Into the Beautiful North(75)

Matt had told them to get off the road at Baker, California. They’d find it, he promised, right before they crossed into Nevada and really began their cross-country jaunt. They’d know it, he said with a laugh, by the World’s Biggest Thermometer. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “There’s a sign if you don’t see the actual thermometer.”

Tacho could not comprehend what was so funny about it. He hadn’t been in the United States long enough to have seen the Jolly Green Giant statues, the jackalopes, or the giant Indian arrows sticking out of the sides of highways. He did not know that Matt was proud of the World’s Biggest Thermometer in a way that equaled patriotism. Who could have understood that, say, a cement statute of Babe the Blue Ox with a garden hose running through his penis so he peed a constant stream outside a roadside diner was sacredly American? In Mexico, such things would have been shot to pieces, or stolen, or a family of beggars would have moved into the hollow centers of these attractions and made room for their pigs as well. He pulled off the road at Baker.

Graffiti on a pink stucco wall: CAPTAIN BEEFHEART SLEPT HERE.

“?Qué es eso?” Nayeli asked.

“It is a mystery,” Tacho muttered.

He was bored with the USA.

No, the giant thermometer did not impress Tacho. He had to admit, though, the running fat man on the Bun Boy sign was pretty funny. Matt had told them to stop at the Mad Greek’s for the best milk shakes in California. Nayeli had a date shake, Tacho eggnog. Matt had told him it would taste like rompope, but it did not taste like rompope. Maybe if you poured four or five shots of rum into it.

Ma Johnston’s minivan offered more than enough room for just the two of them, but Nayeli had plans to fill the extra space. She would, she still believed, not only find her father in far KANKAKEE, but convince him to return to Tres Camarones, and they’d need the room for his luggage, maybe some of his smaller furniture. A color television would be nice. And though Tacho had his doubts about the project, she was his girl. What could he do? Just drive. Drive. Drive some more. Then, when he got tired, relieve that by driving for a spell.

And there would always be driving to do. One thing was obvious: Los Yunaites was much too big. He was crossing a distance the size of a small Central American country just to get to pinchi Las Vegas!

No wonder Americans seemed crazy to everybody else—they were utterly alone in the vastness of this ridiculously immense land. They all skittered about, alighting and flying off again like frantic butterflies. Looking for—what? What were they looking for? What was in Las Vegas? And, really, what was the big deal? Why couldn’t they just sleep at the Bun Boy? But no! Matt had insisted they plow through to Las Vegas. First off, what a joke! The place was called Vegas? “Fertile plains”? Nothing outside but dead lizards and black highways glittering with a million busted beer bottles!

Nayeli had been moody ever since Yolo rode the pony at Matt’s. Tacho sighed. Not easy to strike up a conversation with Miss Heartbreak. He tossed his milk shake into the trash. She daintily got out, minced to the barrel, and gently dropped her half-full cup into the garbage can. He hated it when she played the girlie-girl. And now she was watching her weight, too. She got back in without a word, and he got back on the road.

It was already late afternoon. Tacho was amazed and delighted to see an RV ahead, pulled off the side of the road and going up in flames. Massive billows of black smoke roiled above the burning machine. A small group of Americans stood about forty feet away and stared intently. They seemed to believe a revelation was at hand. Tacho passed them slowly, gawking like all Mexicans are compelled to do when a catastrophe ruins someone else’s day more than their own. Nayeli seemed to be reciting a prayer. Tacho felt guilty that he wasn’t more spiritual, but he still craned his neck to see.

They flowed into some crazy glittering Nevada border town that seemed to have a roller coaster going over the highway. Parched sand.

“Nevada?” Nayeli said. “They call this place snowy?”

They laughed.

Tacho said, “Maybe it melted.”

TONITE! GALLAGHER!

Casinos.

LOO$E $LOT$!

The largest building looked like some kind of big boat.

BONNIE AND CLYDE’S DEATH CAR!

“We saw that movie,” Nayeli said.

She noted a prison on the desert slope above the electric town.

“How odd it must be,” she said, “to lie in your bunk and stare across the miles of sand at all the free people having fun.”

“Yeah. Like the people in Tijuana looking over the fence.”

Tacho: Zapatista provocateur!

They stopped for gas and paid with Chava Chavarín’s gas card. It was a family project, no doubt about it.

It rained for about an hour as they headed deeper into the desert. As dark fell, they saw the vast, flat hardpan on either side turning purple with a thin layer of water running to either horizon. They could have been on the causeway at Guaymas that they’d crossed on the Tres Estrellas bus heading north.

The evening light was violet.

And then —

LAS VEGAS.

Nayeli would always remember it like this. In capital letters. It exploded out of the dark plain, a twisted nest of neon and lightning. Black pyramids shooting beams at the moon. “There’s your bright lights, girl,” Tacho said. At first, she couldn’t stop laughing. It was as absurd as her childhood fantasies of dream cities—it only lacked flying carpets and gassy airships. Baffling, winding streets through glitter canyons were interrupted by whole blocks with ceilings of light. She pointed at an eye-aching electric sign that cried céline dion!