Mule (5 page)

She'd grinned at me and said, "I still have a job, don't worry about me. And don't you have a kid now, too?"

I left in the morning before they got up. The yellow dawn was breaking over the dirty city and there were already cars on the road.

 

I stopped that evening in Needles, California, in the Mojave. Kate and I had done that road eight months before, and as I retraced our journey, I thought about all the things that had happened in the meantime. The warmth of the summer and catching my first trout, the tall trees around us in their evergreen coats. The baby kicking in my wife's belly, our quiet evenings together. Splitting wood in the falling snow, the firelight in the cabin. The awful drive down the mountain, the birth of my little girl.

When I called Kate from a truck stop outside Los Banos, the girls three time zones ahead, Kate told me she and the baby had gone to the beach already, she was feeling good about things today. When I told her I'd showed the weed to Rita, she said, "Why would you have risked that, James?" I explained the money I'd made, and Kate said she was proud of me for selling some of it myself, that though I shouldn't show it to anyone again, it was okay this once because Rita was trustworthy. Kate said, "Did she tell you at all how we used to be?"

"She said you guys had a lot of fun back then."

"Did she say anything embarrassing about me?"

"She said you liked to spend your money."

 

I crossed the desert, mountains, plains, quickly learned the art of driving flawlessly so as not to be pulled over. Every moment in the car was a moment when something could go wrong, every second behind the wheel was real work. Speeders stood out from the crowd as targets for the police, of course, but so did people driving too slow. Staying in the middle of a pack of cars was the best thing to do, no matter what the speed. I constantly scanned the road ahead for cops parked in speed traps in the brush, obsessively checked the rearview for cruisers coming up on my tail. Every time I changed lanes, I signaled; at no time did I ever tailgate. I did my utmost to drive perfectly every inch of the way, never give a cop a reason to hurry up behind me, flip on his lights and siren.

I didn't listen to the radio, didn't talk on the phone. As I burned down a tank of gas, four or five hours without stopping, Kate worried about me all of that long silence. "How am I supposed to know you're okay out there?" she'd ask when I'd finally call from a gas station.

"No news is good news. I'll text you if I get pulled over."

In northern Arizona, the highway was bustling with cops. In Albuquerque, my left taillight went out, and I stashed the weed under the bed in my motel room, bought a replacement bulb from Pep Boys, read the car's manual, fixed it myself. I took the I-40 all the way to Amarillo, then dropped down through the heart of Texas. I drove each day from dawn to dusk, peeing at rest stops and eating cheeseburgers. The car still had Texas plates on it because Kate and I hadn't wanted to pay the exorbitant California registration fee. Once I left the Golden State, I saw that Texas plates were common everywhere.

I saw so many things out there I hadn't noticed before. Some cars simply looked like they were hauling drugs, the windows tinted, the hubcaps spinning, the plates from out of state—they might as well have had neon signs in their back windows flashing "Pull Me Over! Pull Me Over!" I'd always been a standalone speeder, zooming down the road all by myself and exposed, but now I didn't leave the safety of other cars, which mostly drove the limit—I'd had no idea most people didn't speed. There were so many different types of vehicles on the road, any one of them could be carrying weed. When I'd come alongside an old guy in an RV and he'd nod his head at me, I'd think, He could have two hundred pounds in there.

Every fifty miles or so, somebody really was pulled over. Sometimes the driver would be sitting on the side of the road while the cop looked through the trunk, most times not. They weren't the kinds of scenes you'd notice unless you were thinking about them, blurred images passing at seventy miles an hour. But all along that drive I was hyperalert, taking note of everything I saw.

On the third day, south of Lubbock, the rain came down and I pressed on through the night. Something about the rain made me feel safe, that I was in Texas with Texas plates, even safer.

Mason ran downstairs to the parking lot when I called at two
A.M.
It was the same old longhaired Mason. "Thank God you made it," he said and hugged me. When I handed him the Christmas present, his eyes lit up. He said, "Is this really here?"

We ran up the stairs to his apartment. Emma was passed out on the couch. Mason unwrapped the present at his kitchen counter: the buds were really there. He shook his head as he stared at all that weed. He said, "We have to do this again."

What I learned in Austin was that people in this business could be flaky. Mason didn't have the money that night; he hadn't even taken it out of the bank. When I asked him why not, he said Emma hadn't let him. "We didn't want it lying around the house, you know? Plus, I've got to make some sales first."

When I said, "What about Kate's and my money?" he said, "I promise you're going to get it." When I said, "What about the risks I took?" he gave me a sorrowful look and said, "I know, I know, and I'm sorry."

I spent the day in Austin with nothing to do while Mason drove around town selling weed. I ate fish tacos at Trudy's, walked around in Zilker Park, watched
Cops
on mute at the Nomad Bar. Wasn't it weird to watch other people get arrested? A relief in a way? Mason called me every other hour to check in; just then he was way up in Round Rock, waiting for some guy to finish playing Frisbee golf.

"Frisbee golf?" I said.

Mason said, "I know. I know."

Toward evening, Mason hadn't met the guy yet; he was out drinking at the time. Dollar-beer night at Cain & Abel's—how was he supposed to miss out on that? the guy had said.

What could I do but shrug it off? It wasn't like I could get rid of the weed on my own.

I drove to where Kate and I used to live, off 183, went past the apartment complex where we'd conceived our baby. They'd changed the code on the security gate, so I parked at the curb and smoked a cigarette. There were stars in the sky, the lights of the city. A plane rose from the airport nearby. What a strange place the complex seemed now. Had we ever really lived there?

Back at the apartment, I watched Emma feed Bayleigh mac and cheese. Emma shook her head at me and said, "What was it like out there, James? Weren't you terrified?"

I told her, "It felt good to be in control of something."

Mason was exhausted when he got home. He microwaved a plate of hot dogs, ate them standing up in the kitchen. Then he smoked a joint, washed his face, and gave me the money. It was a roll as big as my fist, all rumpled tens and twenties. Mason said, "Count it if you want, but it's all there. I rounded it up a few hundred bucks to cover your motels and gas."

I counted it out on the kitchen table: $4,300. Added to what I'd made in Sacramento, I'd more than doubled our money. There was one ounce left to take home to Kate. I'd never made money as easily as that.

When we went out onto the porch and lit cigarettes, Mason told me, "That Frisbee golf guy's in law school. What's he got to worry about? He's so fucking inconsiderate, sometimes I want to kill him.

"I've been doing this my whole life," Mason said, "and I've never had an opportunity like this. This kind of weed? At this kind of price? With everything that's going on out there? This could be real for us, James. This could be what we've been praying for."

 

Houston traffic was a snarled mess, the worst three hours of the trip. Louisiana was a five-hour breeze, Mississippi and Alabama one-hour jaunts. When I went through the tunnel at Mobile, I knew I'd reached the East. The forested Florida panhandle never seemed to end, then I turned south into the peninsula. All I had left was that one little ounce, stuffed under my seat with the bankroll. After driving the pound across the great western span of the country, it didn't even feel like I was breaking the law. When I filled up in Ocala, palm trees stood at the side of the gas station. I pointed them out to JoJo Bear.

"We made it," I said to JoJo.

JoJo said back, "I love you."

My legs were numb the last miles to Sarasota. I'd been in the saddle for a week. I adjusted my driving to the slower city speeds, and then I was at my mother's.

My mother had wind chimes in the live oaks in front of her little house; they swayed and glittered in the sun. They made it sound like a Buddhist temple, like the world was at peace.

"Is it really you?" Kate said on the phone when I called.

"I'm sitting outside in the car."

The front door opened. There was Kate, the baby in the crook of her arm. We met in the middle of the driveway. No one else was around.

Kate said, "You look different."

"So do you."

"Did you really miss me?"

"Of course I did."

We kissed as though for the very first time. Then she handed me my baby. Romana was awake with her dark eyes. When she saw me, she began to cry.

"She doesn't remember who I am."

"You've been away a long time."

"I thought she'd always remember me."

The adventure had come to an end. I showed the money to Kate in our room, and when I slid the cash under our mattress, she said, "Thank God that worked out, and thank God it's over. I don't ever want to have to do that again. Your mother's been wonderful, but can you imagine how stressful it's been for me? Every day to be worried like that, to have to act like everything's fine? Your mom kept telling me I need to get more sleep. I kept telling her it's just the time change."

Then Kate grinned and said, "Did you bring me any weed?"

S
ARASOTA WAS A BUSY
little retirement city. The half near the water had a ton of money; my mother's house wasn't in that half. She was east of the Tamiami Trail, had a little Florida block house with two bedrooms, one on either side. She was always dressed and coiffed, an upbeat older lady living on a grade school teacher's pension. She said to me, the second day I was there, and every following day, "What about work, James? Isn't it time you started looking?" I'd take a long swallow from the orange juice carton in her fridge, shake my rumpled head at her, and say, "Tomorrow." Then she'd say in a quieter voice, "What about Kate?"

"Tomorrow for Kate, too."

"Is something the matter with you guys?"

"Nothing's the matter, Ma."

"You aren't fighting in there, are you?"

"Kate and I are just fine."

What Kate and I were doing was lying in bed with our baby, watching her discover her hands. The last of Kate's unemployment checks was coming in at the end of the month. We'd laze in bed long into the day, exhausted by all the shitty things we knew were going to have to come next.

When my mother finally asked for copies of my résumé so she could take them around for me, I showered, shaved off my beard patches, put on a clean shirt, and drove on the Trail downtown. The
Herald-Tribune
building was tall and new, a beautiful boom-time structure in glass. Sarasota had gotten drunk on the speculation, but was now getting slammed. Foreclosures were on every block, all the strip malls had vacant stores. Construction on a dozen residential developments had completely stopped. There were rumors that the billion-dollar multitower condominium project near the center of town was about to fail. As I drove past all that economic wreckage, I didn't have any illusions the
Herald-Tribune
would hire me.

Instead of looking for work, I went to Siesta Beach, swam in the warm water of the Gulf, watched the pelicans coast by on their outstretched wings. Then I'd lie on the sand and try to figure out how to get ten pounds of Darren Rudd's kush to the guy named Eric I'd met in Tallahassee.

That last day on the road, I could have made it to Sarasota, but instead I'd stopped at an old friend's place and spent the night with him. I'd known Roger Sholtis since college. At our little liberal arts school in Kenosha, Wisconsin, we were reporters on the student paper. But we were also different. He lived in a study dorm, I joined a party frat. He'd always told me we'd have to go to graduate school to get ahead in the world, but when the time came to apply, he was the one who did. While I'd migrated down to Austin, he'd stayed home in our native Chicago, earned his master's at Northwestern, worked for a foreign policy journal in D.C., covered Haiti, and published a couple of university press books on the subject. Now he had a teaching gig at Florida State University.

I called him when I crossed the Florida border; he was happy to hear from me. How was married life treating me? he wanted to know on the phone. And was it true I'd recently had a baby?

The first thing that humbled me was Roger's house: old, traditional, in a leafy neighborhood near the capitol. There was a swing on the porch, a white picket fence around the yard. Inside, there were polished wood floors, upholstered furniture, colorful paintings from Haiti of black voodoo goddesses. There was a huge handmade chest of drawers he'd brought back from China, hardcovers in his bookcases. All of it was much better than how either of us had grown up—his dad had sold tires, mine had sold insulation.

Roger said, "You chose freelance, I took this. You got to go to the Playboy mansion, so I don't want to hear you complain."

I laughed and said, "You know they didn't invite me to the mansion, Roger."

Roger had a beard, glasses. He'd put on weight, had a softness to him that I didn't have yet. Some graduate students were coming over later, he explained, a getting-to-know-you party he threw at the beginning of the semester. But first we could have a drink and talk about old times.

"How's freelancing these days, James?" Roger said from his armchair as we drank his expensive claret.

"Honestly, Roger? It doesn't feel like it exists as a profession any longer. At least not for me. I got so discouraged I just gave up. Now they're saying they don't even know if they're going to be around next year."