As published online at Writersoftheriogrande.com.
For days afterward, the four would have a secret, comfortable glow about them. It was the exciting tranquility of riding arms out, eyes wide face up in the stars, and body thrust forward into the wind toward the empty road. It was the adrenaline: their feet planted firmly on the grate of a black roof rack, on top of a 2005 silver Toyota Prius, zooming quietly along at 15 to 20 miles per hour, sometimes with the headlights off. It was, in part, the unexpected safety of two friendly pairs of hands, ready to keep the rider from crashing down to the pavement below.
The driver — a pig throat-slitting, banjo-playing, motorcycle-riding, campfire skillet-cooking, pirate radio Chicago chicano photojournalist — watched the whole thing play out onto the road in front of him through shadows thrown down by a waxing moon.
First the natively Venezuelan but Virginia-bred, country-singing, trespassing, estate-sale-shopping, insect-eating and parachute-wielding photojournalist goofball climbed up. He stood against the wind as the other two braced him.
Next up was the sandy blonde romantic, Indiana radio boy — by way of South Africa and St. Lucia — who had a desire for the Middle East, and an intense draw to family and Bloody Marys.
Then it was the freckled and kinky long-form journalist chistosa Jew-Mex, schooled in Boston but inherently Austin, who loved to stick her nose into nature, and get lost in the smell of books and the sensuality of words.
It was the sheer whiskey-drunk wonder of flying, howling through the dry night air after a midnight dunk of stargazing and shooting the shit in a Rio Grande hot spring. It was the four giddy travelers, all muscles relaxed, all temperaments goofy and carefree. It was, maybe, the utter tomfoolery of three young journalists taking turns climbing onto the roof of a car from the windows and cruising down a road full of no one but the West Texas jack rabbits.
It was utter bliss.
“This will always have happened,” the driver had said earlier in the night. “And no one can ever take it away.”