Goode Vibrations Read online

  Delia chuckled. “Am I being a know-it-all busybody again? My grandchildren all get upset with me quite often for that. I just can’t help wanting the best for everyone.”

  I thought about lying, but it just wasn’t my style. “Honestly, Delia, yes, a bit. It’s all right, I understand and I appreciate your concern. But I do promise, I’m safe and being cautious about who I accept rides from.”

  I mean, after all, I’d anticipated exactly what happened with good ol’ Donny Zelinski.

  “I only live a few miles from here. How about I take you to my home, cook you a meal, and you can sleep in a real bed tonight. And then, in the morning, I’ll make you breakfast and take you half an hour in any direction you want. Preferably to a bus station, but if not, I’ll understand.”

  Home-cooked food, and a bed?

  Hello, generosity of strangers.

  “That sounds wonderful, Delia. I’d be delighted to accept.”

  A fairly auspicious start to my trip, I’d say.

  Errol

  “These look amazing, Errol,” my editor at National Geographic, Len, was looking down, away from the screen of his laptop, at the iPad upon which my latest completed photography project was displayed. “Sienna and I will go through them and make some choices.”

  “Sounds brilliant.” I was in an airport lounge in…St. Paul?

  Maybe. Probably. I’d been connection hopping since yesterday morning, without sleep, so I was a bit cranky and more than a bit confused.

  “What’s next for you, then, Errol?”

  I yawned. “Find somewhere to sleep.”

  “Well, yeah. But then what? Got a project lined up?”

  I scrubbed my face, listening as a boarding call was announced. Not mine, so I tuned out. “I mean, I’ve had a few ideas. But honestly, this last project was pretty intense and I kinda need something more chill, you know? I like extreme stuff, but I’ve been hanging off the side of helicopters for the last six months. I wouldn’t mind being on the ground for a while.”

  “So, ideas. Hit me.”

  “Well, I’m in the States, right? My ticket is supposed to take me all the way back to Christchurch, but the only way I could get out of Norway was through Atlanta which somehow included a layover in St. Paul…whatever, you don’t care about my connections. Point is, the idea that’s been rattling around in my head lately is sort of a different take on things for me. I was thinking something like a photographic essay of unusual parts of the States. The title I’ve got in my head is ‘The Unseen America.’ Sort of my own unique take. The kind of shots I’m good at, but here, Stateside. A tour of the country, no real itinerary, no plan, just…bang about with a few cameras.”

  “A break from the usual, but still working.” Len chuckled. “Meaning, getting me to pay for you to take time off.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “But you’d get a few thousand photos out of it, at least. I just need a bit of time to recharge, you know?”

  Len mused, still idly flipping through my photos, which was a collection documenting the Norwegian fjords, but most of them had been taken from the side of a hovering helicopter, or rappelling halfway down sheer vertical faces, or from a kayak…the kind of shots impossible to get—birds nesting in the cliff faces, the sea hundreds of feet below—as seen from the chimney crack of a granite face.

  “How long are you thinking of spending on this?” Len asked.

  I shrugged, yawned again. “I dunno. A few months, at least. Four? Maybe six.”

  “If I’m not getting a new project from you for four to six months, it had better be your best work yet.”

  “When you get it, Len, I promise you, it’ll be a cover feature. You’ll want to give me at least half the rag. Maybe even a full magazine special feature. It’ll be brilliant, I swear. Also, if I don’t take time off, my work will go to shit. So there’s that.”

  “Sounds suspiciously like an ultimatum,” Len said, smirking at me.

  “It’s not even a real holiday, Len. I’ll still be shooting just about every day. It’s just not a high adrenaline, wildly dangerous project way the hell out in the wops, accessible only by helo. I love those, you know I do. But I’ve been doing those back-to-back for years now. I need a little break from it, is all.”

  “I know, I know.” Len closed the iPad and rubbed his jaw as he looked at me on his computer. “All right. Six months. Then I’m gonna need a pitch for something high octane. A real attention-grabber Errol Sylvain special.”

  “How about I give you the pitch now? All the highest, most challenging mountain peaks in the world, as only I can shoot them. K2, Annapurna, Everest, Kilimanjaro, Fuji, St. Helen’s, Kilauea. Like, standing on the actual real highest peak? Looking down into an active volcano. The corpses marking the path on Everest. Hanging off a cliff on K2, or El Capitan. Crazy, crazy shit. I’ve wanted to do that one for a while, and after a nice long boring break, I’ll be all geared for a new challenge.”

  Len’s eyes lit up. “All right. If you’ll do the peaks project next, I’ll give you six months at full salary, and full creative control over this. No check-ins, nothing. Just take six months off, call it a sabbatical, and if you’ve got a killer new photo essay at the end of it, great. Beautiful. But I’ll expect the peaks project ASAP following the time off.”

  “Sweet as,” I breathed. “You’re the best ever, Len.”

  “I know. You’re lucky you’re a talented sonofabitch.”

  “I’ll ring you up in six months, bro.”

  “Sounds good. Have fun and try not to…what’s the phrase you use? Cork it?”

  I laughed. “Cark—try not to cark it.” I shook my head, snickering. “One of these days you’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Not bloody likely, cuz,” he said, in a passable impression of my native accent. “I’m an old dog, and that’s a new trick.” He glanced to the side, lifted his chin in acknowledgment, and then glanced back at me. “Gotta go, my nine thirty is here.”

  “Chur. See ya.”

  My iPad made the disconnection sound, and I flipped the lid closed.

  “Flight DL 1234 to Los Angeles, now boarding…” the PA squawked, and I began gathering my things, as that was my flight.

  But now I realized I needed a new plan. My flight to LAX was a connection meant to take me home to Christchurch, where I’d been planning on kicking off a short holiday before my next gig. But now, with Len’s blessing to take an extended sabbatical, I needed a new destination. I could just take the connection and figure things out from LA, but I hated LA something fierce, for reasons I always had trouble articulating. It was too…everything. And not enough of anything. See? I just didn’t like it there, and I’d rather start in New York. I was more comfortable with New York, if nothing else.

  So I hiked my bags onto my shoulders and headed up to the counter, where a pretty young black woman with fantastically long box braids offered me a welcoming smile. “Hi, how can I help you?”

  I leaned against the counter and smiled back. “I’m meant to be on this flight to LA, but I need to reroute. Can you switch me to a flight to New York?”

  She scanned my boarding pass, displayed on my cell, and then tapped at her keyboard for a while. Frowned, tapped again. “Well…not directly, or soon, unfortunately. If you can wait till tomorrow morning, you could fly directly to La Guardia at six thirty, or if you want to leave as soon as possible…no, you won’t make that connection.” She chewed on her lower lip, and bobbed her head. “Well, maybe. If you’re quick. How do you feel about running across airports?”

  I laughed. “Piece of piss. Done it heaps.”

  She blinked, snickered. “Piece of piss, huh? Is that Aussie slang?”

  “Nah love, I’m a Kiwi. New Zealand.”

  “Oh. Cool. So, yeah. So you get on this flight to LAX, and if you can get across the airport to your connection in less than fifteen minutes, you can fly into Atlanta, layover forty-five minutes there, and then fly into New York.”

  I sighed a l
augh. “Fuck me, what a mare.” I wiped my face. “I just came from Atlanta, been on a two-and-a-half-hour layover here, and Oslo before that. Now back to Atlanta?”

  “Man, that’s a lot of flying. Only other option I see is find a room tonight and fly direct tomorrow. That’s all the options I’ve got, Mr. Sylvain, I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah nah. I’ll take the long route. Back to Atlanta, eh?”

  She tapped a while longer, and then printed out a new boarding pass, handed it to me with a flirty smile. “Remember, the second that plane parks, you better be moving. Your connection to Atlanta is wheels up in fifteen from when this one lands. I hope you’re fast, honey.”

  “Piece of piss,” I said again.

  She just laughed and waved me toward the jetway. “Go on, get your seat. You miss this flight, you’re outta luck till tomorrow.”

  I boarded, found my seat, which fortunately wasn’t in the very, very back, just most of the way back and the middle seat. I’m not a small guy, so sitting middle was the worst, but the woman in the window seat was already nodding off, and the man in the aisle seat gave me a glare that said I’d better not even ask about switching, so I stuffed my baggage overhead, took my seat, and tried to will my shoulders to be narrower and my legs shorter.

  Swear to God, when I finally land in New York, I’m not stepping foot on another airplane for at least six months.

  Longer, if I could talk Len into extending my sabbatical.

  Despite my exhaustion, there was no way I was gonna be able to sleep wedged in the middle like this, so I slid my iPad out of my backpack and searched the internet for a suitable automobile to live in for the next six months.

  By the time wheels squealed the touchdown on the La Guardia runway, I was nearly delirious, but I had a reliable line on a van I could buy…if I could find a way from the airport to upstate New York.

  The trip included a horrendously expensive taxi ride to a bus station, and then a one-way ticket upstate, and then a four-hour hike on foot from the bus station along a rural highway to a dirt road, and from that dirt road to a two-track into the woods…and I’d been awake over twenty-four hours. Hadn’t had a real meal in as long. If I didn’t wind up with a decent, running, reliable caravan out of this, I’d pack a sad right in the dirt.

  The two-track wound through towering, swaying pines, which were arrayed in neat, precise lines, which meant it, was planted forest. The deeper and deeper I walked into the forest, the more the wind soughed, the late evening sunlight dappling the sky orange-red.

  Way out in the wops, this was.

  Finally, the two-track twisted almost back on itself, and then the forest abruptly opened into a clearing a good full kilometer across. In the clearing was a small ramshackle house with dirty white siding, an old, leaning red barn with an attached, roofless silo, and a maze of electric wire fencing keeping forty or so head of cattle and sheep and horses separated. The moment I popped out of the tree line, a chorus of barks announced my presence, and I saw three or four large white dogs running along the fence lines, back and forth, fixated on me. At an angle to the house opposite the barn was a long low blue pole barn, the front doors opened, showing a messy jumble of farming equipment and tool chests and junked old cars; when the dogs started barking, a tall older man emerged from the jumble, spotting me.

  The two-track became a narrow, rutted gravel drive leading between fenced paddocks to the house and barn, rusted gates leaning this way and that, ready to be swung across the path as needed. I followed the driveway toward the house, only to stop short of the pole barn when a fifth dog trotted out from behind the waiting man—the dog was enormous, with long dirty white fur and a deep, ripping bark. The dog stayed within six feet of the man, waiting for a command as it stood growling and barking at me.

  “I’m Errol Sylvain,” I said, offering a friendly smile. “I emailed you about the van.”

  The man, pushing sixty-five or seventy, was lean and hard with a gray buzz cut and a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard. He wore dirty jeans, a white tank top, and had a big silver spanner in one hand and a greasy rag in the other.

  He made a flicking gesture at the barking dog. “Colby—hush.”

  The dog immediately went silent, glancing at his master. The man stabbed a finger at the ground. “Colby, heel.”

  The dog trotted to his master’s right leg and sat down, panting.

  “Good boy, Colby.” He extended a hand to me. “Dillon Hendrick.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Dillon. I’m Errol.”

  He eyed the sky. “Gettin’ on to evening. Took your time getting here.”

  I shrugged. “Well, I had to get a bus from the city and then walk here from the bus station.”

  Dillon blinked at me. “Damn, son, that’s a hike. If you’d’a emailed me, I’d have picked you up.”

  “Now you say,” I laughed. “No worries, though. Have you got the van?”

  “Yeah, it’s in here.” He aimed the spanner at the pole barn. “Been giving her a once-over, makin’ sure it’s all here and in working order.”

  “All good, then?”

  “Oh yeah. I put a new belt on, the old one was squeaking. Could use an oil change and a new set of tires if you’re planning on going anywhere far.”

  “Well, I’m actually planning on living out of it for the next six months or so.”

  He nodded, scratched his jaw with the greasy rag. “I got some newer tires in there somewhere, and some oil. If you wanna cop a squat for an hour or so, I’ll do it for you.”

  “That sounds choice. I’m beat, and got no clue where I’d get that done anyhow.”

  “My missus could fix you something to eat, if you’re hungry.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to impose, but I could eat.”

  He flipped the spanner in his hand. “As long as your money’s good, we’re good.”

  “Eighty-eight hundred, yeah?”

  “That’s what we agreed on,” Dillon said, nodding.

  No stranger to potentially risky cash deals in remote areas, I had the appropriate amount of cash pre-counted and in an envelope, which I dug out of my back pocket and handed to him. “All there. Can I see the van before we call it done, though?”

  Dillon took the envelope and it disappeared into his own back pocket without being counted. “Sure thing, man. In here.”

  In the pole barn, but just inside, was the van—a 1976 Westfalia camper van. Bright green, with a yellow peace sign painted on the back that was probably new when the thing was new in the mid-seventies. Not in mint condition by any stretch of the imagination, it had spots of rust around the wheel arches, and on the bumpers, but it was straight, and he’d claimed in the ad online that it had pretty low miles and had been well maintained by him, the original owner. I’d be getting a hell of a deal, if it all proved out.

  The sliding door moved open smoothly, and the interior was clean and intact, if more than a bit dated. Green plaid cloth, a tiny kitchenette, pop top, rock and roll bed, plenty of storage. A bit worn, a bit faded, but clean and neat and in working order. The engine bay was open, showing the tiny motor. Dillon slid into the driver’s seat, one leg hanging out the open door, twisted the key; the engine coughed once, sputtered, caught, the tailpipe belched a bit of white smoke, and then it set to purring quietly.

  “If I fixed the rust on the arches and bumpers and redid the interior, I could get a few grand more for it, but I ain’t got the time, honestly. Rather just take what I can get and be done with it, you know?” He patted the dash as he shut the motor off and slid out. “Me and the missus bought her together back in ’76, followed the Grateful Dead around in her for a couple years. Lotta good memories in the old girl, but we won’t be doin’ any road trips any time soon, so we figured it was time for someone new to love her. Keep an eye on the oil; she’s got a leak somewhere inside. Just burns up, don’t drip none, but every once in a while she’ll need a top off. Pop top opens nice and easy, bench folds flat, all the kitchenett
e stuff works just fine. Wipers, lights, all that, it’s all good. New headlight lamps recently, I should mention.” He leaned in the front door, tapped a part of the dash. “Only thing I’ve done was pull the cigarette lighter and replace it with this one-ten outlet, so you can plug in a cell phone. Don’t connect to nothing but power, but it’ll keep your phone charged while you drive.”

  “Smart touch, that.” I felt a shiver of something slither over my spine. Excitement. This was the start of a new kind of adventure. “Looks great, Dillon. Real great.”

  He nodded. “So we’ve got a deal?”

  “Sure have.”

  We shook hands, and after signing the title I became the owner of the van. I figured there were hurdles yet to face regarding the legality of driving it in the States as a citizen of another country, but I had a legal and valid NZ license. I’d just have to muddle through the rest. Dillon had a shouted conversation with his wife—the missus—about fixing something to eat, and then Dillon and I shared a beer while he changed the oil and put on newer tires which he procured from somewhere in the middle of the maze of parts and old cars and tractors and implements cluttering the interior of the pole barn. I asked him what else I’d have to do to legally drive around, and he explained registration and insurance requirements to me, and honestly it sounded like a real pain in the ass, but I was going to be living and driving in the van for the next six months, so I’d have to just grin and bear the process.

  The missus turned out to be a female version of Dillon—tall and lean and willowy where Dillon was tall and lean and whipcord hard. Her graying hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, and she wore colorful clothes that had probably been new when the van I now owned had been new. She brought out hamburgers with wheat bread in place of actual buns, and crumbled potato crisps. It was delicious, being home-cooked and the first non-airline food I’d had in two days.

  By this time, Dillon had finished the oil change and tire replacement. We ate, and chatted, and by this time it was near dark.