In the meantime I showered and lay naked on the clean bed, feeling the comforting coolness of the air conditioner and listening to the voices of civilization on the television set as I stared at the ceiling, contemplating lonely distances to come, wondering about my strange attraction to the melancholy realm of the desert. Always, the mysteries beckon. Always, there is the urge to see what lies beyond the next range of mountains.
I woke from a restless sleep hours before dawn. In my dreams memories of a haunted past had troubled my slumber, but upon awakening, the visions faded into indecipherable shadows in the recesses of my mind, leaving me with feelings of disquiet and loneliness.
Pulling on my levis, I padded half naked to a swivel chair near the foot of my bed where I sat and jolted myself awake with a powerful shot of demon-chasing Rye whiskey from the amber bottle which sat on a small round table. The comforting warmth in my stomach helped to exorcise the darkness still lurking in the dim corners of my psyche. I stoppered the bottle lest the genie be tempted to emerge, sliding it into a zippered pouch within my suitcase.
Upon the table I saw my journal, a gold plated inkpen resting across the pages, next to the equally golden pocketwatch, its cover flipped open to reveal the thin, black second hand marching along its endless circular path beneath the crystal. Beyond the book, pen and watch, stood a collection of small antique bottles which I had gleaned from the desert the day before. Some of them were clear, others were of brown glass. One shone in a shade of cobalt blue.
They spoke to me, these relics, in voices wistful and sad. They bear witness to stories which cannot be told because the tellers are gone and forgotten. The words are lost somewhere out on that sunbaked desert, blown along by dry winds for the ensuing decades of sun and dust, heat and cold, that have etched the writings of eternity upon the old glass.
A fresh vision fleetingly entered my mind, the crystal-clear memory of another time and place, far beyond the desert, when a hazel-eyed girl with freckles across her nose had touched my face and said "I love the way you love me, I love how you touch me." I shivered and fought back a sudden moistening of my eyes as I heard the desolate cry of a sudden wind whistling past the window, speaking of stark futility and eternal heartbreak across dark ages. I had to break away from the spell.
I picked up a rectangular shaped bottle with a rusted metal cap, turning it slowly in my hands, realizing that it may well adorn someone's mantel a century after the dust of my body has blown away on the winds. On a silly whim I held the object close to my ear, but all I heard was the sound of a truck out on highway 95. The bottle's secrets will never be told. They are more inaccessable than the sparkling stars of Andromeda who's light started it's journey to earth millions of years before my birth, more inaccessable than the hazel-eyed girl who peers into my soul through the window of time.
Stars. Outside my room they blazed in the predawn sky, sharply brilliant at this altitude. A few yards away the highway sloped up the last gentle rise of the Tonopah Summit before dropping down into the vast bowl of the Mojave. Down there in that dark bowl a different world waited to be discovered. Different and perhaps a bit frightening. From here the lower desert expanse sloped southward, broken only by an occassional tiny town left behind by the westward expansion of humanity, most of whom sought more hospitable ground.
As I looked at the sky, a sound startled me. An attractive woman, perhaps somewhere between 35 and 40 years of age hastily loaded things into a small black car. She seemed to be taking care to do so as silently and quickly as possible, casting a wary glance in my direction now and then as well as at the room from whence she had just emerged. I made brief contact with her dark eyes as she got inside the vehicle, letting it roll backwards a few feet before turning the key in the ignition, then swiftly rolling away into the darkness.
What shadows do you flee? I wondered. Is there a man asleep in that room who will never see you again? Will he be haunted by your face in long years to come? Perhaps the loneliness of the pre-dawn night was too much for her, but her method of departure could only be described as suspicious. I shrugged. None of my business.
I deposited my suitcase in the back of my dusty Camaro. Starlight dimly illuminated the dark hills above town, hills pocked with the tunnels of nineteenth century gold mines, and some that are much more recent. The boom had long since come and gone here, causing Tonopah to be erected out of the dry rock and dust with the coming of the fortune seekers and the clouds of parasites who followed them. Painted women, gunslingers, gamblers, snake oil peddlers and the rest, all gone now except for a few skeletal remnants of what once was. Scorpions crawl in the shadow of a modern supermarket and a couple of small casinos that have been built over the remains of the past.
My old Camaro roared into life and I pulled out past the large and gaudy wagon wheel supporting the motel sign. A skinny Mexican kid filled my gas tank while I purchased a scalding foam cup of black coffee. Minutes later as I crossed the summit and headed down into the great darkness, all sign of mankind had vanished except for the asphalt ribbon leading me ever downward, arrow straight into the lower desert.
Only a handful of people still inhabit the deserted shell of Goldfield. In the gray predawn light I saw no store, no gas station, despite the fact that Goldfield was once the largest city in Nevada. The stone and masonry buildings of the deserted downtown have been empty for many decades. Although few and far between, there sat here and there, a shack or two showing signs of continued occupancy. A yellow porchlight or a beat up car. Up one dusty side street, the dim red light of a whorehouse.
I passed through without stopping, but the eerie image of Goldfield stuck in my mind with visions of tall brownstone buildings with black windows, remnants of a crumbling church and an outlaying desert spotted with hulks of ancient automobiles, abandoned where they stopped running. A final outpost at the edge of the Mojave with it's other-wordly Joshua trees and sunbaked distances. The road led on into morning's pink glow. What pillow would I lay my head upon in the coming night? What visions would wake me in the early hours?
With the sad ghost of Goldfield dwindling behind me in the predawn gloom, I could see dimly, a great vastness beyond the pale illumination of my headlights. A comforting purr came from my Camaro's throbbing engine as miles of black asphalt passed beneath her wide tires. From my radio came the tinny sound of Kitty Wells plaintively singing about
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