Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey (4 page)

After a long drive like that, I needed a drink or two, or five or ten. So after filling up the tank I moved the car behind the gas station and, noticing the crickets chirping, made my way to the old bar across the street. Once inside, I saw that the bartender was an old-timer, and that there were only a couple people in there, all seated at the bar. I took a seat and ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer. I had my backpack with me, with my laptop and camera inside it; I brought it in with me to avoid losing anything if somebody should decide to break into my car.

I set my bag on the ground by my feet, and when the barkeep came back with my order, he asked where I was headed. I told him east.

“Hitchhiking?”

“No. Driving.” The whiskey felt good.

“What you driving?”

“A 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente.” The beer felt better.

“That’ll do it.”

A
s I left town the following morning, the road wound uphill for a bit, then straightened out, stretching as far as the eye could see, all the way to the horizon. At one point, looking into the rearview mirror, I could see exactly the same thing behind me as in front, nothing but the road just traveled. The sun was hot, the sky blue. Not a cloud in sight.

Operating radio or not, one of the many joys of long drives is allowing your mind to wander. Wearing my old desert tan BDU undershirt, I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. A combination of my reflection and my surroundings reminded me that I could easily have been in Iraq right now, instead of doing this, which then brought Georgia into rotation, drifting once again back to Kerouac.

It was late 2003 when we crossed the Kuwait-Iraq border, driving all the way up through the middle of Iraq. We drove through Baghdad, spent some time in the Sunni Triangle, then moved on to Mosul, in the northern part of the country, near Syria. The path to that hell was very similar to the one I’m on now, except that there you’d pass by a burned-out Iraqi tank lying on the side of the road, .50 cal bullet holes slicing across the road. I remember even over there thinking of Kerouac, and how I was “on the road” in Iraq, feeling the excitement of an adventure while crossing the border into a combat zone, wondering whether or not I’d make it. Looking back, it might have been one of the happiest moments of my entire life.

Years later, once again a civilian living month-to-month in San Francisco, having thoughts of checking out, I received a lovely letter in the mail, causing me once again to think of Kerouac. The top left-hand corner indicated that it was from the U.S. Department of the Army, my previous employer. Inside were orders indicating that I had five weeks to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, “Home of the Infantry,” for in-processing. They stated that I’d be assigned to an infantry unit. Purpose: a return engagement to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

A couple days after receiving this letter, I took my parents out to dinner at an Italian restaurant in North Beach, my mother still in perfect health at this point. I remember telling my father that one of our relatives, still in the army, had suggested I go back to Iraq. This was before the presidential election, and there was some debate on the future of the war, McCain versus Obama. I told my father that he had reasoned that if a Democrat won the election, I’d be there during the retreat, er, withdrawal, maybe even less than a year.

My father made a career of the military. He was in Vietnam, experienced the Tet Offensive, and would go on to retire a lieutenant colonel in the army. I was nervous as to how he would react when I told him that I didn’t want to go back to Iraq.

“Don’t listen to him,” he said immediately. “I don’t think you should go back. I’ve seen plenty of elections in my life, and right now, the Democrats are just talking about drawing down to get votes. You’d be a fool to believe that we’re going to pull out of Iraq anytime soon.”

When my father got up from the table to go to the restroom, it was just my mother and I. “I’ll support whatever decision you make,” she said. She then looked around the restaurant for a second before saying, “The other night, when you called with the news, your father couldn’t sleep. He stayed up all night.”

As of right now, though “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended” we’re still in Iraq, there is no real end in sight, and I wonder if anything will ever change. Perhaps one day I’ll have a similar conversation with my own son.

I read somewhere that during the height of “The Good War,” Kerouac managed to get an honorable discharge by convincing military doctors that he had “strong schizoid trends” and was thus “unfit to serve.” Online you can find the official U.S. Naval Reserve file. “Facts” are as follows:

Military: Very poor adjustment. “I just can’t stand it; I like to be by myself.” Sexual: He had a sex contact at age of 14 with a 32 year old woman, which upset him somewhat. Habits: Smokes pack and a half a day. Spree drinker. . . . A review of this patient’s health records reveals that at recruit examination he was recognized as sufficiently abnormal to warrant duty status, and that during this period neuropsychiatric rambling, grandiose, philosophical manner . . . without any particular training or background, this patient, just prior to enlistment, enthusiastically embarked upon writing novels. He sees nothing unusual in this activity. . . . At a staff conference on June 2, 1943, the diagnosis was changed to constitutional Psychopathic State, Schizoid Personality, it being unanimously agreed that this patient has shown strong schizoid trends which have bordered upon but not yet reached the level of psychosis, but will render him unfit for service. His discharge from service is recommended.

When I reported back to Fort Benning, Georgia, I found myself numb, staring blankly out onto the historic military post from the top floor of the barracks. It’s a beautiful base, surrounded by well-rooted trees, classic southern-style homes reserved for officers, a river nearby, not far from the Alabama border. The sun was about to set as soldiers, some in uniform, others not, casually walked by below. Evidence, to me, that with or without you, the army keeps rolling along.

The army changed its mind about rehiring me, kindly providing me with a one-way ticket back home once I showed them the letter the VA Medical Center in San Francisco had given me:

Mr. Buzzell came into the evaluation visibly distressed, uncomfortable, presenting with flattened affect and speaking with soft, mumbled speech. When asked about his experiences in Iraq, he became more agitated and asked if it was necessary for him to talk about them. When told that he could refer to them very generally, he replied that one of the main incidents involved a firefight that lasted all day that took place when he was driving along a major street and his vehicle was ambushed. During the course of talking about this incident, Mr. Buzzell’s speech became increasingly softer, more incoherent and more disjointed, as he was visibly disturbed and easily stimulated to flooding by this retelling. Mr. Buzzell added that there were other traumatic incidents that occurred aside from this roadside ambush, but in the interest of containing this vet, I told him that the information he provided was sufficient for the time being.

Mr. Buzzell reported that he has tried very hard to “push out of his head” the aforementioned incident and many others since returning from Iraq. He reported that he drinks heavily every day as a way to avoid these traumatic memories, usually to the point of blacking out so he can eventually fall asleep. He has been using alcohol for the past three years as a way to numb intrusive thoughts and reminders of his combat trauma since his return from Iraq. . . . He is severely isolated, spending most of his day in his room and sometimes going for several days to weeks without speaking to anyone. Upon returning from Iraq, Mr. Buzzell and his wife divorced. . . . When asked whether he has thoughts of harming or killing himself, Mr. Buzzell endorsed having a passive suicidal ideation. . . . Mr. Buzzell also stated that he does not own a firearm because he is scared of what he might do with it when he is drunk . . . while he has gotten into a couple of fistfights in bars, he has never had an urge to hurt or kill someone. . . . In sum, Mr. Buzzell reports extremely significant functional impairments resulting from PTSD symptoms related to his military service in Iraq, including severe intrusive thoughts of his trauma in Iraq, irritability, hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping, feelings of depression, and avoidance of people, places, and things that trigger him or remind him of his service in Iraq.

I had recently flipped through some photos of me in Iraq, about six or so years old now. I look so young in these snapshots, and what is amazing is how many of them depict me naturally smiling. Nobody back then told me to smile when they took a snapshot.

A
couple hours later on U.S. 50 I hit Eureka, “The Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America.” I pulled into the gas station, filled her up again, took a piss, and purchased coffee and a hot dog. I walked around a little to stretch my legs. U.S. 50 goes right through the middle of town. Every streetlight pole along this main street held a banner bearing a service member’s name; the young men and women of Eureka, population 1,628. I felt touched by that.

I sat down on a park bench and, sipping my coffee, wondered whether I had done the right thing while I was in Georgia. A car passed by.

That letter I had received calling me back up to active duty was for a deployment to Iraq, at a time when word was going around that we were going to pull out of Iraq and end the war. If that was the case, why in the hell did they need me? If we were going to withdraw anyway, what’s the point?

Afghanistan, however . . . that’s a whole other story. If that letter I received had requested my presence for Operation Enduring Freedom over there in Afghanistan, I think I might have gone. Not because I believe in the mission over there any more strongly than I believe in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but because I enjoy traveling, especially when it’s on the government’s dime. I’ve never been there before, and who knows, it could be kind of interesting. That, and the last time my life made any sense at all was when I was in the military. It didn’t feel that way at the time, but it does now.

But since my orders were for Iraq, I handed the army my medical records and psychiatric evaluation. Leaving the main gate at Fort Benning that very last time, knowing I’d never have to return, I felt as though I’d just woken up from one of those dreams that don’t make any sense, plaguing you the bulk of the day.

T
he entire time I was in Iraq, I wished I was stateside. Now that I’m here, there’s this part of me wishing I was back there. I wonder if I wouldn’t miss home as much the second time around, or even at all. You come home and think everything’s going to be great, but it’s not. You realize that even though after a bad day there, nothing in the world could be remotely comparable, it still seems that, just like when you were over there, every time you tell yourself things cannot possibly get any worse, they do. Tenfold.

Over the years, I’ve had moments I wish I had been killed in Iraq. I have a son now; I tell myself I shouldn’t be having these thoughts. After tossing my coffee cup in a trash can and field-stripping my cigarette butt, I get up and make my way back to the car to hit the road again.

Y
ou sometimes witness strange things out in the middle of nowhere, such as the tinted-window late-model Ferrari passing by, probably on its way to Los Angeles, and then a couple of psychotic cross-country cyclists. You lose track of how long you’ve been driving, and suddenly the road comes to an end. I thought to myself that I’d really miss the Loneliest Road in America. It had been just me, my car, the road, my thoughts, my war, and the barren earth around me. I let my imagination go with that for a while, until far up on the horizon I see it, coming directly at me, twelve o’clock.

It was one of those compact Smart cars. It takes a certain type of individual to be able to drive around town with the word
Smart
on the back of his car. It was heading in the opposite direction, west, probably on its way to San Francisco.

Though it probably would have pleased my publisher if I went all green and did this road trip in some fuel-efficient corn-oil vehicle, the thought makes me cringe. Nothing against fuel-efficient vehicles, or the people who can afford to drive them; I’m all for the movement, but it’s just not me. Not right now, that is. I’m way too vain for that. The first image that came to mind when preparing for this journey was driving an old vintage car, something sexy, like my Caliente. Just me and my car, on the road. That’s it: no corporate sponsorships, no hours and hours beforehand of writing grant proposals and please-give-me-money-so-I-can-endorse-your-products-on-my-car letters, no vinyl stickers with my dot-com address plastered to the side of my vehicle to ensure people can follow me on my constantly updated blog or Twitter feed; there will be no goddamn tweeting. Just me, my car, endless cigarettes, low-grade coffee, high-grade fuel, the road.

After the Smart car passed by, I’d let my mind wander again when suddenly a bird shot out of nowhere right in front of my car, resulting in a loud
thump
on my grill, an explosion of feathers. My luck, it was probably an endangered species of some sort, the first miniature flamingo ever to be seen in Nevada, I am positive. With help from the wind, it removed itself, blowing up only to hit my windshield, looking at me, quickly flying off; I watched in my rearview mirror as it hit the asphalt behind me. It fluttered around a bit, then stopped, dead. The small, defeated body gradually became smaller and smaller as I continued driving.

Chapter Four

A Veteran in a Foreign War

“If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.”

RONALD REAGAN

U
tah. Mormons and polygamy. Sundance and skiing.

Pulling off the freeway in downtown Salt Lake City, I cruised up to a red light and waited. The coffee shop to my left seemed packed, outdoor seating, many of the patrons covered in tattoos, coffee and cigarettes in hand. The car next to me was a Toyota, tricked out with a custom green paint job. The guy driving it couldn’t have been much younger than me, and was wearing a baseball hat, cocked to the side, rap music blasting from his sound system. A scruffy hipster with a beard and bike messenger bag, though I doubt he was a bike messenger, pulled up alongside my rumbling vehicle on his fixed-gear bike. I shifted my attention over and stared at him. When the light finally turned green, he started pedaling. I put some pressure on the gas.

The first thing I noticed about my friend Pete’s house when I walked in was that a woman was living there. The furniture had been moved around a bit, and the place was tidy and clean. Nothing like the way I remembered it five years before, the last time I came to visit. Back then, his place was beautifully thrashed, like a bohemian crash pad Ginsberg might have used as a backdrop to a photo shoot.

Pete’s now married, which probably explains damn well the interior makeover, and the homemade meatloaf dinner his wife Kendra made. After dinner, Pete and his wife charmingly washed dishes together, as I sat at the table drinking a bottle of beer. After finishing a six-pack I felt bloated and wondered why I wasn’t drunk yet.

Out for a tour of SLC with Pete, I felt a lightbulb going off in my head as we passed by the Department of Labor. We pulled into a 7-Eleven first, to grab a couple Big Gulps, and walked over to the DOL. A minivan from a local news station was parked outside. When we entered, a news camera crew was inside interviewing a lady about her job search.

I asked the girl behind the counter where the job board was located and she told me that all the jobs are now listed online, and if I wanted to find one, I only needed to sign in, and I’d be allowed to use one of their computers. There were dozens of people in front of these computers, looking for work. We signed in, took our Big Gulps with us and took a seat at the computer next to the lady who was being interviewed. Eavesdropping, we found that she was a journalism major who was now looking for something called a job.

Resisting the temptation to tap her on the shoulder and suggest she start a blog, perhaps with some affiliate links, I pulled up a Web site for a temp labor company whose slogan was “Work today, get paid today.”

Sounds good. Real good, actually; and I was feeling something tingly but wasn’t quite sure why that was, yet. My instincts were telling me that it was destiny. Only one way for me to find out, and that was to act on this hunch.

Excited, I wrote down the address and contact information, and we quickly drove down to where the company was located. The place was completely empty. I told the lady in sweats behind the desk that I was ready to work and could start today. She told me she was sorry, but that they didn’t have any work. “Haven’t for some time,” she said. For the last five or six months now, every day at five in the morning they had about sixty people show up for work, and on average, they only had about ten jobs available.

I explained to her that I was interested in traveling across the country and working different jobs along the way, asking which cities she recommended. She looked up some information on her computer and told me that my best bet to find work through their agency would be to head north to Billings, Montana, or maybe Cheyenne, Wyoming. “Cheyenne has plenty of work.” Casper, Wyoming; Fargo, North Dakota; and Denver, Colorado, also had work. But no matter what, don’t go to the Midwest or the South—especially the South; there were absolutely no jobs there whatsoever. She had relatives who lived in the South who were in the process of leaving on account of the situation.

I jotted all this down and thanked her.

A
few days passed, and while I planned my departure, I received a call from an 801 area code. Turned out to be in regard to a job post I had responded to on Craigslist with my laptop while drinking at a bar that had free Wi-Fi. Good things happen to those who seek them out. We had seen a bar earlier advertising free Wi-Fi, so pulled in and parked. There, after ordering a couple pints, I logged on to my computer and began scanning Web sites for possible employment opportunities. I’ve always been curious as to why bars offer free Wi-Fi, and now I knew. They offer it so that you can look for a job while unemployed.

The lady on the phone asked if I was still interested in the position. Containing my excitement to the best of my ability, I told her yes, I was.

Pete gave me a ride to the interview, explaining on the way that it’s a lower-middle-class part of town. He went on to explain that he doesn’t really go there much, since it’s kind of “ghetto.” While he waited in his car in a nearby church parking lot, listening to Michael Savage on his car stereo, I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. I immediately heard the stomp of little feet running around like there was some kind of day care going on inside. Then the door to opportunity opened up to me, and a kindly housewife welcomed me inside. The smell of stew was in the air, and I saw at least three kids—all running around—as I made my way, as directed, to the table in the middle of the room and took a seat. The lady who owned and operated the business sat across from me with a bunch of miscellaneous folders and paperwork organized into neat stacks set in front of her. To my left, a few steps away from me was the kitchen where a lady, slightly older, stood stirring a pot on the stove, which I suspected was the source of stew I had smelled when I’d first walked in. She asked for my name, and when I gave it, the lady cooking quickly turned around, making it possible for me to view her stellar sweatshirt, which had deer embroidered onto it. With a subtle red-state accent, she asked if I was the guy on the phone who was traveling across the country. I told her I was, and she immediately got excited telling me how cool that was. “You know what that reminded me of? What’s the name of that one guy? You know, that one book where those two guys go hitchhiking across the country? Hmm, what’s the name of that . . .”

I was amazed that this lady knew of it.

“
On the Road
?”

“Yes! That one! It reminded me of that!”

The interview consisted of only a few questions: how was my driving record, when could I start, and how much or often could I work. I was perplexed that nothing was said about a background check; there was no request to see my birth certificate, nor was I asked to provide my social security number. She explained to me that I would be contracted out, and I would get to use their van lease-free, as long as I returned it at the end of the day with the same amount of gas in it as when I left. They would provide all the ice cream, and I keep 30 percent of each sale. I should have paid more attention in math class back in school; at $1 to $1.50 an ice cream bar, how many ice cream bars would I have to sell during a full nine-hour shift to make it worth my time? Confused, I don’t ask her how much an average day would rake in, nor whether there was a 401(k) plan involved. She told me that weekends were always good, especially when it’s sunny and hot like it had been the past several weeks. After the interview, I walked slowly back to the church parking lot where Pete was waiting, a block away, and got into the car, bummed. Pete asked me what happened and, more importantly, if I had gotten the job.

I smiled.

T
he next morning when I woke up, it was as if God was telling me not to get a job. I step outside with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and what should it do on my first day as an ice cream truck driver in Salt Lake City, Utah? Rain. It wasn’t a light rain, it was downright pouring. How the fuck did that happen? It had been sunny and hot the entire time I’d been there, and I didn’t know what to do. Is it like a game that gets canceled due to rain? Do I show up to work today? It could be a waste of time for all parties involved to try and sell ice cream on a rainy day, plus I was a bit hung over from going out to the bar last night to celebrate my new employment. I called the lady up to see if she still needed me to come into work, and she said, “Absolutely! Get down here! Some of our best days have been on days where it’s rained!”

I had gone online the night before to do some research on the profession. I was curious to find out how much ice cream trucks made, how many units I could hope to push on the good children of SLC, so I Googled “ice cream truck,” checking out various recent articles; I was shocked to see that there were dozens. As I read, I seriously wondered how many ice cream truck drivers get killed each year in the line of duty. The statistics must be staggering. There had to be a monument for them somewhere, because these articles were brutal. “Ice Cream Truck Driver Says Arson Was Attempted Murder,” “Three Charged with Hate Crime in Ice Cream Truck Attack,” “Two Marin County Men Face Charges in What Police Say Was an Attempted Highway Heist of an Ice Cream Truck,” “Mister Softee Driver Busted for Stopping Ice Cream Truck to Buy Drugs.” All recent.

Pete waited again in his car down the street as I went to sign in and pick up the truck. When I showed up at the house, one of the kids I had seen the day before was seated at the dinner table playing a game of blocks with two packs of cigarettes while Grandma took me out to the ice cream truck to show me how it works. She went over the entire inventory and told me which ice creams sell, which don’t, how to drive the vehicle, operate the Slow Children sign, and turn on the sound system, which has a couple dozen ice cream chimes to choose from. After that, I was all ready to enter the world of the employed again. She gave me directions to a town called Magna and suggested I start there and make my way back: “Yes, it’s a poor neighborhood, but you’ll make a killing there. For some reason kids there love ice cream.”

She helped back the ice cream truck out of their garage, waving me off. I drove over to pick Pete up in front of a house down the block with gang graffiti spray-painted on the outside. After I picked him up, the rain cleared up, and the sun was starting to come out. We were locked and loaded on our way to Magna. Pete’s wife called, wished us luck. “Try not to get shot,” she said.

I was starting to wonder what in the hell we were doing wrong when all of a sudden at 11:15 a.m. a girl popped out of a building to our vehicle’s ten o’clock, guided by her mother. The two of them walked over, and I asked the little girl what she wanted. She told me she wanted a Rainbow Pop. Easy enough; we had two grown males in charge.

I looked, but didn’t see any Rainbow Pops, so asked her to pick something else. She frowned and pointed at a sticker on the side of the truck. I leaned out the ice cream truck window to see what she was pointing at, and dove into the back of the truck on the hunt for a Fudgsicle.

A few moments later I poked my head back outside the truck to tell her that we didn’t have that either and asked her to again pick something else. The frown on the little girl’s face turned to borderline anger. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to kick me or start crying, she could go either way, so I grabbed a King Cone, thanked her for her patience, and told her that it was free. Her mother asked, “Did you guys just steal the truck?”

I didn’t know how to answer. Just then Pete, who like me was breaking a sweat, exclaimed, “I found it!”

We made our sale, and after that we both needed a drink. So we parked the truck outside the neighborhood VFW bar and walked in. An old dusty American flag hung above the bar, and about a half dozen day drinkers were silently inside looming at the bar. One guy, sitting at a table in the corner, had his head down, sleeping, while
The Gilmore Girls
played on the television
.
After ordering a pint, I got to talking with one of the old-timers, telling him how much of a pain in the ass it was trying to sell ice cream. He told me to follow him after we were done with the beer, and that he’d drive us over to a trailer park community that always has dozens of kids running around. After we polished off our beers, we did as he asked, following his white pickup truck to the Promised Land, the trailer park community. We didn’t sell shit.

As I drove the truck through other residential neighborhoods in search of little kids, I wondered if this is what a child molester on the hunt might also find himself doing. We came across several other ice cream trucks also driving through our area of operation, one of which we tailed for a bit, and another I pulled up alongside to ask, “Hey how much do you make?” He didn’t seem to speak English, and I had no idea what in the world he was saying; I’m not even really sure he understood the question. It made me wonder if this was his first job here in America.

The only rush we had that day was a Mexican family who came over once we pulled into a small park. Afterward we drove around another neighborhood, several houses again covered in gang graffiti. Pete and I felt bad for not selling any ice cream, and we felt even worse for having eaten some of the profits when we got hungry. Our last sale of the day went to a little black girl who pushed her wheelchair to the curb and sat there patiently waiting for us to pull up. She was wearing a T-shirt with the American flag on it. She only had a dollar in loose change on her, and she asked, “Can I have that one, please?” as she pointed to an ice cream bar that cost $1.50. I really did not want to take her money, and I felt bad doing so, but I sold her the ice cream bar for her dollar. She said thank you, and we called it a day.

A
t the gas station I estimated that for a full nine hours of driving around way below the legal residential speed limit, about fifteen miles per hour, the amount I would have to put into the vehicle would be $7. That didn’t move the gas gauge one bit. So I put $5 more in. It barely moved. I put another $7 in low-octane fuel in, and it moved the meter a bit closer to where I needed it to be. Fuck it. Close enough. The amount that I spent on gas that day was $19.