When Alice bent over, the outline of the hump that was her upper back became more prominent.

          “Here it is, Mom.”  Cowboy picked up his mother’s black bag that had been no more than a foot a way from her.  Alice stood up and I watched her dull, dark eyes focus on her son and the purse that dangled from his thumb.  Alice had great, big bags under her eyes.  The puffy, crinkly sacks spoke volumes of what kind of life she had lead.

            “I only sleep once a week,” she told me about a hundred miles ago, while we sat at the rickety dinette table that made up the kitchen part of their mobile home. While Alice never slept and spent her time rearranging the family’s drugs, her husband seemed to remain in a perpetual twilight slumber.  His catatonic state behind the wheel, with the bend and whine of blues chords playing from the tape deck had me and my friends worried. We quickly devised a plan to take turns keeping him company.  My boyfriend, Lang, was having his turn with Frank, trying to engage him in conversation.  My turn had been an hour ago.  I must admit I was mesmerized by his thick drooping mustache, and glazed over eyes. I sat and stared at him for a good minute, before he turned to me and asked if he could have a drink of my water.  “Uh, sure,”  I handed over the bottled water, and watched him wrap his lips around it, tip his head back and guzzle it down, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down under slack, bumpy skin.  He handed the bottle back, but I told him to keep it.

             “Oh Cowboy!” Alice called out staring at her son.  “You have colors all over you.  This acid is just amazing; did you get a chance to try it?  I think there might still be some left.”

             “I’m on coke right now,” Cowboy said.

             “Oh yes, well you better wait then,” his mother advised, turning away from him to fumble around in her cabinets.  Cowboy was fifteen, a year younger than me.  It amazed me that Frank and Alice had children, two boys, Mannie was the oldest.  Somehow their sons managed to survive.  It was chilling to imagine the boys as babies and toddlers relying on someone like Alice for everyday care. Alice pulled a photo album out of a cabinet that contained a box of fruit loops, a pile of marijuana buds and a single cup.

            “Here you can look at this, Married Girl,” she said handing me the album. 

            From the start of the bus ride my boyfriend and I became known as the married couple to Alice.  She had taken a great liking to me and Lang over our other friends, Steve and Nate.  I opened the album and was confronted with the image of a single, enlarged eyeball.  “That was me at that festival,” Alice said.  “What was that festival Frank?” But Frank did not respond.  He either didn’t hear her over the electric undulations of Buddy Guy’s guitar coming from his sound system, or, well I was hoping that he just didn’t hear her.  Was he awake?  I looked over in Frank’s direction, and saw he must still be with us, Lang was talking to him, and my boyfriend’s body language was relaxed. I turned back to the album at Alice’s prompting, and examined other pictures.  There were Alice and Frank, young and smiling, it looked like, although it was hard to tell, as sunlight streamed from behind them, washing out most of the picture.  The rest of the album followed the same vein, the chronicles of a psychedelic life.  Alice would point out something now and then with a knurled, veiny hand. 

             After doing some calculations in my head from looking at the pictures of Alice as a young woman in possibly her twenties, holding one of her baby sons, I surmised that she was only in her forties. 

            “You are so young here,” I said pointing to the picture of hippy girl in a long, flowing dress with flowers in her hair, and a baby on her hip as she stood happily in a field, a cigarette dangling from her full lips.

            “That’s Mannie with me.  I was young, I’m forty now.”  Steve looked up sharply, his eyes wide as he stared at Alice.  A life of drugs, alcohol, and no sleep had aged her far

beyond forty.  She looked like a washed up sixty year old.

            Through looking at pictures in the album Alice recounted the story of her life with Frank.         

           “We’ve been on tour with The Dead for over twenty years now.”  I nodded, as she rattled on.  “I don’t drive anymore though because I almost got us all killed.  I needed some sleep, so I took some elephant tranquilizers; well those things just knocked me out.  I woke up and was wondering why cars were coming at us.  Turns out I had jumped lanes and was going against the grain of traffic.”

           “But that’s never happened to Frank right?”  Steve asked, his distraught clearly visible on his face.

          “Oh no, Frankie’s a great driver.” 

            I set the album down and watched with heavy eyes Nate and Mannie having a conversation about the marijuana market.  We were pot growers and Mannie wanted to know what our wholesale price was.  Cowboy drummed his stubby fingers on the sink counter, and bobbed his head to the music.  When he saw me watching him, his face lit up in a smile.

           “Want some coke?”  He asked.  I shook my head, no.  For a pot grower, I was fairly drug free.  I smoked maybe once a month and my alcohol consumption was even less frequent.  I yawned.  Alice, catching on that I was tired, fussed over me in her own druggie maternal way.

           “Where is the married boy?”  She asked.  Lang turned around and waved at Alice.  “Come on honey, come lay with your wife, she’s tired.  Cowboy, put the married couple in the bed.”  I really didn’t want to lay down in their dusty, dank looking bed, but my eyes just didn’t want to stay open.  The carbon monoxide was settling into my brain from the cigarette smoke.  I felt like Dorothy in the field of poppies.  I did not have to be coaxed much to lie down in the bed with my boyfriend who wrapped me in his arms protectively.

             I a woke to someone vigorously shaking me.

            “Come on Celena wake up, we’re here.”  I turned a way from the hand pulling at me. 

            “I need to sleep some more,” I mumbled.

            “I’ve got to get her out of here man,” I could here Lang saying as if from a long distance.  “We all need to get out into the fresh air.”  I was being pulled up, much to my dissatisfaction, and roughly brought to my feet. Come on, let’s go outside.”  I stumbled after Lang, following him out of the bus.

              Crossing my arms to retain my body heat from the cold morning air I stood blinking at the pale light of day in a clearing somewhere.  Mannie was walking a way across a meadow yelling to Nate that his family would be in Santa Cruz next month to buy some of our pot.  Cowboy stood waiting for his brother, grinning.  The boys waved at us before turning away.  Frank and Alice had not left the bus yet.

             “Frank and Alice were just going to lay in the bed with us, Lang told me, as I stood half awake.  “And I couldn’t wake you up.  It was like you were in a coma.”

             “Humph,” was all I could say.

             “Well shit you guys, lets hike out to the concert,” Steve said.  I followed my three friends through the damp grass.  The sun slowly rose through the arc of the sky and as we walked, we were joined by every kind of psychedelic dead head that one could imagine.

              It was a year before I saw Alice again.  As I sat waiting at the bus stop to go home, she and Cowboy happened to come strolling up the street arm and arm.  They recognized me right off, and both gave me hugs. 

              “Are you visiting?”  I asked.

              “No.  We moved here,” Cowboy said.  “Hey we’ve been trying to score some Quaaludes,” Cowboy said in a low voice.  Alice leaned in conspiratorially with her son, her expression all business.

              “We thought you might be able to help us out,” Alice said.

              “Sorry, I just don’t know.”  I told them.  I had no idea what Quaaludes were, and I watched their faces fall with disappointment.

              “Do you know of anyone that might know?”  Cowboy asked.  I scanned my memory of people I knew, but I couldn’t think of a single person.  I shrugged.

             “Well that’s OK Hon,” Alice said good-naturedly.  “We’ll find someone.”  The bus pulled up, and Cowboy gave me the peace sign.  As I sat looking out the window, I watched the two walk slowly away.  I realized that Alice was hobbling a little and that Cowboy’s arm was not just there for affection, but support.