Abbey's picnic: no food, no water, no car—another good day in the desert for a celebrated author

Sierra, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Ingrid Eisenstadter

We ignored it. We talked about where in Ajo we would have dinner, assuming we ever got there churning along at ten miles per hour. Maybe we should be talking about breakfast instead, I suggested dryly By now we had to talk pretty loud to be heard over the sound of the engine. KERCHUNK. KERCHUNK. I looked again at the speedometer. Five miles per hour. The van was now lurching in sync with the noise. I was holding on to the door handle to steady myself. After a time, Ed turned to me and yelled: "I think something's wrong with the car."

"No. Really?"

"Did you put any oil in it?" he shouted.

"When?" I yelled back.

"Ever."

"No. You?"

"No."

Pause.

"Should we pull over?"

"Well, I dunno why we should pull over," I shouted. "You think we're going to block traffic?"

Pedal to the metal. Two miles per hour. Not a car in sight. In fact, no signs of life of any kind in sight. All the reprehensible creatures that surrounded us had the sense to be out of the noonday sun. No food. No water.

And, so, well, we began to laugh. Time passed. At this point it would be inaccurate to say the van was actually moving anymore, because that would imply we were going forward, whereas in fact we were just jerking violently in place, the engine clanging, resounding, pealing through the desert. And, so, we laughed harder.

Ed dropped his head down onto his arms, now folded across the steering wheel, and he tried to catch his breath.

"Hey," I exclaimed, "keep yer eyes on the road. We're drivin' here."

Then, with a final, violent kerrrrrrCHUNK, the engine seized up. Froze. Died. Four red-hot pistons solidly and finally fused to the cylinders, melted into the engine block that was now their coffin, never to pump gas again. O, silence. Silence everywhere. Heat. Thirst. Despair.

"Well, thank God," Ed said, glancing at the gas gauge, "we've still got half a tank."

Now we spilled out of the van, him on his side, me on mine, tearing eyes, struggling for breath, leaning heavily on the hot van, then collapsing onto the desert sand with aching lungs and throats, laughing. When our merriment subsided, we crawled over to each other and, back-to-back, sat quietly, exhausted. Time to assess our situation. After a while, Ed spoke.

"Got any water?"

Time to decant the wine. I hopped into the back of the van, opened the ice chest, and pulled out a bottle of hot red wine, red-hot wine, which we had opened some days before. "Vino Fino." A dollar a fifth. Seventy cents if you knew where to shop. No wine glasses. No dixie cups. Ed popped the cork, took a swig of the steaming, vinegary stuff, and made a sour face as he forced it down.

"Fruit of the earth," he said, and handed the bottle to me. We got drunk. And why not? We didn't have much longer to live anyway.

Thus, the conversation turned to dying, especially the grim possibility that we would run out of wine before we died. We talked about the wills we didn't have; the life we would not share; the state our gutted, rotted carcasses would be in before we were discovered; whether we should leave behind a note ("got oil?"); and then we heard a car. No, a truck. And then we could see it. And then it stopped. The driver gave us some water. Ice water.