Not His Car

When I traveled the country, I found myself drawn to Tucson, Arizona more than most other places. I’m not exactly sure what it was. The weather was nice, to be certain, but there was something more. Some sort of charm that kept me interested. Tucson is a sprawling city taking up 241 square miles, and it has a population of over 500,000 people. Because it is so large in area and the population so dispersed, it doesn’t feel like a big city, yet there are still attractions that you cannot find in small towns. The downtown of Tucson was probably my favorite part. I often found myself sitting in the 4th Avenue tunnel, people watching and listening to the roar of car engines.

The weekends downtown were bustling, and that’s when Zach and I could make the most money busking for the bar crowds. There was a lady with a hot dog stand who’d set up camp next to us. She sold hot dogs for a dollar, and offered unlimited toppings. She probably made a fortune from drunk and hungry people. Meanwhile, Zach’s guitar and my voice echoed and entertained. Through the week, we stood outside the Subway sandwich shop during lunch hour. Whether it was our music or our puppy, we earned enough money for our daily expenses.

In February, Tucson’s Rock and Gem show brought dirty kids in droves. The spot became “blown up” with buskers, and Zach and I found it harder to make money. It was made up for by the fact that we found friends in the other travelers. Still, the entire downtown’s dynamic shifted with the Great Dirty Kid Exodus.

Most of the time while traveling, we didn’t get to know cities very well. As a result, we tended to park at truck stops outside of town to sleep for the night. It was a safer bet than trying to find residential roads that we wouldn’t be bothered on. Tucson, however, became a home of sorts. We got very comfortable there, and we found a few solid places we could sleep soundly. One of those places was 6th Ave, a few blocks from the Circle K we’d buy our nightcaps at. We parked there on and off for a couple of months with no incident. It was a dark and quiet road.

One night, around 3 am, I had fallen asleep, but Zach was still awake on his phone. I awoke to the sound of someone outside yelling incoherently. Meth is pretty popular in Tucson, being so close to the Mexican border, and it wasn’t altogether unusual to hear people tweaking out. We would generally keep our distance when out and about, but we always felt my car was our safe space. The voice continued, and it seemed like the person was wandering up and down the road. The yells would grow distant for a while, then get closer again.

At some point, it was clear the person was walking directly by our car. We could hear what they were saying much more clearly, but it still didn’t make a lot of sense.

“I am so cold. I can’t do it. Okay, okay, okay. I’ll do it,”

With that, something hard slammed against the back passenger side window. Over and over, the person was attempting to smash my window. I was paralyzed in fear, but Zach was galvanized into action. He opened the door and tackled the unsuspecting person to the ground. It was then we realized what we thought was a man was actually a woman. She was my height, probably 110 lbs. She was taken by surprise, apparently not expecting the car to have contained people. To this day, I can’t understand why, out of all the cars parked on that street, she chose to attack the only one (to my knowledge) with people in it.

Zach kept the woman pinned down and tried to talk to her. Once we realized she wasn’t actually a threat to us, he let her up. I asked her why she was trying to smash my window. She held up the object in her hand. It was her cell phone, completely smashed to bits. She explained that someone she was talking to on the phone told her to break my window. I couldn’t determine if she was truly speaking to someone or if the woman was referring to the voices in her head. Either way, her cell phone was no match for my car’s windows, which remained in tact.

The woman was pretty incoherent. Some of the things she said made some sense, but then she would trail off into some delusion.

“If you leave and don’t bother our car, we won’t call the police,” I told the woman.

“It’s not his car,” she replied.

I felt taken aback. The woman was right, Zach’s name wasn’t on the title, but for all intents and purposes, it was our car for the moment.

“No, it’s our car,” I argued.

“We both know that isn’t true,” the woman’s piercing hazel eyes looked directly into mine as she spoke.

I didn’t and still don’t know what to make of this woman. The intensity with which she spoke made me feel like she was in on something that I could never understand. Again, the fact that she chose the one car with people in it to target still baffles me. I am grateful Zach was there and was able to handle it. I don’t really know what I would have done otherwise.

We decided to stop parking on 6th Ave for a while after that, choosing 4th Ave instead. I think probably 3 weeks passed before we ventured back to the dimly lit side road passed the Circle K. On this particular night, we knew we’d have an early morning. Pancake, our puppy, had been attacked at the dog park a few days previous, and as a result, an abscess had begun to form on her neck. Thankfully, at the local shelter they had a free vet clinic on the first Sunday of the month. It just so happened to be the weekend after Pancake’s attack. We decided 6th Ave was closer to the shelter than our typical 4th Ave spot, and it would make traveling there easier.

We parked for the night, leaving the window cracked so that we could continue smoking cigarettes without suffocating. Again, I fell asleep and Zach remained awake on his phone. Around 2 in the morning, there was a little knock on our car door.

A man asked, “Can I have a cigarette?”

Zach replied, “It’s 2 am, fuck off.”

The man must have thought that was fair enough, because he walked away without saying anything. It was weird, but I didn’t think much of it, until probably an hour later the man returned.

“Can you give me a ride?” He asked.

“Dude seriously, we’re trying to sleep here,” Zach said.

“I’ll give you $100 to give me a ride,” the man was unwavering. “I just robbed a bank.”

In hindsight, I highly doubt the man robbed a bank at 2 in the morning, but all I could think was “If you seriously expect us to give you a ride, maybe don’t mention the part where you committed robbery in your immediate past.” Being a get away driver is not exactly something I wish to be in life. I don’t remember what Zach or I said to the man, but he eventually walked away again. This time, I climbed into the drivers seat so that we could migrate. We ended up parking right across the street from the shelter, which worked out better anyway.

I awoke to the sun rise, and I walked Pancake over to the shelter. The vets drained her abscess and gave her some antibiotics. Zach and I filled our bellies with the shelter’s Sunday breakfast. It was a feast like none other we could find on the road. After eating our fill, they’d still send us home with sack lunches. Every day aside from Sunday, the shelter was actually a wedding venue. I always felt that was a little odd. Through the week, people throw extravagant wedding and receptions in this beautiful white mansion-style building, but on Sundays, the biergarten would be filled with homeless people and their dogs. Most of us had a visible sheen of dirt on our skin or clothes. They didn’t call us dirty kids for nothing.

Tucson was charming. I would love to return some day, perhaps to live in the “proper” way, with an actual house and job. I don’t know where else this life will take me, but I will be sure to avoid that ominous 6th Ave.