The room was one of those certain places where road pilgrims sometimes find themselves. They are located in an unseen world of lost opportunity, health and fortune. Most are found within two floors of artless, right-angled shelter that guests look at as a kind of oasis.
Modern America sparks from multiple collisions of its tradition and technology, tall towers and shanty towns, soaring wealth and crushing poverty. The bikers were approaching one of the towns which was slowly approaching the shanty-poverty end of this spectrum.
The sign was located close to the street in the middle of a short strip of small businesses. Signs said that dollar stores, pawn shops and national retail stores had come and gone. It had likely been a nice, upcoming little neighborhood — forty, fifty years ago. It now felt a lot like the people who currently lived there — tired and in desperate need of attention. It was getting dark and time to choose a spot to stay for the night.
The motel was smallish and reflected a woman’s touch, just the slightest bit girly. Everything was worn, humble, but maintained. Its red neon sign glowed: MOTEL.
On the clerk’s counter, there were a mess of bills as well as red notices for phone, electric, water as well as court orders to appear. All were sorted for the intended recipient’s room.
With space for the night secured, the riders walked outside and smelled a grim future-less dust in the air.
Inside the room: two chairs and a table. On the table, a phone; on the chairs, dirty clothes. Windows faced the parking lot. On the lot, kids; against the window, west winds. This was an abstraction, a painted summary, but children, innocent, unsuspecting, ran about outside, and the wind felt dry and hot on their cheeks. The riders inside the air conditioned room stirred not, their cycles’ powerful engines, in the spot outside the room window, clicked as their engines cooled.
In the motel room, a fuzzy rotary dial tuned TV blared into the middle of the country.
The crummy carpet beneath their feet was stiff, but it was the stiffness that helped hold some room residents upright — especially if they had had too much to drink.
It was a dirt-cheap motel room twenty miles away from any city of size. It looked pretty on the surface. Its most memorable feature was a white, antique Lincoln Continental parked in the lot, which was bathed by the mid-1950s neon sign’s soft red glow.
The Lincoln wasn’t there to ferry guests to a church picnic the next day. The Continental’s driver was selling snort-able pleasure powder.
At first, the place was peaceful.
Then night fell.
The kids who played in parking spaces went back indoors when the sun went down. A couple of meth heads took their place. Some guests visited that vintage Continental, while others muttered curses about lawlessness.
A few times that night, muffled screams could be heard. The bikers couldn’t be sure what was going on, but it sounded like someone was getting their ass whupped.
A deranged veteran in the parking lot serenaded guests with an unwanted freestyle rap about having “PSTD from a war that I didn’t ask for.”
Occupants looked weathered — old and decrepit long before their time.
Junkies multiplied as the clock ticked past midnight. The bars must have closed.
This motel might have been a nice place long ago.
All most of its residents really wanted was to find a way back home
It took effort to see, let alone assemble, the sad ugliness of this place.
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