#24 / 2003 Tour 2: John Day, The Traveler's Motel

TRAVELER'S MOTEL

#24

Piper pulled back the curtains to my hospital bed and said, “You know, Pamela, I’m afraid your insurance won’t cover another day in the hospital. After all, you’ve had a bowel movement and you’re no longer on IVs. A motel room will be a whole lot cheaper than $600 a day for hospital care. You can come back tomorrow and see the doctor.

“She went so far as to go through the phone book and check out the prices on every motel in town. It didn’t take long, there were only five in the tiny town of John Day, Oregon. So, dazed, drugged, and gutted like a fish, I stepped into the sun. Joe drove the VW bus past cushier, fancier places, even a guest ranch, toward the Traveler’s Motel. The mini-mart served as the front desk. The woman who checked me in never betrayed a glimmer of sympathy when I told her I had just been kicked out of the hospital.

Her body was tight despite the wrinkles on her hands and face. It had obviously been a hard life. Her 1950s shampoo and set made it impossible to gauge her age any younger than 60, but she could have been 20 years younger judging by the way she shook her booty and sang to the radio.

She grudgingly shoved over a key to Room 28. For $31 a night we got a bed, fridge, microwave, cable TV, and a full bath. The décor was Rustic Cabin - predating establishment of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system. Within the last generation someone had built a tin shed over the long concrete slabs of cellblocks, I mean rooms.

It was raw, neglected, but oddly cozy. The mini-mart stayed open all night...beer and cigarettes cheap. I took two Percosets and fell into bed, slept almost all night.

It was the groans that woke me up. It was still dark outside. Groans, whimpers, grunts...I knew the sounds of pain, but this wasn’t coming from me. It all sounded so violent. Was someone being tortured, was someone in labor, or having a miscarriage? It went on for so long; I was wide awake, acutely awake. Someone was suffering just like me. Should I call out to comfort that disembodied voice? Should I call that old hag at the front desk?

Then I heard another voice, a distinctly male voice, calling softly, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, baby.”

And then I knew.

The sounds of a hot shower soon followed. When their door slammed, couldn’t resist painfully crawling out of bed to peer at them in the early morning light.

What I saw was an anorexic Gabby Hayes and Edith Bunker, all squeaky clean in pressed jeans and flannel shirts. I wanted to scream at them:

“Stop it, stop it all, you old coots. Stop all that caterwauling. Can’t you tell I’m dying over here?”