llamada del desierto

short fiction - by Brian Clark

We set out from Portland at first light. Dan’s van was parked in front of my apartment building. It was a used white Sprinter van. It had an aqua blue detail stripe wrapping around the sides, a matching blue hood, and a blacklight matador poster that greeted you upon entering through the sliding side door. He bought it seven or eight years ago. I was living in San Francisco at the time, slogging through my intern year in surgery. He “built it out” into a camper van on his own. The vans that now seem ubiquitous in the pacific northwest among the outdoor recreating class actually seemed novel to me at the time. 

“Morning”

“Top of da morning to ya,” Dan said, in a short lived Lucky the Leprechaun Irish accent.

He slid the side door of the van open and Teah hopped out to greet me. Teah was short for Teahupooch, a play on the famous Tahitian wave. She was a Rhodesian ridgeback. She was sleek and elegant and good. Teah was Dan’s closest companion. I handed him a rubbermaid bin of my surf gear to put in the back and threw my backpack into the van through the sliding door.

      “One more trip upstairs and I’ll be set,” I said.

I went back up to my apartment to get my surfboard. It was a 7’3” hand-me-down with a lot of volume. I carefully maneuvered the board out through the apartment door, managing to pull the door open and quickly exit without waking my dog or sleeping wife—both staying home whilst I escaped to the coast. I took advantage of the diagonal dimension of the elevator so as not to bang the board. I walked out through the apartment building entrance. Dan motioned for me to hand him the board.

“I made a special spot just for your board,” he said.

He tucked the board into the back of the van below the bunked bed. 

“Look at this…a box just for your fin box!”

He wedged the back of the board into a shallow old cardboard box, protecting the fins and back corners from the surrounding gear. 

“Teah come! Load up!” Dan said.

The dog hopped into the van, bounding right into the familiar bunked bed. I climbed into the front passenger seat. We drove south on the I-5 past the industrial eastside. The Willamette river was on our right and the rising sun on our left. The sun climbed over the clouds of the eastern horizon and the light caught the vertical glass of the buildings downtown and they glowed in hues of red, orange, and pink. Our route took us south from Portland in the Willamette river valley, through wine country and then west across the coast range to Lincoln City on the Pacific. Just outside the city, I looked to my left. The giant mirage-like triangle of Mt Hood was silhouetted by the morning sun. Gentle green rolling hills and conifer carpeted buttes extended from the river bank to the distant peak. 

“So, how’ve you been man?”

“Good, good” Dan said. 

“It’s been a while. How was Baja?” I said. 

“Baja was great. I was overdue. Needed the month of mostly solitude and me time, ya know? Dan said.

“Sounds amazing” 

photo: @orcatransient

“Most people are unprepared for the time alone in the desert. But not me. I don’t fool around. I pack tons of books, audiobooks, my art supplies, ukulele… you gotta have shit to do when the surf isn’t working.”

“Nice! when I get a real job, I wanna figure out a way to get the time off and come join you down there.”

“For sure, you have to!”

“How did the van hold up?” I said.

“Dooode, it was not without issues. Listen to this. First, ya gotta remember you’re in the middle of the desert, hours from any sort of proper town. Thank god, I was able to get cell phone service and call a tow truck. But this is using my shitty limited Spanish and trying to explain to the tow truck guy that I have a large van and it’s not your standard tow.”

“Shit, what was the problem?” 

“Bottom-line, the van broke down. Turned out to be a broken belt. Anyway, I finally convey to this guy that I need to be picked up out in the desert and to bring a truck that can tow my van. I have him repeat back to me the directions to where I am, ya know, hoping this shit isn’t getting lost in translation.”

“Did he find you?”

“Eventually. Just before it got dark, I see headlights coming over the hill and it’s the tow truck. We get to work rigging up the van and getting things ready for the ride. By this time it’s pitch dark and a two hour plus drive to the town with a mechanic.

“Damn.”

“Wait, it gets better. Hours later we roll into this little village; the whole place is like a fucking ghost town. He drives me to the shop; lights are out; no one is there. But my guy says he knows where the mechanic lives.”

“What time is it?”

“like 9-10 o’clock.”

“right.”

“About a 20 minute drive later, we pull into this driveway and a light on the front porch of the house turns on. My tow truck guy says ‘epera aqui’ and goes up to the porch where the mechanic is already standing in the open doorway. Who knows how many unseen dogs are barking somewhere on the property—sounds like at least three. While they’re talking on the porch, I’m checking to see how much cash I have on hand to pay these guys. I see the mechanic button up a flannel shirt over his t-shirt and point to the shed farther up the driveway. My guy comes back to the van and is like ‘you’re in luck, my friend; the mechanic was fighting with his wife and is happy for an excuse to escape.’”

“Ha! that’s funny.”

“So me, the tow truck guy, and the mechanic unload the van in the shed. The mechanic pops the hood, hangs a trouble light and quickly points out the missing belt. ‘Tienes suerte, mi amigo” says the mechanic this time. He flicks a switch to his left, and the back wall of the shed lights up. On the wall are like a hundred assorted engine belts hanging from wooden pegs, and below that are shelves of random alternators, engine parts, and gaskets, and along the floor are old struts, hubcaps and tires. He grabs a small stool and zeros in on one of the pegs about halfway up the wall, walks his fingers deliberately over the hanging belts one by one like he’s perusing vinyl at a used record shop and says ‘este es el indicado.’”

“This is the one,” I interjected. 

“Theeez iz da one,” Dan said in an exaggerated Mexican accent. 

  “Now that the mechanic is happy with his belt choice, I start thumbing through the manual for the engine belt diagram. It’s an old worn out manual with large sections missing and for the life of me I can’t find the diagram. I have one bar of sketchy extended network cell signal, but I attempt a search online for the diagram anyway. The google search results slow load with 2006 sprinter van belt diagram PDF as one of the first hits below the ads. I click on it. The page starts to load; it’s fucking ridiculously slow, like a line of pixels per minute but steady. I prop the phone on the work bench in landscape. The tow truck guy and I pull up stools and the mechanic grabs three cold beers from the frig in the corner.”

“Look at you guys, making a movie night of it,” I said.

“Two beers each later, the page is at like 60 percent, and we can make out the section we need. Eventually, it takes all three of us pulling on a steel pipe lever to get the belt to fit—high fives all around!”

“Yes!”

“I know, right? I fire up the van and all is good. I ask how much. The mechanic and tow truck guy are like ‘no, no, my friend.’ I try to give them each 100 dollars. They aren’t having it. The tow truck guys says ‘1000 pesos for the tow ($50).’ The mechanic is just waving his hands, ‘no, no, my friend, it’s my pleasure.’ I say, ‘I insist.’ ‘200 pesos ($10.5) for the belt then’ he says.”

“Shit like that just makes you feel like it might all work out alright,” Dan said.

“Reaffirms your faith in humanity?”

“Something like that.”

photo: @orcatransient