Marianne Wiggins - The Shadow Catcher

The concept of cowboys and Indians, for instance.

The West had both of them, but those iconic scenes of Injuns chasing John Wayne in his Stetson could hardly be more mythic than an extraterrestrial on a flying bicycle silhouetted on a rising moon.

Indians fought Army men, not cowboys.

Cavalry .

Yellow hairs in navy blue wool uniforms. G.I. Joes on Union wages.

But I didn’t grow up watching boys play Custers and Indians. I grew up thinking Indians were on the side of bad . That the cavalry was good .

The power of the entertainment industry to skew our moral compass is older than the industry itself, it’s as old as the first myths. Revelatory and marvelous, these myths sustain us, even when they are promoting points of view that were never true — and all I have to do is look up through my open sunroof at the desert sky to find supporting evidence in all the Greeks up there, storying the constellations.

Cassiopeia and her daughter Andromeda.

Perseus.

Pegasus.

Orion.

Hercules.

Neptune.

The Pleiades, all seven of them.

It seems the first great Greek diaspora was upward — a Greek APOLLO program to people space waaay before the added boost of jet propulsion. It’s a big wide plasma screen of Greeks up there — as many reruns of Greek myths above me as TV Westerns in the 1960s. And once upon a time people believed in them, believed Orion was exiled for eternity into the sky just as people, not so long ago, believed cowboys went with Indians the way pepper pairs with salt. No cowboys, no Indians . But myths are passionate belief systems that have ended up in someone’s attic, mothballed to the sky. They were irrefutable, once. Once, they were sustainable, and the fervor with which they were maintained illuminated the dark reaches of our ancestors’ fears.

Ask yourself what you believe in, and you’ll find out who you are.

Know thyself —the ol’ Socratic oath. (Do normal people start channeling the mad Greek on their way to Vegas?) It’s always HERE, on this leg between Barstow and Baker, that things begin to fray, and by THINGS I mean radio reception, cold reality, and stamina. Even in the dark I know there’s nothing out here but grit, salt pans, deadbrush and mineral deposits on either side of the road — one-horse desert outposts named in honor of the ground. BORON. I stopped there, once, in daylight, shadowing Curtis’s route through the Mojave. There’s a cemetery there, dedicated to men who died laying the railroad through this desert. Their names are bleached away, but the small quadrant of sacred ground near the Union Pacific tracks evokes the labor of their lives with crosses made of railroad ties. Once you leave Barstow, let me tell you, you are out in no-man’s-land — no stops — no recreation — just a long long stretch of straight straight road under godforsaken heat until your first sighting of a billboard promising your first sign of civilization fifty miles ahead.

Souvlaki , friends.

Homemade baklava .

The Mad Greek . A Greek restaurant. In Baker. In the middle of the desert.

Greeks! you gotta love ’em! and I’m not saying this just because I’m half Hellenic (well, yes, I am saying this because of that), but because Baker is a place that is basically a crossroad to Death Valley, a service road beside a railroad lined with gas stations, Bun Boy and the Bun Boy Motel and a couple of Mexican joints, one of the last places you would expect to find a Greek restaurant serving reasonably authentic Greek food, bursting with rembetika, open all night long.

Just when you need it.

Just when, out along the road, in the desert, you were starting to believe that you are seeing eyes …The promise of feta and olives arises.

The place is all lit up and the Amtrak bus is pulled up in the packed back parking lot, and as soon as I open the door and step inside I may as well be in any taverna in the Plaka or Piraeus.

The walls are white, trimmed in St. George blue, the blue of the Greek flag — the booths are the same unadulterated blue, the whole place floats with light, like an oasis. Plastic grapes and rayon bougainvillea grace the windowsills, and frescos of Mykonos and Santorini fill the two front walls along with a movie poster of Zorba the Greek , a translation of the Greek alphabet and the English lyrics to the Greek national anthem.

(“From the graves of our slain shall our valour prevail,

As we greet thee again, Hail, Liberty, Hail”!)

Tourists on their way to Death Valley congregate here, though not at this time of night, so I reckon most of my fellow diners will be of two varieties — those on their way to Vegas, those on their way from —and you can spot the differences between these two by where their body language registers on the adrenal -ometer.

If you ever wonder about the health effects of a stay in Vegas you should run a random survey among departing gamblers, wannabes and tourists at the rest stops between Primm and Baker.

The ones standing very very still in line have most definitely just departed. Ditto, ones with the dead eyes. The ones in ruined clothes.

Talky ones in freshly pressed polo shirts with toothy wives are on their way in their vintage Continentals, most likely for slots, the house buffet, Wayne Newton.

I take my place at the end of the line in front of the counter and survey the menu suspended from the ceiling.

TIROPITA.SPANAKOPITA.CHICK PEA DIP.GYROS.THE ORIGINAL ZUCCHINI STICK.

A foursome of moody stoners in varying degrees of undress wait petulantly in front of me. Brentwood brats, I reckon: Crossroads grads. A wall-sized plaque of FAMOUS GREEKS and HONORARY GREEKS is next to us and one of the laconic ones stares at it and then, almost by mistake, starts to read aloud: “‘FAMOUS GREEKS,’” she monotones. “‘Telly Savalas.’” She flatlines on his name. “‘The Trojan Horse.’ Yah, I think I saw that. ‘HONORARY GREEKS,’” she reads without expression. “‘George Hamilton. Lord Byron. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.’ Like we’re supposed to know these people.”

“She was ‘Jackie O,’” another of her group registers real slow. “John-John’s mother.”

“‘John-John’?”

“John Kennedy.”

“Which one was he?”

“He’s dead.”

“I thought they all were dead.”

“‘Anthony Quinn. James Joyce. St. Paul. All Macka-Macka—’”

“ Macedonians ,” I offer.

“They need to get that Nia person up there. That Nia person. Last name starts with ‘V’ or something. Made ‘My Big Bad Thing.’ You know.”

“—big Fat .”

“‘My Big Greasy Wedding.’ Couple years ago. You saw it—”

“Like I’d go to that . I’m not Greek. Who is ?”

“Jennifer Aniston is Greek. I’m pretty sure.”

“Well there you go.”

“—half Greek.”

“ Ch ennifer — not even Grik name. I speet on her.”

This from a rasping voice behind me.

I turn in time to see her dry-spit into her open palms. A fierce tiny woman in a black dress, in her 70’s, I’d say, with dangerous eyes, no makeup and what I’ve come to recognize as female Balkan facial hair.

“Only thing Bra- Peet is ask is bebi. Adonis . I would sell my eyes to have his bebi. So I speet on this Ch ennifer.”(She dry spits, again.) “She ees eembarrassmant to all Grik wimmin.”

You don’t want to be alone in a dark alley with a woman like this and it both frightens and enlightens me to think I may have one of her vintage enlivening my lineage but what captures my imagination most about her and her type of village crone is their ownership, their absolute and resolute assurance that they own the only info, that they’re in the know not only about which village neighbors have been feuding for a hundred years or how to extract oil from olives but also about what Brad Pitt was thinking when he left his wife. The scary thing about this woman and others who talk about celebrities as if they know them personally is that the exercise squanders civic involvement. Unlike voting in a real election, voting in a People poll accomplishes absolutely nothing , but we’re still encouraged to believe in celebrities as modern mythic gods. Modern-day heroic fallacies. Zeus screwing around behind Hera’s back. Icarus getting high on too much ego. Innocent Ledas losing their cherries on the casting couch.