Ghost Tour (ch.14)

September 20, 1998

Like planetary giants beyond the asteroid belt, western states possess a vastness that toys with the northeastern mind. Distances expand geometrically, a single day’s journey will not suffice to deliver you to the next show.

915 miles to Denver. Pacing himself, Kenny pulled off early morning at a truck stop in western Iowa. Reid, having fallen asleep curled up in the captain’s chair again, woke when Kenny cut the engine. It was just before sunrise.

“Where are we?”

“Just shy of Nebraska,” Kenny said, low so as not to wake anyone else. “Grabbin’ a coffee, care to join me?”

“Lemme get my shoes.”

There was technically one day left of summer, but the Iowa air was cold in the early morning, Reid was glad he’d pulled on his jean jacket.

The dirt lot, bigger than a football field, was filled with idling semis, drivers sleeping in the backs of their cabs. The direction to the facilities was not readily apparent. Kenny wended his way like he knew where he was going, Reid followed. He was struck by the monstrous size of each eighteen-wheeler, heat coming off radiator grills that could roast a calf, air thick with diesel.

When they made it to the travel center restaurant, Kenny fell into a booth like it had his name on it. The waitress brought two coffees without being asked.

“See you’ve got an accomplice,” she said, eyeing Reid as she plunked the mugs down.

“You didn’t see us,” Kenny instructed, like he and Reid had just pulled a job.

“You want anything, cutie?”

She was asking Reid, she had a laminated menu in case he needed it.

“You getting anything?” he asked Kenny.

“I’m good til supper.”

“That’s how keeps his physique,” she said, only half kidding. Some of the other drivers in the coffee shop could’ve benefitted from a touch of Kenny’s restraint. Reid decided he wasn’t ready for breakfast either.

“Thanks Mary,” Kenny winked, freeing her for other customers.

“You know her?”

“Stop here a bit,” Kenny said.

Kenny extended his Marlboro reds, Reid took him up on it. Kenny lit up, then set the lighter on the table in front of Reid so he could light his own. The first draw was harsh compared to the Camel lights he sometimes bummed off Liz, but he dealt with it.

“You haven’t been sleeping too well,” Kenny observed, he couldn’t help notice how many nights Reid was falling asleep up front. “Hope it’s not my drivin’.”

“In my dreams I can drive like you,” Reid said.

Kenny was hoping Reid might talk a little more about whatever he’d seen roaming the bus that first night, but Reid didn’t seem inclined to go there, and Kenny wasn’t inclined to press.

They drank their coffees, took turns tapping ashes into the one tray.

“Your wife,” Reid said, “is she back in Texas?”

“Works as an accountant.”

“Must be hard sometimes, you on the road.”

“Her daddy was a trucker,” Kenny said, “she knew what she was getting into.”

Reid thought on this a moment. In the past, being out on tour had never been an issue, so it seemed.

“Kristina’s daddy was not a trucker,” he found himself saying.

Might explain why the kid’s having trouble sleeping, Kenny thought.

As they made their way back to the bus, the sun peeked out from under the blanket of the horizon. The morning air had less bite.

“‘Member your way back?” Kenny asked.

“Gotta admit, wasn’t paying attention.”

“Next time you might wanna leave breadcrumbs, some of these stops are pretty big.”

“10-4.”

“Daytime’s not so bad,” Kenny added. “Nighttime’s another story.”

# # #

They crossed into Kansas and kept rolling. Midmorning, Reid figured Kristina would be up by now, even if it’d been a late one.

“Hey Roncho, mind if I make a quick call?”

“No can do amigo,” Roncho said. “Guy in Chicago sold me a bum charger, totally out of juice.”

“Damn, told Kristina I’d call her.”

“We got a dayroom in North Platte. I’ve got more than a few people wondering why I’m not calling them back, I imagine.”

Corey, for some odd reason, seemed to be paying attention to the exchange about the cellphone. He slipped away as if to avoid being roped into something.

“But since you’ve got some time on your hands,” Roncho said, setting his open laptop in front of Reid on the kitchenette table.

“No croissant?” Reid said. He began type.

# # #

Our tour bus has two built-in sound systems, one up front, one in back. We were somewhere in Wisconsin when Subs started wiring them together. Our driver, Kenny, has a rearview mirror that doesn’t let him see outside, but he can see what’s going on inside the bus behind him.

“Whatcha doin back there Subs?” he called out.

“Don’t worry, I’ll put it all back,” Subs replied.

Kenny kept his eyes on the road, and Subs kept connecting the systems. He did a test run with Steely Dan’s Aja, which a lot of sound guys swear is the best song to normalize a board. We’re all pretty tired of hearing it every day at soundcheck, but it seems to put Subs in the zone.

He pulled out an old gym bag that looked like smelly socks. Reaching inside, he produced a pearly black box with just one input, one output, an on-and-off switch, and a single dial that read INTENSITY.

Subs plugged the box in next to the preamp. He popped out the Steely Dan and replaced it with Ghost Rider, by Suicide, which is creepy to begin with. When he flipped the switch, nothing happened at first. Then he turned up the INTENSITY and shit began to happen.

“Subs, what the hell you doing,” Kenny yelled, “my odometer is flipping out.”

We were all sitting there watching. The physicality of the bus remained stable, but the air inside got blurry, like we were in a giant blender or something. When our eyes adjusted, we realized we were looking at a high-speed sequence of shadows, the sum total of all human activity that had ever taken place in our bus’s front lounge.

Every band that had ever ridden and lived on this Eagle tour bus since its manufacture in 1985 flit past our eyes in time-lapse, so fast you couldn’t make out details. But in the middle of it all, a single dark human figure, ever-present, was moving slowly throughout, as if he’d been here the whole time for everything.

The activity slowed as we neared the present, until we could make out ourselves boarding the bus just days before. Finally, we were left with our actual selves sitting within ourselves at that moment, the dark figure now sitting on the couch directly across, coming into focus, wearing clothes from 50 years ago. He crossed his legs, looked directly at us. Then he spoke.

“What do you want to know?” he said.

# # #

Kenny slowed the bus as he approached the exit for North Platte. Just under his breath, he began singing a wagon train song that came to mind.

One evening quite early they camped on the Platte

Near by the road on a green shady flat…

Pulling into a motel lot barely off I-80, Kenny left Roncho at the lobby, then swung around back where there was plenty of space for an oversized vehicle.

Roncho returned to the bus with key cards for two rooms, one for Kenny to get his mandatory eight hours, the other for the dayroom he handed directly to Liz.

“One hour,” she said to everyone, dead serious. “Don’t even think about knocking.”

She took her stuff and headed into the motel for her first bit of real privacy since Chicago.

Subs and Rex continued playing Game Boy uninterrupted in the back lounge. Corey went into the motel to see about a laundry room.

“You wanna go grab a beer, or whatever?” Jordan said to Reid, revising his offer mid-flight when he remembered Reid was off the sauce.

“Gimme a few, I gotta find a phone first.”

There was a payphone outside the motel, Roncho was already trying to remember how to use it since his cellphone was dead. Reid started walking north, figured there must be another nearby.

The bridge across the South Platte was more like an overpass. You’d never know how consequential the river had been for a half-million people who’d gone west on the Oregon Trail, which I-80 now rolled over like it was nothing.

He came to a Sinclair gas station, with the big green dinosaur. This one’s dinosaur had a saddle on it, for photo ops. There was a payphone mounted on the minimart.

When he got the answering machine at their house, he didn’t bother to leave a message, he’d half expected no answer. He began to head back, but on a hunch returned to the payphone. He pulled out the scrap of paper with the number Roncho’d scribbled.

A man’s voice said Hello.

“Hey, this is Reid, is Kristina there?”

“Oh, hi Reid, this is John. Just a minute, I’ll get her…”

Son of a bitch.

“Reid?” Kristina said.

“What the hell are you still doing there?”

The phone went quiet for a second. Reid put a finger in his other ear to block out the passing traffic.

“John and Isabella have company staying this week, they hired me as private chef…so I’ve been staying here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Reid, I’ve been busy, and you’re out on tour doing…whatever.”

“I’m not doing whatever. I’m doing shows, and sound checks, and promo, and sleeping on a freaking bus with seven people.”

She paused again.

“There’s something else,” she said. “Something happened at our house.”

Reid got the chills. He’d never actually told her about that crazy shit he’d seen in their living room that night. There was just too much going on right before tour. It was just easier to assume he’d been imagining it. But it’d occurred to him more than once that if there really was some freaking phantasm inhabiting their house, he never should’ve left her alone.

“Was it, like…that noise coming up from the basement again?” he asked cautiously.

“No, nothing like that…Murphy showed up one night. He was really drunk.”

Reid assumed the worst.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” he said.

“He didn’t do anything terrible,” she said, “he was just babbling. Asking questions about the tour. I think he’s just really confused, more than anything. Just adrift.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“I didn’t tell him anything. I said I needed to go to work, he started apologizing and falling all over himself and then he left… I don’t know, maybe he wouldn’t have come back but, you know, being in the house alone, it freaked me out.”

Reid tried to think about what she was actually telling him as opposed to what he’d initially thought.

“So when John called,” she continued, “and asked if I wanted to come cook for a while, it just sort of made sense, you know?”

They both let the line stay quiet, other than the cocktail voices Reid could hear in the background at John and Isabella’s, and the clipped sounds of the road Kristina could hear on Reid’s end.

“Okay,” Reid said. He left it at that.

Walking back toward the motel, he stopped on the bridge. He wanted to believe the story, it did more-or-less make sense. But he’d been to John and Isabella’s, he knew what a party at their house looked like, and what they were into. His gut told him there was still something off about this thing.

Laying both hands on the guardrail, he stared at the Platte like so many wayfaring souls before him. Determinedly pushing westward, ever hearkening to echoes of what’d been left behind.

—

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