Good People

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Dena woke to the unmistakable sound of an angry palm smacking the Chinook’s window. Blam blam blam.

“You can’t park here!”

Dena jerked up, whacking her forehead on the low ceiling of the bunk.

“Aghgh.”

“Hello? I said you can’t park here. This is private property!” Blam blam blam blam.

Dena stumbled outside, still massaging her head. Goose egg, her father would have said.

“Listen, you can park at the Wal-Mart down that way, but you can’t be on this land, you hear me?”

“Sorry,” Dena said. “I didn’t--I was asleep.”

“You got a self-driving camper? First Google Glass, and now, miracle of miracles!”

“Huh?”

“Jesus, girl. I’m joking. I may be old, but I don’t think technology’s magic.”

The woman’s wrinkled hand still pressed against the camper’s window, where she’d been smacking it a moment before. Her hand wasn’t the only part of her that was wrinkled--the entire terrain of her skin was leathery. She wore seafoam green shorts, a faded t-shirt with a picture of a raccoon on it, and wrap-around sunglasses. From underneath a wide-brimmed hat, a white braid snaked down her back, ending below her belt.

Dena opened the driver’s side door and checked the ignition.

“Shit. Sorry. I don’t have the keys.”

“Well, isn’t that the predicament,” the old lady said.

Dena unlocked her phone. Still Thursday. She hadn’t slept for that long. She texted Chris: Where are you??!?

“Is that the iPhone 6? My grandson keeps begging me for one of those.”

“What? Oh. Yeah. Look, my boyfriend--well, I think he’s still my boyfriend--he went somewhere, and I can’t move my camper until he gets back.” Dena thought of Jennifer and sucked in her breath.

“Lovers’ quarrel?”

Dena glared at the old lady.

“It’s my business if you’re on my property!” the woman said, bending to adjust the velcro on her sandals. Her toenails looked like the scales of something large and reptilian.

“Is this Santa Fe?” Dena asked.

“They call it Agua Fria.”

“Cold water.”

“I see you took your Español .”

“So we’re not in Santa Fe?”

“Oh, practically,” the old woman said. “We’re right near the airport. That’s why me and Benny have to really crack down on the parking, you know? It’s nothing personal. But people will do anything not to have to pay weekly airport rates.”

“We’re not flying anywhere,” Dena said, willing Chris to text her back. The screen stayed black. She sent another text. Hello??

“You sure about that? Looks like your boyfriend might have flown off. Took the keys too! What a hoot.”

“Look, as soon as he comes back, we’re gone, okay? I promise.”

“I can wait.”

The old woman fished a cell phone from the cargo pocket of her green shorts. “I’m an Android fan, myself,” she said, her thumbs flying over the screen. “Better for customization.”

“Are you calling the cops?”

“The po-po? No!”

The woman laughed until phlegm caught in her throat and triggered a coughing fit.

Dena extended her hand to pat the woman’s back, then retracted it, thinking better.

“I don’t trust cops,” the old lady hissed, catching her breath.

“My dad was a cop,” Dena said.

“Ha! And what would he say about you trespassing on private property?”

“He’s dead.”

“Life’s a bitch,” the old woman said.

Dena had expected a different reaction, even from this human sun-dried tomato.

“Well,” Dena said, feeling a flicker of warmth for the old woman, “I think there’s a lot of stuff about me my dad wouldn’t have liked.”

“Do tell. Humor me, and I’ll have Benny bring you some chili. You’re not one of those vegans, are you?”

“What is this, confession? You want to know all the bad stuff I’ve ever done?”

“Being vegan’s a sin.”

“I’m not a vegan,” Dena said.

“Go on,” said the old lady, wiping spittle from the edge of her mouth.

“Uh, okay. Marijuana.”

“Child’s play.”

“Dating a drug dealer.”

“Well, that’s your answer for where he went! Drug run.”

She may be right about that, Dena thought.

“Um--cheating.”

Dena’s father was always critical of cheaters. Though he never talked much about Dena’s mother, he had once let it slip that, before her death, she had been unfaithful. But Dena didn’t remember her mother. How could she become her?

The old woman nodded, plucking her huge sunglasses from her face and wedging them onto her hat. Her eyes were beady and too close together.

“Cheating happens, even to good people,” she said.

“I don’t think I’m actually a good person,” said Dena, processing this for the first time. She noticed a cactus near the Chinook’s back wheel. It looked like spiny hands reaching up from the earth--hands pleading for help before wounding whoever came to their aid.

“Isn’t this the part where you give me wise life advice and then vanish with the wind?” Dena asked.

“I’m not that kind of old woman.”

The woman’s phone shook in her wrinkled hand, blasting Nicki Minaj.

“Benny! Bring the chili out to the lot! We got us a trespasser!”

Benny appeared from a squat pre-fab across the road. Dena hadn’t noticed it before. Benny was thirty-ish, six-and-a-half feet tall, and looked like one of the wolfpack from the Twilight movies.

Team Jacob, Dena thought, before her guilt took over: You are a cheating piece of shit.

“I hope you like spicy,” he said, glaring at Dena. “Don’t stay out too late, Mae.”

“That your son?” Dena asked, watching Benny lumber back towards the house.

“Hell no,” Mae said, shoveling chili into her mouth. “My son’s locked up. Benny’s my boyfriend.”

Dena checked her phone. Still nothing. She called Chris.

The number you have dialed is out of service…

“What the fuck.”

“That’s a lot of judgment coming from someone who’s breaking the law and eating my food,” Mae said.

“No, not you and Benny. My boyfriend--his phone’s disconnected.”

“Sounds like you better find somebody who can give you a tow or hot-wire a camper.”

“But--” Dena pleaded.

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Then, sorry, but you’ve got to move that RV. You done?”

Dena handed Mae her empty chili bowl and watched as she headed across the road towards the trailer.

Dena tossed the Chinook. No note, no keys, and no fat wad of cash--he’d taken all the money left over after they bought the RV. Dena considered her options. She could call Chris’s dad, which might result in more panic than necessary. She could call Kimbra, but she was what Dena’s father would have called “a complete space cadet.” Who did Chris still talk to? She and Chris had been so intertwined for so long that they didn’t have many close friends anymore.

She pulled out the floormats and rifled through the center console. In the glove box, she found a tiny bag of weed held closed with one of her bright pink ponytail holders.

I’m not the only sketchy one, she thought. Chris said he sold it all.

She rolled a joint and hunched down in the passenger’s seat. When she felt her head begin to loosen, she composed a text to Jennifer.

I need you.

She hit “Send.”

 
Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Caleb Ekeroth

Silent Treatment

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Outside Dena’s window, the desert flew past in a never-ending loop. Sandy ground. Scruffy shrub. Discarded tire. Sandy ground. Scruffy shrub. Discarded beer can. Sandy ground...

It was like watching one of the GIFs Chris loved so much. The cat swats the wine glass off the table, and then looks at the videographer and seems to grin. The video loops, re-sets, and the wine is back. The cat prepares its paw to swat.

“Would you be happier if I’d stayed in Austin?” Dena asked.

Chris’s gaze locked on the road, as focused as if he were navigating switchback mountain passes instead of keeping a straight line for hundreds of miles. Dena noticed his jaw clench.

“I just think if you’re never going to talk to me again--” she started.

“Jesus, Dena. Can you just give me some time? If I say what I’m thinking right now, I’m going to regret it.”

The first words in a six-hour silent treatment.

“Maybe I deserve it, though,” Dena said.

“Oh, you definitely do.”

Chris rummaged between his seat and the center console for his aviators.

Okay, so cry. And hide it, Dena thought. She tried to envision what she’d do if their roles were reversed--if she’d walked into a clearing expecting to find a party, and instead found her boyfriend half naked with some guy.

The problem was, she knew exactly what she’d do. She’d laugh.

Dena had felt so numb for so long. Her father’s death had shut off her normal reactions. When she’d climbed into the RV with Chris ten days ago, she’d felt almost inhuman. But in the field with Jennifer--she’d caught her breath, just for a second.

She fiddled with the radio.

--a Connecticut pastor drops dead in front of his congregation after confessing to an extramarital affair. More on this story when we come--

Dena punched the radio back off.

So she had cheated. So what. It wasn’t like they were engaged. And it wasn’t like she’d expected to stay in Austin to be with Jennifer. To don a jumpsuit and fix cars and play second mommy to Jennifer’s kid? Shit. Jennifer’s kid. That had thrown Dena for a loop. There was so much she hadn’t known. Everyone, herself included, was a stranger.

If only Chris hadn’t shown up. She could have gotten tipsy at the bonfire, kissed Jennifer one more time, and then gone with her boyfriend in the morning. She could have left town as Chris’s partner in crime and Jennifer’s mysterious what-might-have-been. Now, Dena could be neither.

“Explain this to me, though,” Chris said. “What is it, exactly, that you want?”

Now it was Dena’s turn to be silent. She tugged at the frayed hem of her shorts, twisting a thread until it broke off in her hand.

“I guess I wanted to feel something,” she said under her breath.

“What was that? You wanted to feel something?”

Chris took his eyes off the road and turned his face towards Dena. She could see her reflection in his sunglasses.

He jerked the wheel of the RV to the right, and they veered onto the road shoulder, before he jerked it left again. A red truck in the eastbound lane honked as they missed colliding by a few feet.

“What the fuck?” Dena said.

“Did you feel something? Did you? Did you get what you wanted?”

“Chris, don’t be a psychopath!”

“No, you don’t be a psychopath, Dena. You don’t. Because do you know what psychopaths even are? People who can’t feel anything. People who will hurt other people because to them, it feels like nothing.”

“Chris, that is not what I meant.”

“Do you even feel guilty at all?” he asked, his voice whining higher as he fought back tears.

“Yes, okay? I feel bad!”

“You feel bad you got caught,” Chris said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“I shouldn’t have done it. Is that what you want me to say?” Dena said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m going crazy or something. I don’t even like girls.”

“Yes you do, and that’s not what this is about.This isn’t some true awakening bullshit, and you know it. This is about choices, Dena.”

“Okay! Okay. It’s about choices! And right now, I am choosing to be with you. Even though you hate me more than anyone in America!”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You just tried to fucking run us off the road.”

“You tried to run us off the road. Like, metaphorically speaking.”

“You’re an idiot,” Dena said, cracking a smile.

Chris pushed his aviators up on his forehead and massaged the bridge of his nose where the glasses had pressed red, bean-shaped indentations.

“I’m starving,” Chris said. “I’m going to stop up here, and then can you maybe give me some space until we get to Santa Fe?”

“Okay.”

Chris drove onto the exit ramp and followed the signs towards McDonald’s. He parked on the far side of the lot and opened his door.

“Five piece or ten-piece?” he asked, not meeting Dena’s eye.

“Ten piece.”

Dena watched Chris cross the parking lot. His hands were jammed in his pockets. She rolled down her window and leaned out. The air was hot, but dry, and smelled of sage and oily french fries. She thought about calling out after him, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

When Chris returned, Dena took her chicken nuggets and climbed up into the bed above the RV’s cab. She took tiny bites, counting how many times she could chew before swallowing, turning the meat into mush.

Chris turned the radio up full blast and drove them away from the restaurant. Dena sprawled on the bed like a starfish. She felt like a stowaway. Below her, Chris sang along with broken-hearted Taylor Swift, periodically smacking the steering wheel to accentuate the beat of universal pain.

The RV coasted down the access ramp and back onto the interstate. Dena closed her eyes and let the rumble of the desert road lull her to sleep.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

This is It

                                                                            continued from “West”

The RV made it to Austin before it died, without fanfare, in the night. Dena and Chris didn't hear it breathe its last mechanical breath. It just refused to start when they woke in the morning, foiling their intention to check out of the Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park.

"I didn't even know she was going," Chris said, struggling to open the hood of the giant camper.

"So she's a she, now?" Dena asked with an eye roll.

"It's probably the transmission," Chris said.

He doesn't know a damn thing about transmissions. He doesn't even know the difference between regular gasoline and diesel.

"Okay," Dena said.

"I'll fix it," Chris said. "Go find us muffins?"

The Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park was five miles from downtown. Dena shuffled out to the main road. She shifted her weight on one leg, thrust her hip out, and extended a thumbs-up to the passing traffic.

Is this how you hitchhike? Shit. I'm as much of a poser as everyone else.

After ten minutes of cars zooming past without stopping, Dena started walking. She Google-mapped the nearest bus stop. This is how it goes, now. Forget everything you've seen in the movies.

When the bus arrived, she boarded and made her way to the back. She slumped onto the last row of seats, avoiding an old woman with a bloom of grocery bags and a hipster with a baby strapped to his chest. The baby looked at Dena with big, sparkling eyes, but didn't wail.

At the next stop, a girl got on. She looked maybe nineteen, twenty at the most, and wore a work jumpsuit with LeeAnn stitched over the breast pocket. Her boots were enormous and caked with dirt and grease. Her hair had been dyed black, then grown out, and then the roots re-dyed camellia pink.

After her short-lived hitchhiking experiment, Dena was now sure that nothing happened unless you made first contact.

"Hey," she said to the girl, presumably LeeAnn, "Are you a mechanic?"

"Learning to be," the girl said. "Please don't tell me how badass that is. I already know." She rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette.

The hipster's baby began to scream.

“Shh, shh, Reagan,” the hipster crooned.

"Hey! No smoking on my bus!" the driver yelled.

"Whatever," LeeAnn muttered. She extinguished the cigarette on the dingy vinyl of the bus seat. It burned a glowing circle, which then blackened.

"Do you know anything about RV's?" Dena asked. She extended her hand. "I'm Dena."

"Jennifer."

Dena's eyes drifted to the girl's name tag.

"Hand-me-down uniform."

"Huh."

"So you've got an RV? What are you, eighty-five?"

"Something like that," Dena said.

She felt a jolt of realization that the RV, as much as she hated it, was the sum total of all she had in the world. She and Chris had sold everything to buy it, and now it was dead. The RV was her family inheritance, her car, her favorite vintage clothes she'd consigned at a loss. The RV was the re-fashioned, welded-together, Frankenstein’s-monster version of her life.

"It's at the RV Park a couple of miles back,” Dena said. “Won’t start. Any chance you could look at it today? Or know somebody who could?"

"I'm going to class now. I'm done at noon if you want to wait around downtown until then. You can pay, right?"

Dena promised she could.

They got off downtown, where Jennifer left her at a Starbucks. They exchanged numbers.

"I'll text you when I'm leaving class," Jennifer said.

Dena stood outside the Starbucks, watching Jennifer go. She walked with such purpose. Her bag of tools bounced against her leg as she moved. Her steel-toed boots clomped through the morning shadows of tree branches on the sidewalk. She was a rough goddess of Austin.

Dena's phone buzzed. It was a text from Chris: Muffinz? and a cat emoji.

This is my life, Dena thought.

No muffins. Mechanics, she texted. Back this afternoon.

Sad cat emoji.

Whatever. Dena pushed open the door to the Starbucks, where the burnt stench of bad coffee assaulted her. It was still early, and the line of people wound through the store, circling cutesy displays of seasonal beans and Keep Austin Weird coffee mugs.

She ordered a grande chai tea and barely flinched when her cup arrived with her name spelled "Dean."

It made her want to find some boots like Jennifer's. Who wears the pants, now?

"Is that the Oprah Chai?" a guy in a beanie asked her as she plopped down in a faux-leather chair.

Hipsters. Who wears a knit hat in Texas summer?

"What?"

"The Oprah Chai. There's Tazo and Oprah. I want to try Oprah, but I kind of don't, you know?"

"Oh. I don't know. I don't think it's Oprah."

"Gotcha. Where you from? I’ve never seen you around here before."

"Georgia."

If this guy’s going to hit on me, he could have at least bought my tea.

"Do you go to UT?"

“I graduated from college already.”

“Cool, cool. So what brings you to Austin?”

“Well, my dad died and now I’m an orphan, so I sold all my shit and bought an RV, and now the RV’s broken down, and I’m stuck here until the stranger I met on the bus gets out of mechanic-class.”

“Whoa.”

“You asked.”

“Well, good luck with all that. I gotta—“

“See ya.”

She watched his beanie-clad head pass out of the doorframe as Jennifer’s hot pink roots entered it.

“My whole class is like, in love with you now,” she said. “You got us a field trip.”

                                                                                                 ***

Chris stood on the sidelines, useless, as the head mechanic and his gaggle of protégés peered under the hood of the Chinook. Dena was there in the thick of them, handing Jennifer tools when she asked.

Jennifer’s whole class was women, all dressed in their matching jumpsuits.

“I know the whole point of fixing this is so you can go, but you should stay and come to the shop sometime,” a blonde named Shelly (nametag: Bridget) said.

“We’re going out West,” Chris said, knitting his eyebrows.

Dena watched the smudged, engaged faces of the women as they tightened valves and checked fluids.

She couldn’t remember the last time her life felt real.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Jennifer’s instructor said, slamming the hood. “The bad news is, it’s the fuel pump. The good news is, a part replacement on this baby is so outrageous that it would be cruel to charge you for the diagnosis.”

Dena looked at the grimaces on the faces of the mechanics, whom she was beginning to think of as friends. She looked at the hulking RV, her worthless everything. She looked at Chris, playing Candy Crush on his phone. This was it.

“Shit,” she said. “Should I order pizza?”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

West

They sold Dena's car, Chris's bike, their used textbooks. They sold the dresser Dena's father had given her before he died, the one that belonged to Aunt Elizabeth. The one she swore she'd keep in the family.

"You Craigslisted the dresser?" she squawked at Chris.

"Chill! We got a hundred bucks for it!"

Dena felt a little catch in her lungs, or maybe in her heart. She remembered her father’s body, the sticky tape sealing tubes and needles to his skin, pushing and pumping, trying.

Her father was dead. Aunt Elizabeth was dead. A dresser wouldn't fit in an RV anyway.

Kimbra came over to buy the last of the pot.

"It's not the good stuff. I won't lie to you," Chris told Kimbra. "But we really need the money right now."

"I think what you're doing is totally rad," Kimbra said. "It's just like On the Road, right?"

Dena watched Chris fold the money into their thick stack of cash.

"Yeah. Just like On the Road."

She knew Chris hadn't read Kerouac. Couldn't speak to the tradition. Couldn't know to be afraid of it.

"Don't eat any poison plants, 'kay?" Kimbra said.

Into the Wild, not On the Road. Is everybody I know full of bullshit?

Kimbra gave them a ride to the used car lot and wished them luck, already pawing in the marijuana baggie as she waited for them to climb out.

The day was hot. The last crisp cool of Kimbra's AC deserted Dena's skin. She could feel the back of her neck begin to sweat, her baby hairs curling into insistent ringlets.

"You ready?" Chris asked. He didn't wait for her to answer.

Louie barely looked up when they entered the shack that housed the dealership’s office.

"Still want the Chinook?" Louie asked.

Chris handed over the money. Louie counted it, licking his fingertips to separate the bills.

"Now, she's definitely your vintage model, but I added some freon for you this morning. You should be good to go. Where y'all going, anyway?"

"West," Chris said.

That was all he ever said when people asked, as if the answer was meant to evoke the spirit of adventure. Lewis and Clark. The gold rush. More likely, Chris was thinking Oregon Trail. Living off the land. Hunting and gathering. Dying of dysentery after attempting to caulk the wagon and float.

Dena climbed into the RV first. It smelled of cat urine and mildew and something worse—a lingering cloud of lavender Febreeze. At least Louie had tried.

"Fucking home sweet home," Chris said, pumping his fists above his head.

Dena climbed into the bed tucked over the cab. The mattress cover had a hole in it, and underneath, she could see that the foam was dried and rotten. She thought of her father’s hospital bed, starched and sanitized, even the railings coated in copper to kill germs.

"Are you thinking about how sweet it's going to be to sleep up here, in the middle of a national park, listening to the wolves howl?" Chris asked, climbing up beside her.

“Yeah,” Dena said. “That’s pretty much exactly what I’m thinking.”

                                                                                              ***

They spent their first night parked at a rest stop in Mississippi. The RV had made slow time, groaning when Chris pushed it over sixty miles an hour.

“It’s not about the destination anyway,” he said.

In the bed over the cab, Dena tossed and turned as Chris snored. The radio had only been able to pick up country music through Alabama, then finally a dubious R&B station. Chris had hummed along to a song in which a guy croons that he doesn’t mind if his girlfriend’s a stripper as long as she makes money. They’d eaten McDonald’s for breakfast, Burger King for lunch, and Waffle House for dinner.

“We are human grease,” she’d said to Chris.

“The body is an amazing thing. It can get used to almost anything, after a while.”

“Yeah. Like cancer,” Dena muttered.

He’d rambled on about accumulating callouses, about sun-tanned skin, about a new awareness of nature. But now the rambling was replaced by snoring.

And then, a howl.

At first, Dena rolled her eyes. It was too much. There were no wolves on I-22. She heard it again. A high-pitched howl. Definitely not her imagination.

She rolled out of the bed and guided herself to the floor, sneaking towards the door. She slid on her flip flops and went outside. The air was still hot, even in the middle of the night. Lights washed the rest stop in an orange glow.

She heard the howl again and moved towards the noise.

On the other side of the parking lot, a man in a baseball hat was dragging a dog towards a green pickup truck. The dog, some kind of hound mix, howled and struggled, lurching towards the rest station building.

“That your dog?” Dena called.

“Yeah,” said the man in the hat. “Sorry—it’s just—he’s after the raccoons.”

“Raccoons?”

“They’re smart. They’ve figured out how to rob the vending machines.”

Near the entrance to the women’s bathroom, two raccoons were scuttling near the snack machine. One had snaked its arm inside and was grabbing at the food trapped in the black metal coils. The other paced behind its companion in obvious anticipation.

“Shit,” Dena said.

“Resourceful little critters,” the man said. “Get in, Riley.”

The dog resisted.

“Want a hand, there?”

Dena helped the man hoist Riley into the cab of the truck.

“Thanks,” he said. “Can’t blame him, right? Hey, is that your camper over there?”

“It’s my—friend’s.”

“Where you heading?”

Dena paused. Her lips had almost formed the word West, but instead she said, “Away.”

“Great American adventure?”

“Something like that.”

The man in the hat grinned at her. In the great American adventure story, he’d say his name was Bill. He’d offer her a beer or maybe some ill-advised hallucinogens. They’d stay up all night as Riley slept in the cab of the truck, as Chris snored in the Chinook. Maybe he’d try to kiss her. Maybe she’d tell him all about her father, about feeling so lonely you’d sell everything you owned to ride across the country with an unlovable optimist. They’d watch the sun rise. Maybe she’d leave with him, drive north, slip another untraceable layer between who she was and who she could become.

But this was not a story. There was no such thing as real reinvention.

“Your front tire there looks a little flat,” the man in the baseball hat said as he climbed into the truck. “Might want to find someone to take a look at that before you hit the road.”

The truck pulled onto the interstate. The light by the rest station flickered. As Dena crossed the parking lot towards the Chinook, the two raccoons ran across her path. Each one carried a bag of honey mustard pretzels in its whiskered mouth.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal