The Atlas

TIN SOLDIERS

Past the heat-seared road weeds, past the Tomahawk truck stop, I found the magic barrier crossing which once had filled me with awe and exaltation so many years ago when I left the east forever (so I'd thought) by Greyhound; now it eased me, pleased me, but could not help me anymore. It was the line between east and west. At first it was just a jaggedly wavy gray-gray horizon; then it doubled, dark purple from cloud-shadow; the same dark purple I once saw in Gallup, New Mexico. All had to cross that line, and when they did, it changed them. In the white convertible ahead were two white-helmeted soldiers. The one on the right kept saluting. When we got closer I saw that he was a girl whose long locks snapped and fluttered below the white suncap; she kept stretching her arm out as if to catch more than her share of the harsh hot sunlight. Then we got a little closer, and I saw that she wasn't a girl at all, just a pimpled boy with long greasy hair, smirking and elbowing his brother the driver, smoking cigarettes; it was to flick the ashes that he stretched his arm out. Then we drew level with them, and I saw that he was an epileptic, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back; in his hand a tightly rolled strip of white paper that his fingers could neither squeeze nor drop. As we passed them, he winked. Then I realized that he was only on some drug.

We'd crossed the line. We were all in the west now. Looking back at the white convertible, I saw how a leathery expressionlessness like something out of a sleazy cowboy novel had molded itself over the pimpled boy's face; he'd become a Westerner once more, his amoebic freedom gone until the next time he went east. I was reminded of the way that Boot Hill's cracked and white-stained iron-gray boards leaned hard in the hot-packed dirt. W M COFFMAN SHOT 1875. Mrs. Lillie Miller, since petrified, was surrounded by black fence, cracked dirt and junipers. A single black-eyed susan grew by the new houses (one driveway held a canvas-covered boat). They'd crossed the line. A barely legible stone said UNKNOWN COWBOY 1883. The unknown cowboy in the white convertible behind tipped his hat, massaged his pimpled cheeks, and yodeled: Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiouuuu dippy-dippy-dooayheeyooooooooooooooooooo!