The Haunting Highway
Editor’s Note: This piece is from The Dead File — stories that, for one reason or another, were not published in a newspaper or website, but now live here in the place where dead pieces go. Enjoy.
DAY ONE — Filthy white crosses with flowers and printed photos dart the freeway like mile markers. The road from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Phoenix, Arizona, is a massive memorial to the mangled dead. If there is a haunted highway in the U.S., Interstate-40 is it, bub, all the way to frigid Flagstaff. And when the sun gives way to night, and the witching hour creeps like a foaming, fanged demon hiding under your mattress, the imagination begins to reel, and you wonder how many ghosts you’ve driven by so far and how many more still are ahead.
It’s about an eight-hour haul from Santa Fe to Phoenix, and we trundle in just past midnight. We stop for a quick bite at In-N-Out and then head to the boutique hotel. Rae, the former Navy officer, and I pull the bottles of Jack Daniels and Tito’s from the cooler in the trunk, grab some ice from the ice machine across the pool, and pound a few cocktails, celebrating that, so far, we are not one of the doomed ghosts haunting I-40.
DAY TWO — We boom like a missile to México with hardly a stop for Red Bull, caffeine, or something painfully spicy to burn your face right off, keeping you alert and in the moment. Sunset now as we near the border … we’ll pull into the tiny town of Tecate in ol’ México. Driving through the checkpoint here is like passing through a portal: on the U.S. side, there are no visible houses or even a small border-town hamlet — no signs of life, just rolling hills, dry, scattered bushes, and this windy, narrow two-lane road leading us to the land of Pancho Villa, Frida Kahlo, and former Mexican president Vincente Fox Quesada who said last year, “We don’t need walls … [walls say], ‘America is great, and to the rest, fuck you.’”
Rae is behind the wheel. We take a hairpin turn and run into a U.S. Border Patrol officer rifling through a brown family’s trunk. I tuck my edible gummies under the floormat. We pass under a sign that reads MÉXICO and leave the wilderness of southern California and into the bustling town of Tecate. Music. Food. Folks wandering about selling fruit, flags, hats. We’re on our way to Ensenada, a port city and tourist trap on the shores of the Pacific, and allegedly the home of the fish taco. Rae’s been craving them for five years, she said, since her days in the Navy, and asked me to tag along. “Why not,” I responded. “Who in their right mind would want to be in the U.S. right now anyway? Let’s get the hell outta here.”
ON THE EVE OF NEW YEAR’S EVE– Stray dogs wander downtown Ensenada, México. White tourists speak broken Spanish and saunter by an abuelita sitting on the ground by the curb, a stained paper cup in her hand. She stares at the sidewalk and holds the cup up and says softly, “Por favor.” Jeezus, what a god-awful, disturbing scene: starving, lonely dogs; huddled, homeless, hungry elders, and then a gaggle of wiggy, wealthy, white folks in Sperry’s laughing at a dull anecdote and looking the other way.
We drop into a local bar, order two monster margaritas, consider them absolutely shitty, and wander to the bar next door, which turned out to be a local live music joint. “Bidi bidi bom bom!” the gorgeous lead singer of the band belts out to a crowd singing it back. I pay $500 pesos ($24 dollars in the U.S.) for two cocktails and realize we’re getting swindled. “Do you know how many fucking fish tacos we could’ve gotten for that!?” I yell over more bidi’s and more bom bom’s.
New Year’s Eve in Ensenada came and went; nothing to write home about (or a chapter about) in comparison to the fish and shrimp tacos we had the next day at Tacos Fenix. They’re the kind of tacos that ruin every other taco you’ll ever have for the rest of your life, and that was fine by me. Some things in this life are better than sex and high-voltage edibles, and well, this taco got damn close, jack.
DAY SIX — We pass through Tijuana and into San Diego. Rae made sure that I ditched the last of the THC gummies before we, too, faced grisly Border Patrol curmudgeons. In San Diego, I decided we’d do a “bang bang,” which is New York City-speak for two back-to-back meals: oysters and mussels and a Sangria at a seafood joint located on the shore, and then pasta, bread with olive oil and salt, and a pair of Moscow Mules at a local favorite in Little Italy just up the street. It was dinner and a show at the second restaurant because a waiter pounded a few high-priced cocktails, quit his job, and didn’t pay his tab before darting out the door with drunken glee.
DAY SEVEN (I think) — The road back to Santa Fe. More I-40, more dirty crosses and ghosts, this time on the eastbound side of the highway. “Back in the day, pirates aboard ships would marry one another,” I say to Rae as I swerve in and out of traffic. “Are long-haul truckers openly bi?” I ask. Rae just gives me that look she gives me when I ask shit like this.
We stop in Scottsdale, Arizona, and stay at the Hyatt Regency where a massive police investigation is already in progress. “There are 16 cop cars out there,” Rae says, looking down at the parking lot from the window. “There was a murder,” I respond. We decide to stop in for the last one at a place called Gilligan’s Bar and Shrimp Hut a block away. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” happens quickly when you talk ghosts and almost-better-than-sex tacos with horny, hungry ghosthunters at the bar.
THE LAST DAY — Back in Santa Fe now. Pesos still in our pockets and sadly no edibles. Who got murdered at the Hyatt Regency in Scottsdale last night? I wonder. “Where to next?” I ask Rae. “Where do you want to go?” she responds. “Edinburgh, Scotland … now, you want to talk ghosts…”
