CHAPTER 11--ON THE ROAD
...and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
-Jack Kerouac
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rom '92 to '97 Louie pretty much did our best to be nomads.
Drifters.
Travelers.
Mysterious strangers blowing in and out of town so fast no one could really get a fix on us. And we pretty much did our best not to get caught. Somewhere along the way, we decided it was best if Louie had a pager. Myself, I always hated pagers. So, until I hooked up with Louie, we weren't on call for Rooster. Have to admit I was glad Louie had it on him because when you're on call for Rooster, and Rooster has a million dollar job, well, what's a pager? And it came in handy with Louie, who, being Louie sometimes made it necessary to find him in a real fast way. Like the time I almost lost the box at Stateline. Of course, it was my fault, but I got greedy. And I thought I'd be safe by shuttling from Whiskey Pete's to Prima Donna’s on that little space car Disneyland-like shuttle they have to shuttle your over I-15.. Back and forth a few times, while Louie was getting laid in the room upstairs.
Didn't know I was being followed. Turned out, one of the main plain clothes security folks thought I looked suspicious. Don't know if it was the long shoulder length hair, the beard, the tattered blue jeans, the boots, the faded Led Zeppelin tie-dye, the dangling key chain, or just the whole Hell's Angels look, but I fit that cat's definition of a suspicious character. After seeing me win four times in a row, he became very curious. Fortunately for me he was not quite my size, and, when finally confronting me about my remarkable luck, the look in his eyes as I towered over him said he wished he'd called for somebody to do this confronting business with him. Someone taller maybe.
"I can't help it if I'm lucky," I said.
"Look, there's luck and then there's luck. I've never seen somebody win four times in a row. I'm saying I want you to leave. Now! Before I call for backup. I don't know how you do it. I don't want to have to find out. So just get out of here."
"Can I get my things out of my room?"
He followed me, the little, whiny-voiced twerp, to my room.
"Is it OK if I use the phone?"
"Just hurry up," he said.
Called Louie and left him the code for "we're getting the hell out of Dodge, in the Dodge, or before that, the Impala, STAT!"
Plenty of Native American action in that part of the country, to be sure. And sure enough the box works in those places on the right kinds of machines, but you always have to take a voucher to the cash booth, so, walking out of the place anonymously, even after just a hit for $100, you get noticed.
We did do some disguises, but disguises are dangerous for the simple fact that if a mustache or wig falls off, you're fucked. Still, Louie had a fake arm he would put on from time to time.
At times I'd even get my beard trimmed. Cutting the locks was off-limits, however, except for the occasional trim. So what if I looked like Charles Manson? No way in hell I would ever wear my hair that makes me look like that fresh young GI who had disappeared in
So, there we were: a Hispanic cripple and a big, tall, long-haired relic from the sixties. And we'd gotten to the point where we'd work shifts. There was only one magic box, after all. We'd hit Vegas for a good few weeks. Do a casino on one end of town, rack up two good wins, maybe put some back, and then split, drive to the other end of town, or the next town, hit a few more. When the till was full, we'd then maybe party, "tithe" as I used to call it, by playing blackjack, or the game craps, which I still didn't fully understand. But I always came back to blackjack because it was a game where I could leverage some skill and intelligence. Not much, but some. Craps was the same way, but I just went crazy trying to figure out all the side bets.
It was half a day's drive to
Over those years, as you can imagine, Queen, me and the kid got to know each pretty well. Turned out he was real close to his mother, so her suicide pretty much devastated him. She taught Louie to read, who, because of what they called attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, still had great trouble in school. He stopped going all together after he lost his mom and dad. But he kept on reading. Always.
His dad's death didn't affect him that much, because his dad was always been working, except maybe in the last year. They had risen from poor refugees to somewhat middle-class, and had lived a comfortable life until his dad lost his job as a casino manager. Unable to keep up with the payment premiums for health coverage, the insurance company terminated his coverage shortly before Maria's diagnosis.
Louie often asked about my mother. What could I tell him, Queen? You grew up down the street from me, where I was living alone with my Dad in
Between learning of each others' pasts, and discussing the traditional wine, women, and song, we managed to get into some pretty heavy conversations, him and me.
"Do you consider yourself a Christian?" he asked me.
"No," I said. He was silent.
"Do you believe in Hell?"
"Yes and no," I said.
"And what do you mean by that?" "It means I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that there could never be a hell because it just doesn't make any sense. And then I think about somebody truly evil, say Hitler, and I think surely somebody like him deserves a hell. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe his childhood was so fucked up, so miserable, that in a non-linear way he was getting his punishment for all the hell he was going to stir up later. So, yeah, heaven and hell on earth or something."
"Interesting. I believe that Christ died for me and was resurrected so I guess that makes me a Christian," he said.
"Why do you believe that?" I asked.
"Because my mother and father raised me to believe it, that's why I don't know, I suppose all religions are good. Don't really believe in hell, don't really believe a lot of the Bible, but I believe in Jesus. I really do."
"You know what I believe in, kid? I believe that religion or faith or whatever you want to call it is something we all so desperately want that there is no shortage of people out there claiming they can give us what we want. We pore through catalogs. We go to the mall. And we're all looking for these prepackaged ideas that we can make our own-what we are about. And there are a million sellers out there, and million different varieties. Way I see it though, you're best off not going for the shrink-wrapped stuff.”
"So what do you do then?" he asked.
"Build my own faith. Fashion my own. Build it from my own experience. Most importantly, be honest."
"I like that," he said. "I still believe in Jesus, but I like that."
