White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World

6

My mother grew up on a farm in the village of Worthen in Shropshire. I never liked going there to visit my grandparents: house and surrounding countryside shared an atmosphere of dank unhappiness (my grandfather had allegedly been cursed by a Gypsy) but this was not without its own brooding allure. Everything seemed far older than where we lived in Cheltenham. Marton Pool, a nearby lake, was said to be bottomless. It was held to be dangerous, because swimmers could get caught in the reeds that grew on the lake bed. As a boy I was oblivious to what I realize now was not a contradiction but an authentication or verification that this place existed in the realm of the mythic.

I also heard, many times, about the Robber’s Grave in the churchyard in Montgomery. As my grandfather and mother told the story, a man had been hanged for stealing a sheep. On the scaffold, insisting on his innocence, he prophesied that if he was telling the truth no grass would grow in an area the shape of a cross on his grave. The execution went ahead, and the sky, which had been clear, grew suddenly dark (a meteorological detail easily dismissed as after-the-fact atmospheric elaboration). We drove to Montgomery to visit this fabled place when I was about fourteen. The grave was easy to find in the dismal churchyard and, pretty much as claimed, there was a bare patch of ground in a shape approximating a cross — more like a diamond. The grave had become a tourist attraction, and even at that young age I suspected that it was preserved and maintained as such (by weed killer?). Still, the whole package — hearing about this place and visiting it — evidently stayed with me: I wrote about it in my English O-level exam.

White Sands

My wife and I were driving south on Highway 54, from Alamogordo to El Paso. We’d spent the afternoon in White Sands and my brain was still scorched from the glare. I worried that I might even have done some permanent damage to my eyes. The sand is made of gypsum — whatever that is — and is as bright as new-fallen snow. Brighter, actually. It’s really quite unbelievable that anything can be so bright. It’s a very good name, White Sands, even though we thought the place a bit disappointing at first. The sand was a little discoloured, not quite white. Then, as we drove further, the sand started to creep onto the road and it became whiter, and soon everything was white, even the road, and then there was no road, just this bright whiteness. We parked the car and walked into it, into the whiteness. It was hard to believe that such a place really existed. The sky was pristine blue, but the thing that must be emphasised is the whiteness of the sand, which could not have been any whiter. We would have liked to stay longer in this unstained wilderness, but we had to get to El Paso that night. We walked back to the car and headed out of the park.

Jessica was driving. It was early evening. We were about sixty miles south of Alamogordo and the light was fading. A freight train was running parallel to the road, also heading south.

‘Hitchhiker!’ I said, pointing. ‘Shall we pick him up?’

‘Shall we?’ Jessica was slowing down. We could see him more clearly now, a black guy, in his late twenties, clean and not looking like a maniac or someone who smelled bad. We slowed to a crawl and took a good look at him. He looked fine. I lowered my window, the passenger window. He had a nice smile.

‘Where ya going?’ he said.

‘El Paso,’ I said.

‘That’d be great for me.’

‘Sure. Get in.’

He opened the door and climbed into the back seat. Our eyes met in the mirror. Jessica said, ‘Hi.’

‘’Preciate it,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome.’ Jessica accelerated and soon we were back up to seventy and drawing level once again with the long freight to our left.

‘Where’ve you come from?’ I asked, twisting round in my seat. I could see now that he was perhaps older than I had initially thought. He had deep lines in his face, but his eyes were kind and his smile was still nice.

‘Albuquerque,’ he said. I was slightly surprised. The logical way to have got to El Paso from Albuquerque would have been to go straight down I-25. ‘Where you from?’ he asked.

‘London,’ I said. ‘England.’

‘The Kingdom,’ he said.

‘Right.’ I was facing straight ahead again, because I worried that twisting around in my seat would give me a cricked neck, to which I am prone.

‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘I love your accent.’

‘What about you?’

‘Arkansas originally.’

‘That’s where my mother’s from,’ said Jessica. ‘El Dorado, Arkansas. Before she moved to England.’

‘I’m from Little Rock,’ he said.

‘Like Pharoah Sanders,’ I said. It was a pointless thing to say, but I have this need to show off, to show that I know things; in this instance to show that I knew about jazz, about black jazz musicians. The guy, evidently, was not a jazz fan. He nodded but said nothing, and we prepared to settle into the occasionally interrupted silence that tends to work best in these situations. We had established where we were from and where we were going, and a pleasant atmosphere filled the car. Then, less than a minute later, this pleasant atmosphere was changed absolutely by a sign:

NOTICE

DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS

DETENTION FACILITIES IN AREA

I had seen the sign. Jessica had seen the sign. Our hitchhiker had seen the sign. We had all seen the sign, and the sign had changed our relationship totally. What struck me was the plural: not a detention facility but detention facilities. Several of them. The notice — and I took some heart from the fact that the sign described itself as a Notice rather than a Warning — did not specify how many, but there were, clearly, more than one. I did not glance at Jessica. She did not glance at me. There was no need, because at some level everyone was glancing at everyone else. As well as not glancing, no one said a word. I have always believed in the notion of the vibe: good vibes, bad vibes. After we saw the sign the vibe in the car — which had been a good vibe — changed completely and became a very bad vibe. This was a physical fact. Somehow the actual molecules in the car underwent a chemical change. The car was not the same place it had been a minute earlier. And the sky had grown darker— that was another factor.

We soon came to the facilities which had unmistakably been designed with detention in mind. Both places — there were two of them, one on the right and one on the left — were set back from the road, surrounded by high walls of razor wire, and brightly lit by arc lights. There were no windows. In the intensity and single-mindedness of their desire to contain menace they exuded it. At the same time, both places had something of the quality of IKEA outlets. I wished they were IKEA outlets. It would have been so nice if our hitchhiker had said that he had come to buy a sofa or some kitchen units and that his car had broken down. We could have sympathised with that. As it was, no one said anything. No one said anything, but I know what I was thinking: I was thinking that I had never been in a position where I so wished I could wind back the clock just one or two minutes. I would have loved to wind back the clock, to say to Jessica, ‘Shall we pick him up?’ and heard her reply, ‘No, let’s not,’ and sped past, leaving him where he was. But you cannot wind the clock back in this life, not even by two seconds. Everything that has happened stays happened. Everything has consequences. As a consequence, we couldn’t have not picked him up, but I could have asked him to get out. I could have said, ‘Look, man, I’m sorry, but in the circumstances would you mind getting the fuck out of our car?’ I could have done this but I didn’t, for several reasons. First, I was worried that if I did suggest he get out he might go berserk, might kill us. Second, I was worried that by asking — by telling him, really — to get out I would be being rude. So instead of asking him to get out we drove on in tense silence. The car sped along. There seemed no point slowing down. In any situation there is always something positive to emphasise. In this one it was the fact that there were no traffic hold-ups at all. Jessica was gripping the wheel. No one was speaking. The silence was unendurable but impossible to break. Unsure what to do, I turned on the radio. We were still tuned to a classic rock station that we had been listening to earlier in the day, before we got to White Sands, and as soon as the radio came on, in the fading light of New Mexico, I recognized the piano tinkle and swish of ‘Riders on the Storm.’ I am a big fan of the Doors but I did not want to hear this song now. It was unbelievable. A few moments later we heard Jim Morrison crooning:

There’s a killer on the road

His brain is squirming like a toad. .

Having turned on the radio with such disastrously appropriate results it seemed impossible, now, to turn it off. The three of us sat there, listening:

If you give this man a ride, sweet family will die. .

Jessica followed the advice offered by Jim Morrison elsewhere in his oeuvre. She was keeping her eyes on the road and her hands upon the wheel. I kept my eyes on the road and my hands in my lap. Day was still turning to night. The lights of oncoming cars were dazzling and did not augur well. The song continued. Ray Manzarek was doing his little jazzy solo on the electric piano or whatever it was. We are in a totally nightmarish situation, I thought to myself. The rain on the record made it seem like it was raining here as well, under the clear skies of New Mexico, south of Alamogordo, heading towards El Paso. Before I could pursue this thought the guy in the back seat cleared his throat. In the tense atmosphere of the car the sound was like the blast of a gun going off.

‘Listen, man,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ I said. Jessica had said ‘Yes?’ too, at exactly the same time, and the sound of that double-barrelled query erupted into the car in a volley of desperate good manners.

‘Lemme explain.’

An explanation was so precisely what we wanted. In the circumstances the only thing we could have wanted more was an unsolicited offer to get out of our car and turn himself in to the authorities.

I caught his eyes in the mirror. You often see this in films: the eyes of the person in the car framed by the rearview mirror, which is framed, in turn, by the windshield, which is framed, in turn, by the cinema screen. Basically, the look in those eyes is never benign. It is always heavy with foreboding. I met his eyes. Our eyes met. Because of all these associations it was impossible to read the look in his eyes. Also, I had recently seen an exhibition of photographs by Taryn Simon called The Innocents. The pictures were of men and women — usually black — who had been convicted of terrible crimes. Some of them had served twenty years of their unbelievably long sentences (hundreds and hundreds of years in some cases) but then, having won the right to DNA testing, they’d had their convictions overturned. It was not just that there was an element of doubt or that the conviction was questionable due to some procedural technicality (cops falsifying evidence of a crime which they knew the suspect was guilty of but could not quite prove). No, there was simply no way they could have done the terrible things for which they had been convicted. Looking at these faces, you try to deduce innocence or guilt, but it is impossible. Innocent people can look guilty and guilty people can look innocent. Anyone can look like anything. Innocent or guilty: from the faces it is impossible to judge. But while it is terrible that they were convicted of these terrible crimes, these crimes were committed by someone. It is even possible that the reason some of these people had been wrongly convicted was that these crimes — these terrible crimes — had been committed by the person in the back of our car, who, speaking slowly, said:

‘Guess that sign freaked you out, huh?’

‘That is putting it mildly,’ I said. ‘Also, frankly, that song did not exactly set our minds at ease.’

‘Well, let me tell you what happened.’

‘That would be great,’ I said. I sometimes think that this is all any of us really want from our time on earth: an explanation. Set the record straight. Come clean. Let us know where we stand so that we can make well-informed decisions about how to proceed.

‘I did some things in my past. I been to jail. I did some time. You hear what I’m saying? I got out more’n a year ago. But now I’m just hitching, trying to get to where I need to be. I tell you, brother, I just want to get to El Paso.’

‘Well, in the circumstances,’ I said. I cleared my throat. It was one of those situations in which no one could speak without first clearing their throat. ‘In the circumstances I think it would be better all round if we could just drop you off.’

‘Better for you. Not better for me.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s true but, in the circumstances. . ’ As well as constantly clearing my throat I was constantly using the phrase ‘In the circumstances.’ In the circumstances it was inevitable. ‘Well, the truth is,’ I went on, ‘we were hoping to have a nice relaxing ride, and now that doesn’t seem at all possible. In the circumstances, in fact, it seems extremely unlikely.’

‘See, here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I am not inclined to get out of the car.’ It must be emphasised that he did not say this at all threateningly. He was simply stating his position, but it was impossible to state this particular position without conveying an element of threat. I was worried that he was the kind of person who suffered from mood swings. Violent mood swings. I suffer from them myself. But now my mood was not swinging so much as plunging or, if such a thing is possible, swinging violently in one direction. Jessica was gripping the wheel and keeping her eyes on the road. I was starting in some way to feel that it was predominantly her fault that we had got into this situation. If we had been on our own — I mean, if we had somehow been in this same situation (i.e., not on our own) but somehow on our own—I would probably have lost my temper and told her as much.

‘Lemme explain a few things,’ he said. Because I was worried about cricking my neck, I didn’t twist around in my seat. I kept staring straight ahead into the darkness and the oncoming lights and the red tail-lights of cars in front of us. He had been in a supermarket buying things, he said. His wife had been having an affair with another guy, and this guy’s brother worked in the supermarket, and one day, when he was meant to be at work but had bunked off because he had flu. .

I was looking at the cars coming, the hypnotic blur of lights, the inky sky, wondering what time we might get to El Paso. .

And then, when he came back to the supermarket. . I realized I had drifted off, lost track of the story. In truth it wasn’t a very good story, or at least he wasn’t a very good storyteller. He kept bringing in all this irrelevant detail. I was very interested in his story but not in the way he told it. A few minutes earlier I was worried that he might be a murderer; now I was worried that he might be a bore, but it was possible that he was a murderer and a bore. I had been feeling for several years now that I was losing the ability to concentrate, to listen to what people said, but I had never before reached such a pitch of inattentiveness at a time when it was so important — so obviously in my best interests — to concentrate. It was so important to listen, to follow his story carefully, to pay attention, but I couldn’t. I wanted to, I should have, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It is because there are people like me doing jury service, people who can’t follow what other people are saying, that there are so many wrongful convictions, so many miscarriages of justice. Whatever I was meant to be thinking about and concentrating on, I thought to myself, I was always thinking about something else, and that something else was always myself and my problems. As I was thinking this I realized that his voice had fallen silent. He had come to the end of his story. The defence had rested its case.

‘We need petrol,’ said Jessica.

‘She means gas,’ I said. A few miles later we pulled into a gas station and stopped. I hate putting gas in a car, especially in America, where you have to pay first and it’s all quite complicated and potentially oily. On this occasion, though, both Jessica and I wanted to put the gas in so that we would not be left alone in the car with this guy, but we could not both get out, because then he might have clambered over the seats and driven off without us. Except he could not drive off, because we needed the key to unlock the fuel cap. Except we were in America, in a rental car, and the car did not have a fuel-cap lock. I was not thinking straight, because of the hitchhiker and everything pertaining to the hitchhiker situation. Both Jessica and I got out of the car. I did the filling up. It was quite easy. I watched the numbers— dollars, gallons and gallons of gas — spinning round the gauge on the gas pump. Although it was not my main concern it was impossible not to be struck by how much cheaper petrol was in America than in England.

Then our new friend got out of the car too. He was wearing black jeans and trainers. The trainers were not black but they were quite old. Jessica got back in the car. I was pumping gas, as they say in America. He looked at me. We were the same height except he was a bit shorter. Our eyes met. When they had met before it was in the rearview mirror of the car, but now they were really meeting. In the neon of the gas station his eyes had a look that was subject to any number of interpretations. We looked at each other man to man. Black man and white man, English man and American man.

‘I need to take a leak,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Go right ahead.’ I said this in as neutral a tone as possible. I made sure my facial expression gave nothing away and then, worried that this non-expression manifested itself as a rigidity of expression which in fact gave everything away, I relaxed and smiled a bit.

‘You ain’t gonna up and leave me here, are you?’ he said.

‘Leave you here?’ I said. ‘No, of course not.’

‘You sure about that, brother?’

‘I swear,’ I said. He nodded and began walking slowly to the rest rooms. He was dragging his left leg slightly. He took his time and did not look back. I watched his retreating form. As soon as he disappeared inside, I released the trigger of the fuel line, clattered it out of the side of the car and banged it back into the metal holster of the pump. It fell noisily to the ground.

‘You need to push the lever back up,’ said Jessica. I did that. I pushed the lever back up and settled the awkward nozzle of the fuel hose back into it.

‘Quickly!’ said Jessica. I twisted the cap back onto the fuel tank, but I did it too quickly and it would not go on properly. There is much truth in the old adage ‘More haste, less speed.’ Eventually I succeeded in getting it on and ran round the front of the car while Jessica turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared into life.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ I shouted as I climbed into the passenger door. Jessica pulled away calmly and quickly, without squealing the tires, and I shut the door.

We exited the gas station safely and smoothly and in seconds were out on the road. At first we were elated to have made our getaway like this. We high-fived each other. Ha ha!

‘Did you like the way I said “I swear”?’ I said.

‘Genius!’ said Jessica. We went on like this for a bit but we soon ran out of steam, because although we still felt a bit elated we were starting to feel a bit ashamed too, and then, bit by bit, the elation ebbed away.

‘Your door’s not shut,’ Jessica said after a while.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Jessica. I opened the door a crack and slammed it shut, shutter than it had been shut before.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You were right.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Jessica. Then, ‘Was that a really terrible thing we just did?’

‘I think it might have been.’

‘Do you think it was racist?’

‘I think it was just kind of rude. Judgemental. Rash.’

‘Think how he’s going to feel when he comes out of the toilet. He’ll be so let down. He’ll feel we treated him so shabbily.’

We drove on. The scene was the same — cars, lights, almost darkness. We were safe, but perhaps we had always been safe. Now that we were out of danger it seemed possible that there had never been any danger.

‘It’s as if he were testing us,’ said Jessica.

‘I know. It’s never a good feeling, failing a test,’ I said. ‘I still remember how I felt when I was seventeen and failed my driving test.’

‘How did you feel?’

‘I don’t remember exactly,’ I said. ‘Not great. What about you? You probably passed first time.’

‘I did,’ she said, but there was no avoiding the real subject of the moment. After a pause Jessica said, ‘Should we go back?’

‘Perhaps we should.’

‘But we won’t, right?’

‘Absolutely not,’ I said, and we both laughed. We drove in silence for several minutes. We were no longer elated, but the vibe in the car was good again even though we were still ashamed, innocent of nothing and guilty of nothing, relieved at what we had done and full of regret about what we had done.

‘You know those urban legends?’ said Jessica.

‘The vanishing hitchhiker?’

‘Yes. There’s probably an axe in the back seat.’

I twisted around to look — a bit awkward with the seatbelt. There was nothing on the back seat and nothing on the floor either, except two Coke tins and a bottle of water, all empty, and a torn map of White Sands.

‘Nothing,’ I said, rubbing my neck. We drove on. It was quite dark now. Night had fallen on New Mexico.

The dashboard lights glowed faintly. The fuel gauge was pointing almost to full.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘We performed one useful service. At least we got him away from that area where it told you not to pick up hitchhikers. He should be really grateful for that.’ I said this, but as I imagined him back there, coming out of the washroom and looking round the gas-station forecourt, I knew that gratitude would not be uppermost in his mind. There would have been plenty of other cars coming and going but he must have known, deep down, that the car he wanted to see and which he hoped would still be there would be long gone. I could imagine how he felt and I was glad that I was not him feeling these things and I was glad, also, that it was just the two of us again, safe and in our car, married, and speeding towards El Paso.