Monday, May 9
11:22 p.m. Well, shee-yut. Maud wants me to start this post with “Oops, I did it again,” and dang it, if I did it’d be appropriate. ’Cause, post-lunch, we were on Interstate 10, and there was the police car, and, oh, I don’t even need to say it, you know what went down. The flashing lights, the pulling over, tra la la. I am getting awfully good at this. For the record, (a) I am not an unsafe driver, just desirous to get places, and (b) eighty in a seventy-five zone is hardly speeding.

Anyway. The state trooper was mean and squinty, he said it was illegal to drive in America without an international driving permit, and when I tried to tell him that wasn’t what I’d heard, he said, “You gotta talk to the law first.” He said it so that the word “law” had two syllables. He asked what I was studying, and I said “literature” twice before he said he didn’t understand my pronunciation, and another three times before he said, “Oh, litter-ritchur.” And then he took my license and said we had to FOLLOW HIM INTO TOWN TO MEET WITH THE JUDGE. Man, if there is something you don’t want to hear when you are in Texas, it is that you have to follow the state trooper into town to meet with the judge.

We crossed the highway median and chucked a U-ey, and then, some miles down, took the exit for Ozona. When we got out at the town hall or the sheriff’s office or whatever official building it was, trooper dude came over and tipped the brim of his hat and said he owed me an apology because he’d just checked, and hey, turns out I don’t need an international driving permit to drive in America with my foreign license. He made up some line about September Eleventh, and forgot to apologize for being rude. And then he said to go in the double doors, down the hall, and into Judge B.’s office on the right. “He’s good people,” he said, “and he’ll take care a you.”

Through the double doors, down the hall, and in Judge B.’s office on the left, three birdy secretaries smiled and welcomed. One had a bowl of Hershey’s kisses on her desk. They said to go right in, so I poked my head round the open doorway, and Judge B., his back to me, was playing a game of solitaire on his computer. “Um,” I said. He placed a card, and then another, and another, and then he swiveled his chair—round face, genuine smiley wrinkles around the eyes, greying strands of hair, glasses, suspenders. There was really very little to be said. All charm, he marveled at my driver’s license, had me pay a hundred and twenty dollars, and then wished us a good trip to El Paso. When we left, he’d just started another game of solitaire.



In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck writes that his drive through Texas was “achingly endless.” And truly, when we arrived on the Western border this evening, having traversed the state from East to West, we felt like we’d achieved something. After one hairy moment in the middle of bloody nowhere on I-10, where it seemed like we might run out of gas in the hot, and empty, and dusty, we hit the city, finally, and the moon smiled in a purple sky. Chicken mole in a Tex-Mex joint by the highway. It hasn’t taken us long to navigate the country’s industrial zones, keeping our eyes out for the mega Targets (for fresh food), the Barnes & Nobleses (for an Internet connection), the national chain motels (for sleep, we like sleep).

The guy at the restaurant was Ned Flanders–friendly, and he pointed down the road. “In four traffic lights, you’ll be New Mexico.” But that’s tomorrow, and the thing about tomorrow is, it’s tomorrow.