Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) (2 page)

How they broke apart.

Falling in love,
Jade thought.
It’s easier than falling down the stairs.

But he would never show his confidence, and she would never let down her guard. In time, their bright eyes would turn cold, their words sharp. Eventually, there would come a day when they would turn away from each other, preferring the coldness of the world to the frigidity of each other’s company.

That’s the future
, Jade thought. It was all there in the paths that only Jakes and Jades could watch—and influence. She grinned as the tapped the cabinet.

Unless I do my job.

Neither the man nor the woman saw Jade pour the beer and the wine. Nor did they see her smile as she pulled out Red #4 and Blue #7. “Best to you both,” Jade whispered, tipping drops into each glass. The drinks brightened for a moment, as if revealing some inner divinity, then faded back to their usual merely golden selves.

They should be lifelong,
Jade thought.
But they will let themselves get in the way, instead of trusting each other enough to be their true selves with each other.
Jade set the drinks on the table.

The challenge isn’t falling in love,
she thought.
The challenge is landing safely and staying in love.

An hour later and well past their first round, the man no longer stammered, and the hard edge of the woman’s voice was gone. The woman looked deep into his eyes, one hand near his, almost but not quite touching. Not yet. Though too far away to hear, Jade needed only to watch to know what was happening. They sat closer now, knees touching, hands occasionally tapping a shoulder, arm, or thigh. From serendipitous wonder had come laughter. Now the talk was serious with “you do? me too!” moments.

Then it happened.

Mid-sentence, the talk ended. The man and the woman looked deeply into each other’s eyes. He leaned toward her, his hand on her hand. She leaned toward him. They connected in the smallest, most passionate, tender, relieved-to-have-found-you-in-such-a-random-heartless-world first kiss.

The couple left soon thereafter, toward their shared lifetime ahead. Jade smiled, but only for a moment.
I can help anyone fall in love
, she thought,
but myself
. Like the smile, this thought lasted only a moment.
I am a Jade,
she thought,
and I am the best. Love has no place in decision and destiny.

She went back to work.

T
HE NO-SHOCKS, NO-WORRIES TRUCK
clunked in and out of another pothole. For the millionth time since hopping in the back of the truck at Mt. Everest Base Camp in Tibet, Jay bounced up and slammed back down into the truck bed. His bruised body seared under the blazing Indian day. He hardly winced anymore. The effort wasn’t worth it.

When Jay was crammed into the corner where the truck bed met the cab, the jarring and jostling affected him less. He tried sitting on his backpack again. Instead of merely pounding his arse, each bump nearly tossed him onto the cracked road.

Jay sat back down on the hot metal of the truck bed and patted his backpack. Faded, black, waterproofed by dust, nearly as wide as Jay, and as tall as his tenderized torso, the backpack dozed next to him like a dog beside its master. A round lump stretched the fabric at the top of the pack.

It had come back.

Again.

A triple shot of fear, awe, and revulsion washed through him. Jay had lost track of the number of times he’d dropped the
thing
off cliffs, flushed it down toilet holes, and lobbed it into rivers. Each time, he’d hardly zipped up his pack when the lump would appear again. Jay looked away. Instead of thinking about the… thing, Jay tried to think about Agamuskara. Guru Deep’s
India Through the Third Eye
called it “India’s holiest and unholiest city,” though the guidebook never explained why.

Jay couldn’t explain to himself why he felt so compelled to go there. It was said that people went to Varanasi to die holy, but they went to Agamuskara to live fully. Jay figured he really must want to live, even if his manner of getting to the city suggested otherwise.

After three days of the truck’s tires barely not going over the edges of cliffside roads in Tibet, nearly crashing to a halt from axle-bending potholes in Nepal, and using endless horn blasts to navigate the oncoming trucks and standstill cows of northern India’s river plains, Agamuskara couldn’t be much farther now. Before setting out this morning, the driver had told Jay they would not be going to the city center, but that was fine. He’d make his own way to the middle of town, even if he had to walk. With his skin clogged with grit and his throat caked in dust, all Jay wanted right now was a hot shower and a cold beer. India was India, though. He suspected he would get the opposite. But he would rest and clean up. Then he’d find his way through the city and figure out what he had to see, what drew him so.

The rattling truck moved so fast that the world passed in a blur, but Jay marveled at all he saw. Countless people wore brilliant colors and smiled from weathered, driven faces. They defied the washed-out landscape and the humid mat of the air. Every village had been here before time was time, it seemed. Each village also brought a glimpse of temples and shrines, elephant-headed gods, bulls, monkeys, multi-limbed deities rendered in brick, stone, concrete, and reverence.

Approaching Agamuskara, Jay now understood that India was four things: heat, humans, history, and gods. They shaped India not so much into a country or a culture but a world. India was all of the world, all of time in every passing moment, and every emotion, every depravity and transcendence, every hope realized and every futility suffered, of all the human race.

And, gods, was India heat. Humid, blazing, sopping heat. India felt as if wet blankets had been baked for an hour in a pot of water, then, steaming and boiling, wrapped around the country. Even Jay’s sweat glands felt sluggish. The humidity jellied the will. It softened the wood of the few meager trees. Even the concrete blocks of houses and shacks seemed to sag, drip, and simmer in the midday, clear-sky blaze of sunlight.

The truck turned onto a highway, renown throughout northeastern India for being maintained. The road reminded Jay of the interstate highways of his left-long-ago home, except that as far as the traffic was concerned, the four lanes were simultaneously one lane, three lanes, twenty lanes, and no lanes. Still, the truck’s consistent speed and motion brought a soothing breeze to Jay’s skin, and the smooth road took him from a blazing sear to a nearly gentle simmer.

For once, Jay’s tenderized rump stayed in one merciful, bounceless spot. After a few kilometers, he relaxed like a roast chicken resting after coming out of the oven.

The view from the highway wasn’t as interesting. The heat haze dulled the flatlands, and it seemed as if a wink and some rupees had made the scenery vanish. Jay almost pined for the cliffs that, just a couple days ago, had dropped off from the side of the truck. Every rock bouncing down into nothing had terrified him, but the trees, cows, and occasional village had been fascinating.

“Namaste la vista, baby,” Jay said, mimicking the formerly white t-shirt he was wearing. He lifted the shirt to gain access to the treasures below. Wrapped around his waist and tucked into the front of his tan, dusty cargo pants, the thin fabric of his money belt was already soaked through. But no matter. The treasures would be dry and safe. Jay took out a wad of plastic, then unrolled, unfolded, flipped, and eventually unwrapped his most prized possession: the small, dark-blue booklet of his US passport.

The formalese of government speak greeted him: “…requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection…”

Jay wondered how much he still looked like the photo. The green-and-gold eyes were the same, as was the light-brown hair. But the skin of that face? Dust, heat, sun, cold, ice, rain, beer, hot breakfasts, cold breakfasts, no breakfasts had all leathered his face, hardened his eyes, softened his smile. But it was still Jay. Jay, once from Idaho, now of the world.
 

He flipped through the pages—past the backgrounds of cacti and mountains, past the important information that addressed everything from about your passport to loss of citizenship. Then he opened the last five years. Visas, stamps, signatures—most of them official and some, to put it mildly, questionable. Jay thought about the so-called visas that had been added not at an official immigration checkpoint, but by hands unsteadied after a bit of backroom blather, boozing, and baksheesh. He flipped through the countries: South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Gambia, Morocco, Ireland, England, Scotland, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Tibet.

There should have been a visa for Nepal, but instead there was only a blank page. Before arriving at the border checkpoint between Tibet and Nepal, the men in the truck had hidden Jay under a blanket. Jay didn’t ask why. They’d hardly slowed down since.

And now—officially—Jay was in India.

Adventures taken, people met, sights seen—all condensed to stamps on pages. Jay re-wrapped his passport in the plastic and stuck it back in his money belt, behind the photo where the man and woman always smiled at him.

“I hope you’re still having a good time,” Jay said to the couple in the photo. For a moment, his anywhere voice lost all the twangs and lilts of his globetrotting, and he was just a regular guy from Idaho again. He started to take out the picture, but the truck’s grinding, slowing gears stopped him. The driver stopped blaring on the horn just long enough to slap the door twice. Jay rustled his money belt and clothes back into place.

End of one road,
he thought.
Now for another.

The truck stopped. Jay grinned. He grabbed the pack, ready to lose himself in all the adventures that came from putting one foot in front of the other on an unknown road—a road that could be the one that would finally go on and on forever, as long as he just kept traveling.

At the edge of the city, Jay jumped out, thanked the two men, and handed them some worn notes. The drivers nodded and laughed at the crazy traveler who thought he’d just stroll into the center of the city. As the truck rumbled off, the indistinct faces of the two men slipped out of Jay’s memory. He couldn’t understand why it was so hard to remember what these men looked like, especially after spending so many days traveling together.
Must be fatigue,
he thought.

Jay swung on his backpack, set its buckles, and adjusted its straps. Despite the ringing in his head, the tiredness, the bruises, and the extra weight, the touch of the pack to his back brightened his eyes and straightened up his stooping body. It’d be a good walk. A long walk. A tough, hellish walk, sure, but then again, travel wasn’t supposed to be easy. The pack did feel heavier, though, now that the little... thing spun in there again.

If anything weighed him down, it wasn’t the road-weary fatigue, the not-quite-remembered moonlit night at Mt. Everest, or the Chinese police and all those Dalai Lama portraits. It was the quiet, slow, incessant
shr-shr-shr
as the thing turned, rubbing the fabric of his faithful backpack.

“One foot in front of the other will put it out of your head,” Jay said, the Idaho gone from his voice and replaced by the patchwork of places stamped in his passport.

The city center couldn’t be that far.
Once there,
he thought,
I’ll beeline to a pint, a shower, and a bed—in whatever order works best
.
For once, I even know where I want to go.

Backpack-laden, his skin and clothes were so soaked he wondered if sweat glands could get sore. With every step, Jay tried to understand how the Indians did it. Children ran, laughed, smiled, circled him, joked, and asked for a pen or a piece of candy. Women, wrapped head to toe in yards and yards of sari fabric, walked everywhere carrying baskets. Men in pants and long-sleeve shirts held hands with each other and talked like they were all brothers. Their animated voices and gestures defied the dulling, steaming humidity.

Jay had no idea what the men said. The women didn’t look in his direction. The kids tired of him and returned to their games.

With every step, the age of the country seemed to whisper alongside the
shr-shr-shr
. All around him, in every pebble and blade of grass, in every buffalo-dung patty drying as fuel on the sides of shacks, Jay saw and felt the gods whose presence and personality had shaped all people, all moments, all things.

The acrid scent of burning tires stung the air. A cow rooted through plastic and garbage. Jay wondered why the gods couldn’t have made things smell better.

As he pressed on, the heat melted his resolve. He was now wearing a boulder, not a backpack. Sweat poured and feet dragged, but Jay kept going. Some old saying about single steps and thousand-mile journeys flitted through his mind. It had to be close, though, had to be. The miles pounded the bottoms of his worn boots, and the scene around Jay changed. At least the ground was flat. Other than a tall hill off to the west, the land here was even, with hardly a rise at all.

Covered in drying dung-fuel patties, the shacks gradually gave way to one- and two-story buildings. Shops. Homes. Offices. Sometimes distinct, often all jumbled.

The humid floating dust changed character too. The scent of fields, cow dung, and fires still clung to his pores and his soul, but a new layer of sound and soot settled on him: car and rickshaw exhaust, cooking food, open sewers. Jay had always heard of India as a land of diversity. Walking it now, he understood they meant the smell.