Have a Nice Trip

By Abe Margel

          Diego and I were reluctant companions and had little confidence in each other. His cousin Teo was supposed to be doing the trip with him but at the last minute the idiot got hurt in a barroom fight and was in no shape to travel.

Sitting upright in the driver’s seat, Diego eased up on the Chrysler’s accelerator. He was all nerves and sweating so that his face shone even in the air-conditioned car. With his right hand he searched in his pants pocket for his wallet. A moment later he pulled it out.

          “Okay Paul,” he said, “this time keep your mouth shut, got it?” His eyes shot daggers. “Man, don’t even try to speak Spanish.”

          “Yeah, I’ll be cool.”

It was to be an easy job and I was short of cash. There were the usual bills, rent, food, books, car payments, etc. and there were also my father’s medical bills. Back home in Indiana he loved to hunt. The previous fall he’d gotten himself shot by one of his drunken buddies who mistook him for a deer.

So, to earn a few dollars I skipped a week of graduate classes to accompany Diego in my Chrysler as his bodyguard on a drug run.

Federales waved our car down at a sawhorse barricade. The two cops looked like the fresh-faced teenagers they were. But harmless they were not. Like Diego, the men appeared Native Mexican with olive complexions and sombre eyes. They both carried Colt 1911 pistols as well as M14 rifles. Diego also had a Colt 1911. His was taped out of sight under the driver’s seat. I hid my SIG P210 in a holster under my t-shirt. In the car’s trunk lining we’d stowed a hundred kilos of top grade marijuana. It was 1967 and the demand for pot in the US was increasing daily.

          Diego took a deep breath and rolled down his window. The hot desert air flowed into the car and burned our lungs. You’d never have guessed it was October. All around us I could see hellish, flat terrain devoid of any life except for grotesque prickly pear cactuses. I wondered where these policemen lived when they weren’t busy demanding bribes from travelers.

          “Dame tus documentos,” demanded the taller of the two cops. An ugly horizontal scar decorated his round chin.

          “Of course,” Diego said in Spanish and handed over his driver’s license and American birth certificate. A five-dollar bill was tucked in the folded page of the driver’s license. Five bucks was the going rate. That morning we’d already paid off Federales at two earlier roadblocks on this same two-lane highway.

          The police officer with the scarred chin pulled out the money and shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “More, it’s not enough.”

          Diego grunted and gave the man another five dollars. The cop curled a lip,  then waved us on. He didn’t bother about my papers.

          Once across the border into Arizona we pulled over for breakfast at a roadside diner. Lily’s First Star Restaurant was a blue-collar eatery furnished with Formica table tops, red leatherette benches and little jukeboxes at each booth. In the air-conditioned room I removed my baseball cap and let down my sweaty shoulder length hair. The Chrysler was parked in front of our window where we could keep an eye on it. I ordered pancakes while Diego asked for steak and eggs.

          “Rare,” he said. “Don’t overcook the meat.”

          The middle-aged waitress gave him an acerbic smile followed by a little laugh.

“Mister, you know you’re in a diner not Sardi’s Restaurant in New York City.”

I was surprised this woman, who worked in a shabby eatery just outside the town of Amado, had ever heard of Sardi’s. Maybe she’d seen it as the backdrop of a movie.

Diego took a deep breath, “Yeah, okay do the best you can.”

          We were out of the car, safely across the border and now about to eat. I began to relax. On one of the restaurant’s dingy walls hung an ancient sign that commanded ‘Drink Pearl Lager Beer’. Next to it was a newer notice informing us the place had ‘Budweiser on Tap’.

          Two other tables had customers. Three old men were arguing about Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s role in dividing Korea along the 38^th parallel.

          At the other table sat two young women in frumpy dresses, slippers and hair curlers. One was weeping quietly while the other tried to console her.

          “It’s just a mistake. You know Jack. Sometimes he loses his temper, that’s all. He always comes around, asks for forgiveness.”

          Back in the car we drove past Tucson without stopping. In Phoenix we grabbed coffees and donuts. It may have been the sugar, but Diego began lecturing me. During this trip he’d given the same speech a number of times, but I didn’t complain. I was going to be well paid.

          “The establishment is out to crush the little guy, the working class,” he said. “Those old men at the restaurant talking about Korea were fools, pawns of capitalist society. They were used to suppress the Korean revolution.” I suppressed a smile. “They’re no better than the cops, the pigs that attack the proletariat on behalf of the ruling class. The same thing is happening in Nam right now. Come the revolution people like them will have to be re-educated or liquidated. Do you understand Paul?”

          “Cool man. Yeah, up the revolution,” I said weakly but he didn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm. Diego had a gun and a reputation for using it which made him dangerous. It was a good reason to humor him. I knew from experience what a mess a bullet or two could make.

          “The class struggle is real. What we need to do is change the world, not just philosophize. We’re taking action, you and me. Every time we buy and sell grass we’re dealing a blow to the capitalists that are exploiting working people, Afro-Americans, Indians, Hispanics.” He raised his voice and shook his left fist. “The vanguard of the revolution is going to build a socialist society with the help of profits from the dope we’re smuggling.”

          “I don’t want to know where your money goes, Diego. The less I know the happier I am.”

          “Okay, cool.” Yet he continued with his long-winded sermon.

He’d picked up this Marxist jargon from his pretty girlfriend, a senior attending Berkeley. She was from my hometown of Fort Wayne and had introduced me to Diego which resulted in my getting this job.

Aside from these hollow slogans it seemed to me he didn’t have a real understanding of Marxism. If he’d read anything it would have been Mao’s Little Red Book and the Communist Manifesto. His ceaseless prattle was tiresome, but I kept my views to myself.

This wasn’t a college class, but a drug run and I wasn’t going to ask for his worthless opinion of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh or Herbert Marcuse. On the positive side his ranting did keep me awake which was helpful since I was the one now sitting in the driver’s seat.

          Just west of Indio, California we pulled over for the night at what looked like one of the better motels. We’d been on the road for seventeen hours, ever since leaving Los Mochis, Sinaloa. In the motel parking lot under a lamppost buzzing with flying insects we pried off the car’s trunk lining and removed the bundles of pot we’d had hidden there. Each kilo of grass was in a separate plastic bag. Quickly we placed the bundles into four duffle bags, twenty-five kilos in each.

Diego and I were big healthy guys. At six feet tall and muscular I was a competitive college rower. He was of average height, burly, with wide shoulders. He’d worked as a bricklayer. So, although the duffle bags were awkward, we easily carried our treasure into our motel room. We deposited the luggage full of grass between our two beds. Diego locked the door and angled a chair under the door knob. We shared a joint to settle our nerves. It had been a stressful trip, dealing with sullen Mexican hoodlums, driving hundreds of miles in the desert, bribing Federales, crossing the border into the US then driving for several hours more. Being wary we both slept with our guns under our pillows.

It was after ten the next morning when we woke. Ahead of us was an eight- or nine-hour drive from Indio to Berkeley.

During breakfast, Diego was jumpy, even more agitated than when we’d approached the US-Mexican border.

“Hey man,” he said. He had on what I thought of as his sneeze face, his eyes half closed, his nose wrinkled. So I knew he was in a noxious mood. “We’ve got to get going. Let’s split.” My mouth was still chewing on my toast, my coffee untouched. I didn’t like being pressed by this lumpenproletariat pusher, a man who fancied himself class-conscious but was wrong about which class he was in.

At Berkeley, just like on other college campuses, there were ideological debates around every corner. Even a guy like myself, who was doing graduate work in geology, couldn’t avoid witnessing the rivalry between student groups promoting either violent revolution or flower power. One crowd was vociferously in favor of blood in the streets to reach their utopian goals. The other crowd quietly advocated for non-violence and passive resistance to reach their utopian goals.

Unlike Diego, I didn’t care about any of this nonsense. Evolution not revolution was okay with me. I just wanted to stay out of the draft, earn a few dollars, get stoned and pursue my career ambitions.

          My stomach was far from full but there was no point in trying to reason with him. He had his right hand hovering just above his waistband where he’d stashed his Colt 1911. We abruptly left the eatery. In the car he drove. While Diego’s fingers tapped on the steering wheel, gaucho music blared from the radio. When I drove it was rock and roll; Procol Harum, Jefferson Airplane and Janice Joplin singing out of the speakers.

Closing my eyes, I leaned against the passenger side window as my thoughts drifted elsewhere. In a few hours I’d be back in my apartment on Hopkins Street where my girlfriend was waiting for me. Val and I had been together for a year. She was charming, beautiful and doing a degree in civil engineering. Petite with long sandy brown hair she wore the standard Berkeley student/hippie outfit of colorful ankle-length dress, headband and beads. On her straight, thin nose sat a pair of gold-framed granny glasses. Her outfit, like my own, was all about fitting in rather than a statement of beliefs. She was anything but quixotic.

Practical Val was a great improvement over my previous girlfriend. Anita had been studying geology like me but ran off to a Sonoma hippie commune with a guy she’d only met the day before. In the months preceding her sudden departure she changed and became obsessed with the supernatural, searching Tarot cards, studying the mysterious I Ching, dropping LSD and psilocybin in a bid to find enlightenment. From time to time her mother still called me asking if I’d heard from her, but I hadn’t.

As we passed Chowchilla a fine drizzle descended on the car. A few minutes later the wind picked up and a heavy downpour followed. Diego was forced to slow down. 

We got into Berkeley around six in the evening. He carefully parked in the garage of a red brick two-storey house on Russell Street. Across the road loomed an old Catholic church, its facade obscured by date palms and elderberry trees. The rain had turned back into a drizzle. The street glistened.

Diego’s cousin, Teo, lived in this house. We were to deliver the hundred kilos of pot and be paid. I would get two thousand dollars for my time and Diego the lion’s share.

“Let me check the place out first,” Diego said. He stepped out of the garage, patted his belly to make sure his gun was handy then forcefully knocked on the side door. He appeared very tense, something I hadn’t expected. His sneeze face was in place, eyes half closed, nose wrinkled. I stood by the Chrysler holding my SIG P210 behind my back.

The door opened slowly. “Hi Diego,” said a soft female voice. She gave him a token hug. It was my former girlfriend, Anita. Gone was the hippie clothing. She was in a yellow Grateful Dead t-shirt, new bellbottom jeans and white sneakers. Looking over Diego’s shoulder she spotted me. “Oh Paul, come over here so I can give you a hug too.”

But I didn’t move. I just smiled and nodded. This was yet another new Anita and I wasn’t convinced it was safe to be in her embrace even for a moment.   

An older, brawny man appeared. He had the face of a boxer, bent nose, small scars on his cheeks and forehead and cauliflower ears. On his wrist he wore a gold Rolex and around his neck a heavy gold chain with a crucifix medallion. Diamond-studded signet rings adorned each of his index fingers. He was no flower child.

“Teo,” Diego said sounding relieved. The two shook hands. “Far out man. Good to see you.”

“Peace brother,” Teo said. Seeing me he waved. “Come up to the living room. Bring the dope with you.”

Diego and I hauled the drugs out of the Chrysler and up the stairs to the first floor. From high on the living room’s north wall a poster of a bearded Fidel Castro looked down on us. I had the weird impression the dictator’s eyes followed every move I made.

Teo immediately got down to business and weighed the bags of grass one at a time.

“That’s outta sight man,” he said rubbing his hands together. “It’s all here, cool.”

Following this declaration the atmosphere in the house became buoyant. From the record player The Doors serenaded us. Anita ordered pizza and rolled a few joints. These three old friends were in a celebratory mood, comfortable in each other’s company.

But not me. I didn’t know how long Anita had been with Teo but he was an unknown quantity to me and in a way so was she. Until a few days ago even Diego had been a stranger to me. I had no faith in any of them. Just give me my money and I’ll be on my way, I wanted to say. However, I had to be social, go through the motions until I got paid. Only then would I leave.

After consuming my fill of pizza, I took a couple of tokes from a fat joint. It contained more than just cannabis. Someone had added something to the grass. My mind rocketed above me. Looking out of the front room window I could see the church across the street began to swing and sway. Then it began to talk to me. Proterozoic it whispered. Archean it crooned. Hadrean it murmured. Time stopped then ran backward. Eventually I fell asleep on the floor.  

When I woke up it was late. From the window I could see the street lights glowing as moths hurled themselves against the lamps. The drizzle had stopped and a nearly full moon was out. I was groggy but more or less awake. After orienting myself I checked to see if my gun was still on me. It was. Anita was slumped on the sofa out cold while Diego was snoring away on an easy chair. Looking through the kitchen entrance I saw Teo awake and drinking coffee. I carefully stood up, found my legs and walked over to talk to him.

“Teo, I’m going to go home but first the bread you owe me, two thousand dollars.”

“Two thousand dollars is a lot of bread, man,” he said sounding apologetic. “It’s a bummer but I got only five hundred for you today.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills, placing them on the kitchen table. “Come see me next week. I’ll have the rest for you then.”

“No, I need the money now. I’ve got debts.”

“I don’t give a shit about your debts, dude. Take the cash now and I’ll see about the rest in a few days.”

He pulled out a pistol from his waistband and stood up. “Take the money and get out.” He stepped away from the table so I could reach the cash. “Pick it up and screw off.”

“Okay,” I said and began to move toward the money but stopped short, pulled out my SIG and put a hole between his dark brown eyes. The other two people in the place didn’t stir.

I rummaged through the whole house as quickly as I could and scooped up a total of eight-thousand three hundred dollars. Finding all that money lifted my mood, however, I didn’t have time to dwell on this success. I dragged Teo’s bulky corpse to the garage then placed it in my Chrysler’s cavernous trunk. I’d left a trail of blood behind me, but I wasn’t about to start cleaning it up.

A waning crescent moon lit my way to the sea side. Once at the beach I dragged the body to the water’s edge close to the university rowing club boathouse. Among the various 1, 2, 4 and 8 boat shells lay a skiff. After pulling the small rowboat to the seashore I dumped Teo’s body in the stern and rowed in the direction of Brooks Island. Twenty minutes later I stopped. I’d only done this once before, but I’d learned from that experience. Teo was positioned in such a way that all I needed to do was give him a good shove and into the water he fell. He would remain forever at the bottom of the bay weighed down by my Chrysler’s steel bumper jack which was attached to his corpse by a rope.

It was three in the morning. Now exhausted I rowed back toward the boathouse. I was looking forward to returning to my apartment.

My former girlfriend, however, knew where to find me. As I got close to the shore I saw Anita and Diego waiting for me. In his right hand he held a gun. For a moment I considered changing course but decided not to. I took a deep breath and turned so the welcoming committee couldn’t see me retrieve my pistol from its holster. As I came closer to my targets, I took aim and pulled the trigger of the SIG again and again until they both collapsed in a heap. There would be plenty of room at the bottom of San Francisco Bay for these two.