Ghost Tour (ch.17)

September 22 into 23, 1998

It’d been almost a year since Reid had smoked a joint. Which is not to say he’d forgotten how.

His lips, like a carburetor, admitted the perfect balance of fuel and oxygen to keep him from coughing as he took his first long draw, tip glowing bright orange in the muted light of the bus’s rear lounge.

Rex looked on with approval. As far as he was concerned, there was no one in the world who wouldn’t benefit from smoking a joint and just chilling the fuck out.

Reid passed the joint to Rex as he continued to hold the hit deep within his lungs. He waited until he could picture the smoke expanding into his cranium before he let out a long, slow exhale that filled the space with more smoke than it seemed possible could’ve been inside him.

At first, a feeling of familiarness. Not unpleasant. Kind of relaxing into reality. Existing. Observing.

Rex passed the joint to Subs, who passed it to Corey, who passed it back to Reid, who took another hit.

He looked around at the other faces. In Rex you could see a little boy grown into a roadie, wandering the world with a dented exterior. Subs looked like some sort of sonic Jedi.

Corey was more of a mystery. Maybe this was the first time Reid allowed himself to look plainly at his face. Who was this person he found himself in a band with? I should really talk more with him, Reid thought, but not now, because I would probably say some weird shit.

The bus hit a torn-up patch of Nevada highway. Someone had hung their stage pass from the television, it swung back-and-forth like a pendulum but with less regularity. Reid swayed on the couch like the stage pass, corresponding to the bus’s movement. The shades were drawn, you couldn’t see outside to orient yourself. Equilibrium began to be challenged.

“Reid, how you doing, man?” Corey said, slow and drawn out.

It took a moment to register.

“What?”

“You look a little out of it,” Corey said.

Reid grew acutely self-conscious. What was he broadcasting? He was being analyzed. Unwanted attention was being drawn.

Subs and Rex were both likewise staring at him, waiting for a response.

“I’m fine.”

Ghost Rider came on the sound system, the same shrieking vocals Reid had imagined when the apparition appeared in his online journal. Subs cranked it. Were these guys messing with him? It was like the fiction of the journal was becoming real life.

Then it happened.

Maybe it was truly dark matter converging around an untethered spirit. Maybe it was a misfiring neuron. Or maybe, in his stoned state, Reid had simply stared at a recessed lightbulb and it left a negative impression on his retina.

Whatever it was, Reid perceived a dark, floating field precisely in the center of his vision, approximately the size and shape of a human skull. No matter which way he turned, the dark skull-like image remained, staring at him. It seemed to be pulsing with the music.

“Does anyone see that?”

“Reid, you okay?” Subs said.

“He’s just out of practice,” Rex said. “He needs to smoke more.”

Unfinished, the skull said.

Panic took hold. With olympian effort, Reid vaulted himself from the couch and propelled his body from the lounge. Stumbling up the center aisle, he almost fell off his feet as the tour bus rounded a bend.

Making a bee line for the fridge, the door flung open wildly when he pulled it. He grabbed a cold bottle of spring water, held it to his forehead, then anchored himself to one of the couches in the front lounge.

He looked around to see if anyone was watching. Liz was nowhere to be seen, Jordan was huddled with Roncho over his laptop, lost in tour business.

Reid opened the bottled water, took a swig. The floating skull was fading to a translucent blur, but he couldn’t shake the sense it had spoken to him, stared him down.

“What’s unfinished?” Reid asked, apparently out loud.

“You say something?” Roncho said. Jordan looked up too.

“I’m cool,” Reid managed, then took another drink. He was done with people focusing on him. He made one more move, to his safe place, the captain’s chair up by Kenny.

Kenny knew it was Reid, he sensed he was more on edge than usual from the way he was perched on the chair.

“How you doing, partner?” he asked without taking his eyes off the road.

Reid needed to formulate some kind of self-advocacy that wouldn’t sound an alarm.

“I think I need some air,” he said.

“You feeling sick?”

“Something like that.”

“There’s a Flying J in about ten miles, can it wait or should I pull over?”

“It can wait,” Reid said.

Knowing relief was ahead, he sat back in the chair, took a deep breath of bus-filtered air. The vast windshield was, as ever, a thing of fascination. An IMAX-sized view of the road ahead and stars above.

As they pulled off the highway ten minutes later, Liz climbed out of her bunk, pulled her boots back on, and came up front.

“I’m glad we’re stopping,” she said. “I need to go inside.”

Other than the pumps, there were no spaces up close for large vehicles to park temporarily. Kenny had no choice but steer into the vast field of parked semis. He found an empty patch of dirt some distance from services.

“You need me to come with you?” Kenny asked.

“I’m good,” Reid said, climbing off the bus, not realizing he’d just committed himself to safeguarding Liz’s wellbeing.

Liz, climbing off just behind Reid, hadn’t looked in his eyes on the dimly lit bus. She had no idea the state he was in or what she was getting herself into.

The two stumbled into the night together, Liz pulling her leather jacket tighter around herself, Reid, in just a t-shirt, slightly freezing.

“Which way are we going?” Liz asked.

The totality of Reid’s momentum had been getting himself off the bus and into the night air. Finding the truck stop hadn’t even crossed his mind. He stopped and turned around.

“Where’s the bus?”

Reid had navigated similar territory the other day with Kenny, but that was in the morning light. It was pitch black now, with only the amber side lights of resting semis to guide them. The field was a vast labyrinth of sleeping dragons, massive idling engines within their bellies, belching diesel fumes.

“It’s right there,” Liz said.

The tour bus was a silhouette at best, its Greyhound shape the only thing distinguishing it from surrounding 18 wheelers.

“Let’s go back,” Reid said.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she insisted.

This need was strong enough, she kept walking. Reid followed. There was a vague upward glow in one direction suggesting the way.

The ground beneath their feet was an irregular mix of dirt and stamped down grass. Reid stumbled in a two-inch gully, not quite twisting his ankle. He couldn’t tell if the dark spot still floated before him, but there was a person in the darkness just ahead, knocking on the passenger side door of a parked truck.

Reid and Liz held back.

The door opened, a shaft of light cut into the darkness, illuminating a dolled-up girl in a short skirt, squinting up into the cab. A gravelly voice spilled out from within.

“Well, hello darlin…”

“You lookin for company?” the girl said.

Despite the heels, she climbed expertly into the cab. The door closed, the path went dark again.

Reid and Liz continued without comment. A widening lane presented itself which seemed the established roadway. Reid remembered what Kenny had said, leave breadcrumbs.

There was a truck that read Huntington on the side. Reid repeated the name Huntington in his head. On their way back, he’d look for the truck that said Huntington, that was how they’d find the bus again.

The glow ahead became brighter. They picked up the pace. Like an oasis, the truck stop appeared before them, they hastened inside, out of the night.

“I’ll meet you right here,” Liz said before going into the ladies’ room.

Reid went into the men’s room. He cupped his hands at a sink, splashed cold water on himself. Looking up to where the floating image had been, he was surprised to see his own face staring back at himself in the mirror.

“Keep it together,” he said.

He used the toilet, washed up again, went back out into the hallway to wait where Liz had told him. A trucker walking past looked at him cockeye, like he was hanging too intently outside the ladies’ room.

Reid started pacing. He had no sense of time. How long had he been in the men’s room? He started wondering if she was even still in the ladies. Maybe she’d come out long ago and left when she didn’t find him. Sounds of clinking plates and silverware being bussed in the nearby coffee shop echoed off cinderblock walls.

“You ready?” Liz said, suddenly appearing, adjusting a small hoop earring she’d decided to leave in after all.

Under the florescents, she took her first good look at Reid since they’d left the bus, his darting eyes and tortured posture.

“Wait, are you high?” she asked.

Reid not answering answered for him.

“What the fuck, Reid.”

“I didn’t mean to be,” he said.

“What am I gonna fucking do with you?”

She stomped toward the coffee shop, he followed a few steps behind. They sat across the table from each other like they’d done so many times. Reid tugged at the collar of his t-shirt, wishing it was a hoodie he could hide in. Did they have the freaking AC on in here?

Liz lit a Camel Light in frustration, tossed the pack to Reid who automatically lit one himself. It grounded him. He’d long suspected cigarettes tapped into an almost genetic need to tend fire and find safety in its glow.

The waitress approached cautiously, they had the look of a couple mid-argument.

“You need another minute?” she asked.

“Tea,” Liz said, handing her back the menus without looking. “He’ll have soup.”

“Beef and vegetable,” the waitress said without writing it down, taking their lack of objection as a yes. “Be right back.”

When the waitress disappeared into the kitchen, Reid leaned across the table.

“Look,” Reid said, “there’s…something on the bus.”

“Something on the bus,” Liz repeated.

“A follower,” he whispered, looking around to make sure no one else was listening.

“Please tell me it’s just pot,” she said, trying to get a better look at his eyes.

“I’m serious,” Reid said. “Some ghosts are residents, some ghosts are followers. This hippie chick told me in Denver.”

In his current mind state, this explained everything.

“I’m gonna fucking kill Rex,” she said.

The waitress left the check when she brought the tea and soup so she wouldn’t have to come back.

The soup didn’t look too appealing, but the first spoonful was hot and satisfying. Reid shoveled the whole bowl while Liz warmed her hands on her mug without drinking it. It was too late to ask for herbal and they probably wouldn’t have it anyway.

Back outside, Liz steamed ahead at first, then slowed to walk side-by-side once they’d left the lit portion of the parking area and re-entered the darkness.

Reid was still high, but the soup had a leveling effect. The vast dome of the western night sky with its sprawling array of constellations, it might’ve produced pure wonderment if the chilling air didn’t perpetuate an overall sense of vulnerability.

“Look for Huntington,” Reid said. Liz assumed this was more psychobabble.

When the landmark truck appeared, it reassured her that Reid wasn’t totally clueless, though once off the main road they found themselves lost among the dense rows of irregularly parked semis.

It seemed like it shouldn’t be much further. Near as either could remember, theirs was the only bus, recognizable once they laid eyes on it.

“Hey, look at this,” Reid said, but the hum of engines was loud enough that Liz hadn’t heard him. She kept walking while he stopped in front of one truck that caught his attention.

The grill was framed in lights, there was an icon in the center. It seemed like he was standing before an altar of some sort. It took him a minute to realize he was looking at the dog logo for Mack Trucks, not the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Still, the engine radiated the heat his body needed. He stood there absorbing it like a blessing, not realizing Liz had kept wandering.

Liz, meanwhile, had rounded a corner and gone an additional truck length before realizing she was alone.

“Reid?” she said.

A figure approached her in the darkness. In the dim glow of stars she knew the shape wasn’t right. It smelled of cheap cologne.

“Lose your way, little chick?” said the gravelly voice, like the one looking for company they’d passed earlier.

Liz turned quickly and started to run but the man caught her by the wrist and pulled her back. It was exactly what she’d prepared for in her self-defense class in Clinton. But she froze.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you,” the trucker said.

“Reid!” she yelled, loud as she could.

“We don’t need no Reid, darlin, we can deal direct, just you and me.”

“Reid!” she yelled again, louder.

Reid, still standing in front of the idling Mack, couldn’t tell Liz’s distant voice from the chorus of pistons and belts he was tuned into.

It was Kenny who suddenly appeared, inserting himself between Liz and the trucker. He was holding a baseball bat.

“Back up, driver,” Kenny said.

“Find your own company,” the trucker said, not moving.

“I said back up.” Kenny said. He smacked the bat into his open palm so the other man could hear it. The trucker backed up, but only a little.

“Easy there, driver,” the trucker said, “you don’t know who you’re messin with.”

Kenny said nothing further. He kept one eye on the trucker and one arm around Liz as he escorted her to the bus, which was just half-a-truck away at this point.

“Reid’s still out there,” she told Kenny as he unlocked the door.

“I’ll get him,” Kenny told her calmly. “Do a headcount. Don’t let anybody leave the bus.”

Shaken but mind fixed, Liz literally counted heads aloud as she made her way through the bus. Rex up front with Roncho. Jordan in back with Subs. She parted Corey’s bunk curtain to make sure he was in there. By the time she got back up front, Rex was heading for the door.

“Stay on the bus,” she told him.

“Gotta use the bathroom,” Rex said.

“I said stay on the fucking bus.”

A moment later, Kenny swept Reid onto the bus like he’d just found a lost puppy and was tucking him back into the fold.

“We a bus, Liz?” Kenny asked.

“We’re a bus,” she confirmed.

“Okay then, have a seat folks,” Kenny said, “we’re rolling out.”

Releasing the brake, Kenny checked the mirrors reflexively as he put it in drive, pressing the accelerator a little faster than usual.

Just ahead, Kenny was all but certain the threesome squinting above his headlights were the ones who were looking for him. Looked like there might be a tire iron in there somewhere. He was thankful they had the good sense to get out of the way when he didn’t stop. They cursed and strafed the side of the bus as he accelerated past, but he’d deal with that later.

The rest of the band had no idea what was going on.

“What just happened?” Jordan asked Liz.

“Ask Reid,” she said, arms crossed, done with this fucking tour.

Reid was up front with Kenny, not entirely knowing what had just happened himself, his adrenaline-flooded system ushering him halfway back to mental clarity.

He was impressed how quickly the bus could get up to highway speed. Kenny checked his mirrors one more time, leveled out at seventy, then sat back a little into his seat.

“Thanks for that, back there,” Reid said.

“Told you, gotta watch out in these places,” Kenny said, more fatherly than scolding.

Reid didn’t know exactly what had led up to the dramatic getaway, but somehow sensed it was his fault.

“Sorry,” he added, it just felt like he needed to.

“You’re fine,” Kenny said, taking it in stride. “Why don’t you go back and check on Liz.”

She probably wasn’t going to be very happy with him, but this seemed like a wise idea.

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