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Tina's Mexico |
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All Us
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I'm driving out toward the highway from my desert campsite outside of Quartzite, motor homes and campers spread out thinly, allowing both privacy and space along with a fragile sense of community. A figure waves me down as I head through a wash. As I pull up I see this is a weather-beaten woman, face grimy and wrinkled under the hood of a dingy parka raised against the gritty wind of morning. I feel a moment's hesitation in my heart as I roll down the window. Am I safe? Is this an ambush? Is someone else here, waiting? These are not thoughts I would have had, had Steve been here, driving, me in my accustomed place in the passenger seat. I don't like this closing feeling in my heart, this tightening out of fear.
She comes closer and says shyly, "I'm at a time when my car won't start without help." "Do you have cables?" "Yes," she nods, and I pull over near her battered brown low-rider that's seen better days. If Steve were here he would name the model and year. I get out, we connect the cables, I tell her how my car would only start when it felt like it, when I was living in Eugene, how I had to get a jump most mornings, that I'd found it only took about ten minutes to get somebody to stop. She asks if the Linus Pauling Institute is still there. I've never heard of it. We get her car started. She says she has barely enough gas to get into town. The look on her face is inquiring. I'm not sure what she wants from me. Sympathy? "Maybe we'll see each other back out here," she says. I don't explain that I'm just a transient, not a resident of this desert lot. What does she do all day, I wonder? |
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