Pilgrims Matt Greene
In Reno, we wandered the insides of casinos, buzzed not
from nicotine but from smoking inside, each interior like a kind of dull
nightmare, a work dream, the repetition of blinking lights and gun shot
sound effects and grating electric hooks. One of us won motel money on a
John Wayne slot machine. It called him pilgrim as it spat silver coins. We
found ourselves at a McDonald's with a thirty-minute seating limit and
coupon rack with a deal for a twenty-dollar motel room. The motel perched on
a hill outside the city and two of us checked in while the other lay across
the backseat under a blanket. We had a second-story room with cable TV, a
queen bed, and a cot, but the odd one out said the floor was more
comfortable. He got down on the carpet and covered himself with
the blanket, said that this room smelled like every other motel room, like
refired cigarettes and detergent, like synthetic lavender or citrus, like
that other certain odor no other place in the world could offer but every
motel room had. On the motel staircase we used a camping stove to warm hot
dogs and a tupperware of old rice. We did this again before sunrise, and set
off to watch dawn break from the shore of Lake Tahoe, which we then looped
in the early morning light, gazing into the crystal blue as if under a
spell, as if any lake could actually have a bottom.
Matt Greene teaches writing in Appalachia. Other pieces in this series have
appeared in or are forthcoming from Hobart, Arts & Letters, The
Cincinnati Review, Split Lip, and other journals.
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