Geoff Dyer - White Sands - Experiences from the Outside World

‘Listen, man,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ I said. Jessica had said ‘Yes?’ too, at exactly the same time, and the sound of that double-barrelled query erupted into the car in a volley of desperate good manners.

‘Lemme explain.’

An explanation was so precisely what we wanted. In the circumstances the only thing we could have wanted more was an unsolicited offer to get out of our car and turn himself in to the authorities.

I caught his eyes in the mirror. You often see this in films: the eyes of the person in the car framed by the rearview mirror, which is framed, in turn, by the windshield, which is framed, in turn, by the cinema screen. Basically, the look in those eyes is never benign. It is always heavy with foreboding. I met his eyes. Our eyes met. Because of all these associations it was impossible to read the look in his eyes. Also, I had recently seen an exhibition of photographs by Taryn Simon called The Innocents . The pictures were of men and women — usually black — who had been convicted of terrible crimes. Some of them had served twenty years of their unbelievably long sentences (hundreds and hundreds of years in some cases) but then, having won the right to DNA testing, they’d had their convictions overturned. It was not just that there was an element of doubt or that the conviction was questionable due to some procedural technicality (cops falsifying evidence of a crime which they knew the suspect was guilty of but could not quite prove). No, there was simply no way they could have done the terrible things for which they had been convicted. Looking at these faces, you try to deduce innocence or guilt, but it is impossible. Innocent people can look guilty and guilty people can look innocent. Anyone can look like anything. Innocent or guilty: from the faces it is impossible to judge. But while it is terrible that they were convicted of these terrible crimes, these crimes were committed by someone . It is even possible that the reason some of these people had been wrongly convicted was that these crimes — these terrible crimes — had been committed by the person in the back of our car, who, speaking slowly, said:

‘Guess that sign freaked you out, huh?’

‘That is putting it mildly,’ I said. ‘Also, frankly, that song did not exactly set our minds at ease.’

‘Well, let me tell you what happened.’

‘That would be great,’ I said. I sometimes think that this is all any of us really want from our time on earth: an explanation. Set the record straight. Come clean. Let us know where we stand so that we can make well-informed decisions about how to proceed.

‘I did some things in my past. I been to jail. I did some time. You hear what I’m saying? I got out more’n a year ago. But now I’m just hitching, trying to get to where I need to be. I tell you, brother, I just want to get to El Paso.’

‘Well, in the circumstances,’ I said. I cleared my throat. It was one of those situations in which no one could speak without first clearing their throat. ‘In the circumstances I think it would be better all round if we could just drop you off.’

‘Better for you. Not better for me.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s true but, in the circumstances. . ’ As well as constantly clearing my throat I was constantly using the phrase ‘In the circumstances.’ In the circumstances it was inevitable. ‘Well, the truth is,’ I went on, ‘we were hoping to have a nice relaxing ride, and now that doesn’t seem at all possible. In the circumstances, in fact, it seems extremely unlikely.’

‘See, here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I am not inclined to get out of the car.’ It must be emphasised that he did not say this at all threateningly. He was simply stating his position, but it was impossible to state this particular position without conveying an element of threat. I was worried that he was the kind of person who suffered from mood swings. Violent mood swings. I suffer from them myself. But now my mood was not swinging so much as plunging or, if such a thing is possible, swinging violently in one direction . Jessica was gripping the wheel and keeping her eyes on the road. I was starting in some way to feel that it was predominantly her fault that we had got into this situation. If we had been on our own — I mean, if we had somehow been in this same situation (i.e., not on our own) but somehow on our own —I would probably have lost my temper and told her as much.

‘Lemme explain a few things,’ he said. Because I was worried about cricking my neck, I didn’t twist around in my seat. I kept staring straight ahead into the darkness and the oncoming lights and the red tail-lights of cars in front of us. He had been in a supermarket buying things, he said. His wife had been having an affair with another guy, and this guy’s brother worked in the supermarket, and one day, when he was meant to be at work but had bunked off because he had flu. .

I was looking at the cars coming, the hypnotic blur of lights, the inky sky, wondering what time we might get to El Paso. .

And then, when he came back to the supermarket. . I realized I had drifted off, lost track of the story. In truth it wasn’t a very good story, or at least he wasn’t a very good storyteller. He kept bringing in all this irrelevant detail. I was very interested in his story but not in the way he told it. A few minutes earlier I was worried that he might be a murderer; now I was worried that he might be a bore, but it was possible that he was a murderer and a bore. I had been feeling for several years now that I was losing the ability to concentrate, to listen to what people said, but I had never before reached such a pitch of inattentiveness at a time when it was so important — so obviously in my best interests — to concentrate. It was so important to listen, to follow his story carefully, to pay attention, but I couldn’t. I wanted to, I should have, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It is because there are people like me doing jury service, people who can’t follow what other people are saying, that there are so many wrongful convictions, so many miscarriages of justice. Whatever I was meant to be thinking about and concentrating on, I thought to myself, I was always thinking about something else, and that something else was always myself and my problems. As I was thinking this I realized that his voice had fallen silent. He had come to the end of his story. The defence had rested its case.

‘We need petrol,’ said Jessica.

‘She means gas,’ I said. A few miles later we pulled into a gas station and stopped. I hate putting gas in a car, especially in America, where you have to pay first and it’s all quite complicated and potentially oily. On this occasion, though, both Jessica and I wanted to put the gas in so that we would not be left alone in the car with this guy, but we could not both get out, because then he might have clambered over the seats and driven off without us. Except he could not drive off, because we needed the key to unlock the fuel cap. Except we were in America, in a rental car, and the car did not have a fuel-cap lock. I was not thinking straight, because of the hitchhiker and everything pertaining to the hitchhiker situation. Both Jessica and I got out of the car. I did the filling up. It was quite easy. I watched the numbers— dollars, gallons and gallons of gas — spinning round the gauge on the gas pump. Although it was not my main concern it was impossible not to be struck by how much cheaper petrol was in America than in England.

Then our new friend got out of the car too. He was wearing black jeans and trainers. The trainers were not black but they were quite old. Jessica got back in the car. I was pumping gas, as they say in America. He looked at me. We were the same height except he was a bit shorter. Our eyes met. When they had met before it was in the rearview mirror of the car, but now they were really meeting. In the neon of the gas station his eyes had a look that was subject to any number of interpretations. We looked at each other man to man. Black man and white man, English man and American man.