Get your butt over to Roasters this minute!
“Get your butt over to Roasters this minute!” Randy was sitting at his computer, procrastinating. Sierra was livid. He didn’t move, so she walked over to his computer chair and dumped him out of it. “You’re so late, I’m going to have to drive you over there!” Randy reluctantly walked to the passenger’s seat of their car. He didn’t want to go with Roscoe, but Elvis had insisted. When Randy still backed away, Elvis contacted Sierra. The two of them had insisted that he go with Roscoe up the mountain, whatever that meant.
“I don’t want to go. I don’t care what he does for a living. He’s a park ranger. I don’t want to go.” Sierra looked straight ahead as she rushed to Roasters. “I don’t care what you want. You’re spending the day with Roscoe.” Randy tried to negotiate. “Why don’t you come with me? Then I won’t have to talk to him. You can just talk for me.” She stopped in front of the coffee house and stared at him with ice. “Get your ass in there.” They kissed their goodbyes and Randy headed into Roasters.
The tall park ranger looked younger than Randy remembered. Up close, he realized that they were probably the same age. “Elvis said you’d probably be late. Come on.” Roscoe put on his hat and lead the way out of the cafe. Randy followed him to a large truck. It had a huge tank on the back and tires almost as tall as Sierra. “Get in.” Roscoe pointed at the passenger’s side door and walked around to the driver’s side.
The two of them didn’t say a word for about five miles. The noise from the truck’s engine kept them company until Roscoe finally spoke, “We’re supposed to have a conversation about you getting a hobby.” Randy tried to interrupt, but Roscoe held up his finger. “I’m supposed to tell you that you need to do something besides computers. I’m supposed to tell you about how I used to love off-roadin’ and then I got this job and didn’t have nothing to do and kinda went crazy. Let’s just tell ‘em that we had that conversation and that you’re trying to decide what you want to do for your hobby but you haven’t decided yet, okay?”
Randy was so grateful to Roscoe that he could barely speak, “Okay.” The noisy engine of the truck strained at the speed, but soon, it slowed and Roscoe turned on a trail. The sign said, “Moose Hill.” They bumped along a dirt road for a while until they approached a red rock wall. Without a pause, Roscoe started climbing the wall with the truck. “Wait! We’re going up that wall?!” Randy held onto the handles inside the truck tightly and was grateful for his seatbelt as the truck sat at a 35 degree angle on the edge of the rocks. Roscoe calmly replied, “That ain’t no wall. That’s a trail. Pretty easy one, too. Elvis wanted me to take you on Windowmaker last week, but I told ‘im no. Didn’t they tell you what I do for a livin’?”
Randy held onto the handles of the truck as they slowly crawled up the rocks. He looked out the passenger window and saw the huge drop-off at the side of the truck. “They said you… I… something about off-roading, I think.” Roscoe stopped the truck. It was at nearly a forty degree angle, so it looked like Roscoe was higher than he was. It looked as if the seat belt was the only thing keeping Roscoe from tumbling from his seat over to Randy’s. “You never been off-roadin’?” Randy shook his head. Roscoe faced the trail again and continued the climb. “I haul shit off the mountain. Don’t puke in my truck, okay?” Randy nodded at him, clinging to the handles.
They climbed the rock wall in the truck slowly. Roscoe carefully assessed the trail and kept the truck on it. Not once did the truck skid. Not once did he bounce haphazardly over the terrain. Randy had thought off-roading was just a bunch of hicks in trucks laughing and speeding over dirt hills. He imagined that they went much faster than a mere two miles an hour. He also had no idea they were able to get huge trucks up the face of a rock wall. It seemed like Roscoe’s truck was defying gravity at every turn.
“You do this for fun?” He couldn’t comprehend anyone tackling this hill for fun. Roscoe answered, “I used to. I took my first truck up this very hill. Dora and I spent our honeymoon up at the campsite up here. Ran out of water before the week was up, so we came back home and stayed the last couple of days at the ski resort.”
Randy looked around the terrain for the first time since the truck started up the hill. The dusty and red rocks were dry. The sagebrush, poked out of the lumpy ground. The land looked entirely different than it did back in Merriton. “You ran out of water?” Roscoe slowly lowered the truck over a rock and then put the vehicle into reverse. Randy squeaked as the truck headed almost blindly up the trail backwards. They neared the precipice behind them. Roscoe expertly brought the vehicle to the edge of the rocks and then put the truck in gear and headed up the switchback.
“You wouldn’t know it from living in Merriton, but we’re in a desert here. By the way, you should really trim the wild grasses on your property. They’re all dry from the summer and if they catch fire, you won’t have a chance to get out. I’m surprised Elvis hasn’t scolded you by now.” Randy shrank away. Elvis HAD mentioned that he needed to cut his grass, but Randy hadn’t done anything about it. Roscoe continued talking, “Every tree in Merriton was planted by someone. They don’t grow natural down there. Every tree on your property was planted by my granddaddy.”
Randy shook his head, “Your granddaddy?” Roscoe nodded. “Yeah. Just ’cause my last names’ Palamino don’t mean I’m all Indian. My momma was a Bowen.” Randy looked at Roscoe. “I don’t think anyone ever told me your last name. Man, you want to come over and see the house? Did you used to go there when you were little?” Roscoe pointed at the passenger-side window. “Roll down your window and pull in the mirror, willya?” Roscoe folded in the side mirror on his side of the truck and Randy did the same on his side. While Randy rolled up his window, the ranger expertly negotiated the huge vehicle between two large rocks with barely an inch on each side.
Once they were through, Roscoe continued, “No, June let me in to look around when it was up for sale the last couple of times. Got that blood stain off that wall yet?” Randy shook his head. “No… actually, we don’t go into that part of the house. It’s really bigger than we need. Why didn’t you buy it?” Roscoe shook his head. “I already got a house. I don’t want to run a goat farm. Looks like your wife is takin’ to it nicely, though.” Randy smiled to himself at the thought of Sierra with the goats. “Kinda weird about them kids, though.”
Randy shrugged, “I pretty much expected to find out that one of Elvis’ goats had got to her, but the DNA testing turned out negative for all his males.” Roscoe laughed, “Didn’t your wife name that goat Mary?” Randy shook his head. “No, that was Elvis. Pretty apt name, though.” Roscoe paused the truck. “You might want to close your eyes on this part.” Without question, Randy closed his eyes. Roscoe talked while the truck lurched almost sideways, “Well, when grandpa died, the goats were kind of neglected for a few days. Elvis thinks somebody stole summav ‘em, but I think they ran away. Probably hiding near your place and when your little goat went into heat, they came lookin’ for ‘er. Okay, you can open up now.”
They were at the top of the hill. There were four campsites at the top. Roscoe pulled the huge truck up to an outhouse. “You need to use this before I empty it?” Randy looked at him and crinkled his forehead. “What?” Roscoe got out of the truck and pointed at the outhouse. “Do you need to use this?” Randy did need to use the restroom, so he took his turn. There was no running water. It was just a toilet connected to a hole in the ground. Randy felt the rush of air come out of the toilet when he peed into the bowl. The sound of his urine hitting solid matter so far away from him was foreign. After he was finished, he shut the lid. He wanted to wash, but there was nothing to wash with.
When he walked out, Roscoe was suited up in rubber from head to toe. “You’re not certified to do this, so I need you to stay away. There’s all these diseases that you can get from human waste, so you just leave me to my work okay?”
Randy looked at Roscoe, nodded and backed away. “Careful! Don’t step on the crypto!” Roscoe was pointing to the ground. Randy had stepped off the trail onto the lumpy earth, but it had dissolved under his shoe in a fluffy puff. “That’s bacteria and stuff! It’s really important. You gotta stay on the trail because if you destroy the crypto, it really ruins things up here, okay?” Randy looked at Roscoe in his rubber suit and nodded. Roscoe put on a hooded helmet and covered his face.
Randy moved back to the trail and watched Roscoe attach a huge hose to the back of the outhouse. The stench of the outhouse escaped from the hole in the ground and the noise from the pump on the truck sounded deafening in the quiet of the desert air. After a few minutes, Randy couldn’t smell the stench anymore, but the noise was still pounding his ears. He could barely hear Roscoe swearing as he turned off the pump. Roscoe opened his hood and the swearing became louder.
“What’s the matter?” Roscoe lifted the hose out of the hole. “Some butthead dumped his garbage down there.” Roscoe pulled a huge hook from the truck and pulled out a full plastic bag. “You’re supposed to pack out your garbage, you know. The outhouse ain’t no dumpster!” Randy was repelled by the bag covered in feces and urine. Roscoe placed it on the back of the truck and checked the hole to see if any more bags were down there. Once he determined it was clear, he replaced the hose and began pumping again.
It suddenly all made sense to Randy now, “You haul SHIT down the mountain!” Roscoe looked up from the truck. “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Randy shook his head. “I thought you meant shit like garbage or something, but you actually empty out the outhouse!” Roscoe nodded at him like Randy was daft. “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Randy shook his head, screaming over the noise of the truck, “Why in the world would you take a job like this?!”
Roscoe’s eyes kind of glazed over and he smiled to himself a bit. “You know, this job is great. I can’t believe they pay me to do what I love. Sure, I have to do this once I get to the top, but they pay me to go off-roading every week.” Roscoe patted the tank of the huge truck. “Off-roading with this thing is way harder than with my truck at home. You’ve got to be extra good to get this thing up Widowmaker.” Roscoe got quiet and Randy thought their conversation was over, but the ranger started talking again, “You know, it was really disappointing off-roading with my truck after I got a hang of this big thing. It just got so easy that I didn’t even like to do it anymore. I think Dora was a little relieved that I didn’t want to go off-roading anymore, but let me tell ya, those weekends were long. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
Roscoe turned off the pump and reattached the hose to the truck. He pulled out a different hose and started pumping some chemicals into the outhouse tank. “Elvis helped me through that summer, I tell ya.” Randy expected Roscoe to tell him some more, but the ranger finished pumping the chemicals into the “clean” tank and took off his rubber suit, packing it into a back area of the truck.
“Now listen, taking this thing down the mountain full is a lot harder than going up, so we really can’t talk on the way down, okay?” Randy nodded and got back into the truck. Roscoe was right. The truck full of liquid acted completely different than when it was empty. If Randy was nervous going up the hill, he was near panicked going down.
When they finally reached the bottom, Randy pulled his hands off the handles. They felt stiff from holding so tightly. “Have you ever, you know, scraped the truck or rolled it over with all that stuff in the back?” Roscoe laughed as they turned onto the dirt road. What had felt like a bumpy road before, felt smooth as glass after going over Moose Hill. “No I haven’t. Jeff once scraped pretty bad, though. He didn’t leak, you know… He just leaked chemicals all down the trail. They were pretty angry with him anyway.”
Randy breathed in a lungful of air and found a new gratitude for the lengths his government was willing to go to to make his national park experience enjoyable. Never once had he wondered how outhouses were emptied. He must have passed Roscoe a dozen times at Roasters never knowing what he did every week.
A special thank you to Daniel and Stacey Vest for taking me on my first eye-covering off-road experience.