The only light came from dust and cigarette smoke, lit by the spring sunshine through a crack in the curtain. The only sound was Jean, the barmaid, stacking whiskey glasses. Her back was turned and stayed that way. It was two in the afternoon, and outside the sun felt hot despite the shafts of snow clinging to the hills, reminding me this was still March. Some moments passed. My eyes adjusted to the dark of the Jailhouse Casino floor. Nothing moved. No one spoke.
Ely, Nevada is a crossroads town two hundred miles from anywhere, home to four thousand people, several thousand elk, at least three casinos, some graffiti, a regional Republican Party HQ, a Walmart and a Motel 6. I stayed at the the Motel 6 last time I was in town, back when there was a bowling alley too. There’s just an empty lot where that used to be. Apart from that, nothing seemed to have changed in five years. I never imagined I would pass this way again.
Two old men sat on stools perched at opposite sides of the room, both facing a little old screen built into the bar. Quarter blackjack. You just feed it money and get unlimited drinks. I’d seen the same set up at the Virgin River Hotel & Casino in Mesquite, at the opposite end of Nevada, where the desert was hotter and the people younger. In Mesquite I felt like I’d walked straight onto the set of Goodfellas, it was busy with corruption, excitement, drugs. Crazy people. The guy who shot up the Vegas music festival from his room in the Mirage, America’s worst ever mass shooting – he used to hang out at the Virgin River Casino. I got talking to a fireman who had never left the borders of Nevada or Utah and thought Wales was near Switzerland. He chastised me for having a child out of wedlock, whilst he arranged for a hooker to a room two doors down from his wife and three kids. “We all come out here when we can, it’s a nice break”. They lived twenty two miles away.
The Jailhouse was more Raymond Chandler territory. For a long while not even the smoke or dust moved. The blackjack screens were the only clue to the century outside. But even they weren’t playing. It was hard to tell if the men were even alive but for the ghostly smoke rising from the little red fire in their fingers.
Finally, the spell broke as Jean turned with a smile creasing her heavy black make up, and hollered out the only words possible, the immortal greeting of small town America: “Can I help you, honey?”
Check-in was slow and easy. It usually takes me an hour or so after a long drive to slip into the rhythm of my own two feet and whatever new place I find myself in; Mammoth Lakes was about four hundred miles back – a different universe altogether, up high in the snowy, pine covered Sierras, dotted with liberal city skiers from LA.
But Jean had a long, quiet way about her that helped me settle straight away. She was like a big, cowboy angel – I mean, she wasn’t small, she wasn’t golden, but if she came for me at the Gates, I’d happily follow. Bending forward to write my details, a beam of sun lit up her long dark hair, and as she tucked it behind her ear the breeze sent the dust into euphoric swirls.
My room was in a separate building across the parking lot; an old-school motel shack with a dirty shingle roof and spider webs across the windows. As had become the norm, the vehicle next to mine had a roof higher than the motel, the wheels were chest-high, and it had blacked out windows.
I threw my stuff inside the door, catching a glance of nothing but beige, punched myself a few times, rubbed dirt in my eyes, swapped my trainers for boots, and headed back to the bar.
As Jean brought the beer to my table, “there ya go, honey,” the jukebox started up. Hotel California by The Eagles. Well what else?
Nevada is like a lot of places but also not like anywhere. The scenery is similar to eastern California or other bordering states, but it feels like Nevada when you cross it, whichever way you do it. I’ve done it every which way, entered at almost every point, seen every black and green Welcome to Nevada sign, every one shot to pieces.
It’s the illusory highways: you see the road straight through the valley and up the hillside and it looks close but it takes an hour to get there at high speed. A sign says next gas 163 miles. Another sign says rest stop two miles and you start braking because you see it and it looks right there. There are no obstacles, in the air or in the soul. You dream it you do it, more than anywhere else I’ve been; look at the glittering casinos and golf courses and swimming pools filling the desert – the desert! It makes no sense but you do it anyway.
Without obstacles you also see how badly the dream can end. The searing clarity of a bearded ex-con, heading for Tonapah in nothing but shoes and a pink shirt. Homeless people lying in the cooling mist of a three hundred foot fountain. Out in the wilds I’ve passed desolate oil fields of ancient, nodding machinery that will surely rust into dust after the next storm. Skinny cows refuse to move from the road, staring at my car in hope or disbelief.
As the song changed to Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love, a Native American girl entered the bar. She sat at the table furthest from mine. A few minutes passed in silence until a new man in a John Deere cap emerged from the sun bleached wilderness, made a slow walk to her table and asked if the seat was taken. I didn’t hear much of the conversation but it was awkward and he was old and she was young. She talked to him like you would a stranger at a wedding. I built up the courage to turn and look, and he was older this time, and wearing denim dungarees too. She asked him for a hug and the conversation closed and she walked out into the sun. I turned again. He was holding a newspaper over his face and his hands were shaking.
american covfefe 