The End

Despite the accidents and his need for me to be on the street guiding him even if he only had to back up two feet, the weeks of driving the open roads inspired Lasky to contemplate a new career. We were somewhere in Idaho, possibly the prettiest state we had been through, when he broke a long silence by saying, “You know what? I’m thinking about getting my truckers license.”

It was as though someone flipped on the lights, yelled surprise, and a party started in my in my heart. It was the greatest thing I had ever heard in my life. Imagining Lasky kibitzing with the other guys in trucker school is the kind of thought that could help me through a drawn out battle with a disease. I told him I thought that he would make a great trucker. He didn’t say anything for a while. I knew great dreams of diesel pumps, all night diners, and bawdy waitresses swirled magnificently in his mind. I may have been imagining things, but I’m pretty sure I saw his left arm reach up toward the ceiling, grab a make believe cord, and yank down, letting his make believe horn wail, signaling to everyone on the road, maybe to everyone in the world, that Lasky was coming through.

We stopped at a god-awful casino on the border of Utah and Nevada. Lasky won forty-five dollars playing craps, which was just enough to cover the two of us at the all-you-can-eat buffet.

The food was pretty bad and we ate a lot of it. I knew what that meant.

Lasky would be deucing his way across Nevada.

I suppose I’ve put off addressing it long enough. Here are the some variations on “deucing” I was subjected to every few hours for two weeks:

- I have to deuce.
- I have to drop a deuce.
- I have to deuce it up. (This is my least favorite and it causes me pain to write it)
- The deuce is loose. (A close second to deucing it up)
- I have to turn two. (Baseball lingo for turning a double play. Lasky lingo for deucing)
- Deuces are wild. (This one increased noticeably after we left the casino)

Sometimes he’ll present them as equations:

Question – What’s does 400 - 398 =

Answer – A deuce.

And then there are rhymes:

Lasky: Want to make a truce?

James: What?

Lasky: I have to deuce.

But, it was the home stretch. I had made two thirds of the way across the country without choking the life out of this imbecile. I only had a few more deuces to go.

Nevada is the only state in the union that I hate more than Florida. I fell asleep just outside Reno and woke up in San Francisco. I can’t think of a better thing that can happen to a person.

I consider San Francisco to be the perfect American city. It’s the perfect size, the public transportation, the arts, the restaurants, lots of dog parks, educated people, clever bums; it’s got everything. You’ll hear complaints about it being too cold. But, what would you expect? Apes prefer warmer climates.

Lasky and I were in pretty mellow form for the two days we spent in San Fran. We had dim sum in Chinatown. Spent one afternoon hanging around the Berkley campus. We took pictures off the Golden Gate Bridge. When you’re driving cross-country, wherever you stop, you can let yourself feel like you’re something a little more romantic than just another tourist. But, when you see a picture of yourself smiling with Alcatraz in the background, the jig, I’m afraid, is up.

We hung out at the City Lights Book Store. I thumbed through the old Beat Generation books I used to carry around with me in my pockets when I was younger. They had a picture hanging of Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, and Alan Ginsberg talking, leaning against the wall out front in 1965. I don’t care much about it now, but at different times in my youth, I was obsessed with all three of those guys. I took the time to appreciate the picture as a nod to past versions of myself.

It was time to go. It was our fourteenth day on the road. I wanted to get back to LA. How often do you hear a man say that?

I was exhausted. Lasky could have kept going. If I had said let’s head up to check out the redwoods for a few days, he would have done it. There’s no denying that Lasky, retard that he may be, proved to be of stouter heart than me on this trip. Just about everything he does, says and thinks is wrong, but his spirit’s right. He wants to experience life and will go where the wind blows him to do it. I hope he gets his truckers license.

We took the 5 South to LA. It’s the fastest way from San Francisco, but not very scenic. I didn’t care. I’d seen enough.

There’s a stretch of the 5 that smells like cow shit. The smell lasts for miles. The strange thing was, I didn’t see any cows. The entire time I smelled shit, I didn’t see single cow. I knew they were out there, though. Up wind somewhere. On the other side of a hill, hundreds of them, standing around, staring at each other, casually deucing it up.