Austin Nights

getting serious and starting a career is a positive thing. I agree, but everyone can see on the shallow depths of my eyes I’m at a loss when it comes to discovering what I should do next with my little life on earth. While they want me to do well, they know I’m not being proactive about finding out and getting my shit together. Oh well. I guess I get what I deserve, to each his own, you get what you put in, and whatever other proverbs fit the bill of a lowlife.

  Our conversation switches back to the lighthearted memories of our youth, when all of us were on the same level, undivided by class lines. Cody makes me feel like the person I’ve always been. Although I know Carla and Bridget have seen us bums guffaw over this guff that’s central to our friendship, they do a fine job of not making us feel redundant.

  8

  I feel like we should be interviewed on some late show after our drive. I should be more specific. After covering around 4,000 miles in four days, we’re more interesting than celebrities, at least for the moment.

  If we were truckers, it would be one thing. But we’re only humans who happen to be on the road in an epic way.

  What has the road taught me other than that truckers are Supreme?

  They walk into Pilot gas stations, and they are Supreme.

  They take showers in stalls, and they are Supreme.

  They brush their teeth over bathroom sinks, and they are Supreme.

  They fill cavernous canteens with straight black coffee, and they are Supreme.

  And these Supremes come in every shape and size and gender on the spectrum.

  Truckers are understated specimen. They’re fundamentally different than me. I’m not a trucker. I don’t think I’d like to be one, but only because I like being home.

  I’m a homebody. That’s what the road has taught me. Once I leave home, I have an urgency to get to where I’m going.

  I prefer being rather than becoming.

  6

  We’re riding bikes. Bridget is ahead of me. I’m bringing up the tail with our camera pouch wrapped like a messenger bag around my torso. Inside the camera pouch are two dreamcatchers, one for each of our mothers. Two charms passed down from the hands of Native Americans to help make our mothers’ good dreams come true from this Mother’s Day forward.

  When we reach the Congress Ave Bridge, a knot of people forces Bridget to slow down. She bobs and weaves through the shuffle of feet. I follow, nearly capsizing an old lady with dentures. The Colorado River is orange from the sunset over the west hills. It’s picture perfect. Once the mob thins, I ask Bridget to stop.

  Why are all these people here? I ask. She catches her breath. The jade amulet on her chest rises and falls. She looks beautiful in the amber light. She says, Something to do with bats. She says, I think there’s a colony of bats that live under the bridge. She says, They come out at twilight. I notice all the cameras ready for the moment when the bats will fly. I say, You want to watch them? I say, We’re already here.

  She spots a place to lock our bikes, and the next thing I know we’re two more people in the mob, here to watch the official animal of Austin: the Mexican free-tailed bat. I point like an excited boy at the goose wobbling nonchalantly among the throng. This goose must have a name. Sometimes it stands next to someone and analyzes the frenzy as if surveying its domain. Then it teeters over to someone else.

  I decide to give it a name.

  “Look,” I say to Bridget. “It’s Cuddles the Goose!”

  “Oh my! Whose goose is that?” asks Bridget, bewildered. “Is that really a goose?”

  It’s no wonder she doubts its authenticity. Cuddles is precocious as it migrates from one pod to another, where it holds its neck high and stands, intermittently dropping an eyelid over its beady black eyes to persuade each and every doubter that it is indeed alive. While Cuddles works the crowd, students from the Texas School For the Deaf, which is on a tract of prime real estate in the middle of South Congress, glibly sign next to us. I can’t remember ever seeing so many people carry on a conversation using only their hands. When I look at their ASL long enough I become hypnotized.

  “Stop staring!” says Bridget.

  She has to bump me with her shoulder to get her message through. Admittedly, I do not have the best manners in public.

  “Look,” I whisper, still intrigued, “when they laugh they don’t make a sound.”

  “Stop it, Michael!” says Bridget. “You’re being rude.”

  “All right, all right” I say. I say, “Settle down.”

  On the reverse side of the Congress Ave Bridge, the world’s largest urban colony of winged mammals capable of sustained flight doesn’t communicate with hypnotic hands but ultrasonic echolocation. I hear their high-pitched squeals growing in intensity as they stir from upside-down sleep and prepare for their nighttime hunt for annoying insects. Suddenly, I remember something.

  I say, “Hey, this must be where that bat came from that I saw flying around our place on our first night in The Oaks.”

  “You saw a bat?” asks Bridget.

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding ponderously. “I thought I told you. Odd that I haven’t seen any since then.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a bat at all?”

  “No,” I say, “it was definitely a bat.”

  We really don’t know what to expect. Neither of us have ever been around 1.5 million bats whirring in the air. I imagine the event will be something like a biblical cloud of locusts descending from a low sky and bar hopping from ripe crop to ripe crop, laying waste to everything created by the hands of man.

  When the moment of truth comes, however, I don’t realize what I’m in the middle of until the digital cameras start flashing. In the fleeting lightning bursts, I see a blur of membranous wings, and the squealing reaches an upper limit. Beyond this and only the ears of dogs could hear their rumpus.

  5

  You’re going to laugh when I say this, but Michael’s plan for this manuscript is to give it in person to Larry McMurtry. He thinks Larry McMurtry will make his dreams come true. He’s actually going to drive to Archer City and deliver everything we’ve written to the celebrated writer of Lonesome Dove, a novel he has not bothered to read. I try telling him he should at least read Lonesome Dove, but Michael says not even Abe has managed to get beyond the first few pages. Apparently, Abe says the dialogue is a bear to get through. He says McMurtry tries too hard to be loyal to the way people actually speak, to Texas dialect.

  I’m not going to stop Michael from driving out to Archer City, but I don’t think it’ll do him any good. Honestly, I don’t know what will happen to this manuscript. I do want it to find a readership, but it seems like everyone has a manuscript they’re peddling to agents and publishers. And with the unemployment rate in this country at record highs and steadily rising, even more people are finding the time to put together that book they always wanted to write.

  I guess the McMurtry route is as unlikely as the traditional route. Maybe Michael is right to think he has to do something unconventional. There are just so many people out there with the same dream of getting published.

  What makes him any different? His heart? His tenacity?

  It’s sad. It’s rough. All the people like Michael, all the hopefuls, who keep standing after being knocked down. They don’t quit, until they really quit. Some manage a small win. Some find a little happiness when they get a short story in print. But most are unfulfilled. They simply have to let go of their dreams and move on.

  Do they ever put it all behind them?

  No. I can tell you right now they never put it all behind them.

  There’s always self-publishing, which I’m pretty optimistic about. At first, it may only be something to fall back on, but who knows? With clever marketing, this could be the best shot Michael has at winning a readership.

  All I can say is, I wouldn’t want to trade places with Michael. He’s the writer, and I’m the grad student.

  1

  For those of you who couldn’t make it out to the be
ach today, the water was perfect swimming water even though the purple flag was flying on the lifeguard tower. The sun was directly overhead, far above a cut of the bluest sky.

  I walked out 20 yards and could see the hairs on the top of my feet the whole way. Waves gathered momentum and smashed into my abdomen. I’m serious when I tell you these waves made me laugh like the little boy I once was. A scan to the north and to the south revealed other swimmers thrashing about like dolphin, their bare backs arched and shimmery. The salt adhered to my skin, my face, and cleared my sinuses.

  I took deep breaths, tasting the sea like a raw Maine oyster. From my thick and curly hair dripped microcosms of ocean. The white sand on the floor was smooth, free of shells and rocks. Around me, no weedlines, no seaweed. Aquamarine waters all the way out to the horizon.

  3

  Chlorinated water is dripping off my stubbly chin when Abe steps onto his patio. He’s the first to wave. I smile and wave back.

  “How’s it going?” he hollers from behind his wall of succulents.

  “All right,” I answer. “How’re you?”

  “I’ve got work, so I’m getting by.”

  “Landscaping jobs?” I ask.

  “Some small ones. I finished my last big account out in West Lake Hills. I can feel it hit my wallet. When I think about it, that’ll probably be the last large account I get until this economy turns around. But who knows when that’ll be.”

  I lift my bushy eyebrows and slowly nod my