30 miles west of San Antonio mesas began to rise out of the ground. Massive trapezoids dotted the landscape with green trees along their sides and too-big houses sometimes christened their tops. My black 2-door snaked between them trying, perhaps vainly and naively, to get out of Texas.
West Texas was the kind of place where the road never changes. 80, 85, 90 miles per hour, it made no difference; outside of the white lines the scene was constant. Gold flecked with the green of shoulder-high scrub slid past my windows, soundless save for the noise of the tires and the asphalt. Road signs attempted to convince me that there is life out there. Towns like Sterling City and Sonora, Ozona and Pandale appeared on the green signs on the side of the road and I blew by them.
West Texas was the kind of place where I not only considered stopping to fill up when I had a quarter of a tank left, I actually did it. It was the kind of place that after exiting the highway I drove 4 miles into a town, more like a neighborhood really, to the filling station. There was no explanation for the town or the people who live there, they just were. At the filling station gas was 50 cents more than it was the last time I stopped but I paid it.
In West Texas cell phones were reduced to shiny plastic rectangles and blown out tires rotted on the highway like corpses. There were road signs that read “STRONG CROSS WINDS” and after having my car lurch 2 feet to the left I took them seriously. In Fort Stockton there were two FM radio stations, they were both in Spanish. Billboards in Pecos boasted being the home of the first rodeo. There were unmarked fast food restaurants that offered “small pig” for 85 cents. Buildings were rusted and permanently leaning to the side after a lifetime of being bullied by the wind. It was Cormac McCarthy’s wet dream. My 2-door Acura with Ohio plates would only be more out of place if it were painted rainbow and had a re-animated Freddy Mercury riding shotgun. I wondered to myself after leaving Pecos behind me traveling north on the 285, if something were to happen to me, how long would it take for someone to find my body? Because in West Texas you have kick off 3 inches of dirt and dust to unearth words like “remote” and “desolate.”
Maybe it was the powers that be rather than time and stress that made my right front tire rupture. Perhaps I was supposed to have the “oh shit” moment. It was fate, it was destiny, it was irony. No matter what the motivation was once I felt the steering wheel shake and heard the grinding from the right side of my hood, I had my oh shit moment. I knew I had blown a tire even before I brought the car to a stop on the side of the road. But no one would have to find my body; there would be no need for a search party this time. 45 minutes later the shredded tire was in my trunk under my clothes and camping equipment and the spare had been tightened on. I drove slowly, 50, until reaching Carlsbad, New Mexico under a big starry sky. I drove around looking for a place where I could park and sleep in my car for the night. The next day, I would have to buy a new tire.
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