The Descending Dark
Losing Jerry Garcia's Blessed Guitar at Big Bend, 1973
Full Table of Contents: Surfing the Interstates: Complete Chapter Guide
Chapter Fifteen: The Descending Dark
The semi carries us through the Texas dark. The driver's got gospel radio turned low. Geoff and Jason wedged in the sleeper, I can hear Geoff shuffling his cards back there—that nervous habit when he's processing heavy stuff. Me riding shotgun, watching nothing become more nothing under stars like spilled salt.
The driver doesn't want conversation. Fine by me. Steve's face keeps flickering in the windshield. That yearbook photo. Before the fear got him. Before California. Before last night. But also that morning in the chicken coop, handing me twenty dollars: "You were always the smart one. Getting out when you can." His smile already knowing what was coming. Already writing his ending.
My guitar case between my knees. Jerry's blessing still living in the wood: "I hope it remembers everything." It does. Remembers Sasha pressing my palm against the Mother tree's bark, feeling centuries of survival. Remembers the UFOs reading the ocean's memory like scripture. Remembers Steve playing his Strat at 3 AM, trying to jam frequencies only he could hear.
Midnight. The driver drops us at a Texaco outside Fort Stockton. "Far as I go. You boys be careful."
The station glows against the desert black. We buy Cokes and crackers. Count our money. Jason carefully pulls bills from his wallet with his good hand, that deliberate way he has. In my pocket, the stone Lucy gave me, smooth from river-time. The three dream stones from after the UFOs still traveling with me too—invisible but present. White for clarity I never had. Pink for connections that slipped away. Yellow for abundance still coming?
A pickup pulls in. Two guys climbing out, stretching. Louisiana plates. Oil field workers by the look—Carhartt pants, steel-toed boots, hard-earned tans.
"Y'all need a ride?" The older one, maybe thirty-five. Missing teeth but kind eyes.
"Austin," Geoff says, already moving forward with that easy charm.
"Can get you partway. Heading to Beaumont."
We pile in the truck bed with their gear. Pipeline equipment. Welding tanks. The smell of honest work. Different from Steve's smell—tobacco and paranoia and that whiskey bottle getting emptier each night.
The truck finds its rhythm. Seventy down I-10. The night air finally cool. Geoff produces Wade's wine bottle—still a third left. We pass it around. Jason takes his pull, watching the road behind us through the cab window—always watching their six, old rig habit.
"Least we're moving," Jason says, that flat East Texas certainty.
The stars wheel overhead. No moon. Just the Milky Way like God's backbone. The wine sour but necessary. Like communion wine. Like the wine we'd share in the chicken coop while Steve explained how they were watching, always watching. Me never sure if "they" meant the government or his father or the voices that followed him from that shrink's office at Penn.
At a fuel stop, the Louisiana guys get out. We share cigarettes. The younger one, Billy, can't stop talking.
"Three weeks on, one week off. Eighteen-hour days. But the money, man. The money's unreal."
"Dangerous?" Geoff asks, and I see Jason unconsciously flex his damaged hand.
"Everything out there wants to kill you. The pressure, the gas, the machinery. Lost two guys last month. Valve blew. Nothing left but boots."
His partner, Carl, older and quieter, stares at the horizon. "My brother came through here in '69. After his second tour. Said he spent a week at Big Bend. Down in the canyons."
"Big Bend?" I hear myself ask. The words taste like Sasha's redwood medicine. Like something opening.
"National Park. Hour south. Nothing but rock and river and sky." Carl lights another cigarette. "Said it was the first place since Nam that made sense. Like the war couldn't follow him there."
Something shifts in my chest. A loosening. The Mother tree had taught me about survival, about growing around damage. But maybe some damage needs different medicine. Canyon medicine. Stone medicine.
"Said the canyon walls were like church. But older. Before words. Before bullshit." Carl flicks ash. "Went back to Houston. Got his contractors license. Normal life. But he still talks about those canyons. Says they taught him the difference between what kills you and what just hurts."
Back in the truck. The conversation drifting. Billy describing offshore storms. Waves tall as buildings. The rig swaying. Men praying who hadn't prayed since childhood.
I see Geoff and Jason exchange one of their looks—whole conversation in a glance. They've noticed my distance, my drift toward something they can't follow.
I'm not listening. Thinking about walls like church. About Steve's chicken coop becoming his coffin. About places the war can't follow. Thinking about those UFOs reading the ocean, finding patterns invisible to us. Maybe canyons can be read the same way. Maybe they hold different information. Older information.
Junction coming up. 385 South to Big Bend. 290 East to Austin. The split approaching like a reckoning.
The knowing arrives complete, like those objects moving without transition. ZIP. Suddenly certain.
"Pull over," I say.
"What?" Geoff turns, cards still in his hands.
"I need out. At the junction."
"The fuck you talking about, podna?"
The truck slows. Stops. Two AM. Nothing but a road sign and desert.
I grab my pack. My guitar that remembers everything.
"I'm going south. Big Bend."
"Well, I'll be go to hell," Jason mutters. "It's the middle of nowhere."
"Yeah." Thinking of Steve in his nowhere chicken coop. But also thinking of redwood silence. Of stones that carry lessons. Of needing to sit with this grief until it teaches me something.
Geoff gets it first. Sees it in my face. That Louisiana intuition. "Steve?"
I nod.
"Shit. Shit." He climbs down, ring spinning fast. Embraces me. Unexpected. "You sure?"
"I need... something. Not Austin. Not yet." Need what Sasha found in tree frequencies. What Carl's brother found in stone. What Steve never found in his paranoid circles.
Jason climbs down too, slower, favoring his left side. Reaches into his wallet with his good hand, pulls out a ten. Half of what he has. "For food."
"I'll be okay."
"That ain't no count," Jason says quietly. "Going alone into that nothing."
"You'll be in Austin when?" Geoff asks.
"Few days. Week maybe."
"We'll be at Gary's. On Manchaca. You got that? Gary's on Manchaca." His drawl thickening with worry.
Jason produces something from his pocket—a small wooden horse he must have whittled during one of our waits. Rough but recognizable. Presses it into my hand. "For luck."
The Louisiana guys patient. Understanding something without knowing what. Carl nods. "There's a ranch road ten miles down. Old man Williams sometimes drives to the park early. Checking fences. Might give you a ride."
They start to climb back in. Geoff turns. "Hey. That guitar of yours. The one Jerry blessed?"
"Yeah?"
"Take care of it, podna. Things like that... they're more than wood. More than wood."
They pull away. I watch Jason position himself to keep eyes on me through the back window until I'm just a dot. Taillights shrinking. Gone.
Alone. Two AM. Junction of highways in the high desert. Wind moving through creosote. Stars so bright they hum like the Mother tree hummed, like the ocean hummed under alien light.
I walk south. Pack heavy. Guitar heavier with its memories. Jason's little horse in my pocket next to Sasha's stone. The road empty in both directions.
An hour. Maybe more. Coyote calling. Another answering. The desert alive in the dark. My feet finding rhythm. Not toward anything. Away from everything. Each step a drumbeat. Each breath a prayer for Steve who never learned to pray, only to perform prayers until performance became reality.
The creosote releases its rain-smell as I brush past. Desert medicine. Different from redwood medicine but maybe pointing the same direction—toward something older than human damage.
Headlights finally. A rancher's truck. Old Chevy. Rifle in the rack.
The window rolls down. Face like leather. Eyes that have seen seasons.
"Son, you know where you are?"
"Yes sir. Heading to Big Bend."
"That's forty miles of nothing."
"Perfect." Because nothing is what I need. Nothing like the space between heartbeats where Jerry said the music lives. Nothing like the pause between waves where the UFOs found their data. Nothing like the silence after Steve's last shot.
He studies me. Sees something. Maybe himself young. Maybe just another lost kid. "Get in."
The truck smells like tobacco and dogs. Dashboard cracked. Springs poking through the seat.
"Running from or toward?" He shifts gears.
"Both. Neither. I don't know."
"Fair enough."
South through the Chihuahuan Desert. The headlights catching century plants. Ocotillo. The bones of the earth showing through.
"Lost my boy in Korea," the rancher says. "Chosin Reservoir. Never found the body."
Miles pass. The guitar remembering this too. Another father's grief. Another war's harvest.
"Spent a year drunk. Year fighting. Year driving these roads at night." He spits out the window. "Then I found the canyon. Sat there three days. Didn't fix nothing. But it helped me carry it."
"Carry it?"
"The weight. See, I was trying to put it down. Canyon taught me that's not how it works. You don't put it down. You learn to carry it right. Like a river carries stones. Smooths them over time but never lets them go."
The park entrance appears. Closed. Just a sign and silence.
"Trail starts there." He points. "Six miles to the river. Watch for rattlers."
"Thank you."
"What's your name, son?"
"Andre."
"Andre. French?"
"Yeah, but I’m half Irish. That’s my better half.”
He nods. "I'm Williams. I run cattle other side of the park. You need help, find my place."
I get out. He drives away. Alone again. Three-thirty AM. The universe watching.
Find the trail by starlight. Start walking. The pack crushing but necessary. Everything I own. Everything I am. The guitar case bumping my leg with each step, bruising the same spot. Good. Need to feel something real.
The trail drops. Switchbacks. The walls rising. Limestone pale in the star glow. Like the Mother tree's bark in moonlight but mineral instead of vegetable. Different kind of ancient. Different kind of patient.
Four miles. Five. The sky starting to grey. Bird calling. Another answering. My breath coming hard. Sweat despite the cool. Body remembering it's meat, not spirit. Good. Steve forgot that. Floated too far from his animal self.
Then—the reveal.
Santa Elena Canyon opens before me. Walls rising impossible. The Rio Grande below, black and patient. A gash in the earth. A door to before.
My knees buckle. Just slightly. The same feeling as when those objects stopped time above the Pacific. The same feeling as when Jerry looked through me. The same feeling as when I saw Steve's one eye open on the TV, staring at highways he'd never travel.
I find a ledge. Flat enough. Protected. Drop my pack. Roll out the bag.
Lie down. Look up. The walls reaching toward stars going pale.
The words float up from somewhere deeper than thought: Steve is dead. The war found him. Found us all. The truth I've been carrying since El Paso. The young brilliant friend I barely knew but knew enough. Who labeled his death before it came. Who made his paranoia real by believing in it hard enough.
But this. This is older than wars. Older than words. Older than the need to run or fight or hide. Old as the Mother tree. Old as the ocean those objects read. Old as the silence between notes where real music lives.
Tomorrow I'll learn what the canyon wants to teach. About carrying weight like water carries stones. About growing around damage like the Mother tree. About reading the deep patterns like those objects read the sea.
Sleep coming. The stone holding me. The river singing low.
Tomorrow I'll wake. Write. Try to understand.
Tonight, just this. Walls like prayers. Stars like promises. The dark descending kind.
The guitar beside me, remembering everything. Even this. Especially this.
First light. Automatic reach for the case.
Hand finds bare dirt.
Bolt upright. Sleeping bag twisted around legs. Backpack still there. But the space beside it—empty. Depression in the dust where it lay all night.
Stand. Spin. Nothing moves but a tumbleweed. No tire tracks. Just bootprints. Not mine. Leading to the road.
Follow them three steps. Stop. No point.
Gone. The Harmony. 1935. Carried four thousand miles. Through the Colorado rain. Desert heat. Every tear. Every silence. Every song. Jerry's hands blessing it. Steve's ghost riding in its curves.
Circle the camp again. Wider. Check behind rocks. Nothing.
The case. That battered case with the broken latch I fixed with wire in Santa Rosa. The pick worn smooth. All those nights playing. The strings I changed in Boulder. All of it. Gone.
Kneel where it lay. Touch the depression. Still feel its weight on my shoulder. Phantom pain. Like an amputation.
The canyon walls watching. Indifferent. The river below keeping its own time.
Pack up. What's left. Sleeping bag. Backpack. Water. Food. Jason's wooden horse still in my pocket—at least they didn't get that.
Start walking. Deeper into the canyon. What else to do?
The guitar knew this would happen. Jerry said it remembered everything. Even its own ending. Even this emptiness where music used to live.
→ Next Chapter: Chapter 16: Phantom Ships - "Vision quest in Big Bend canyon - the woman who moves like water appears in dreams"
← Previous Chapter: Chapter 14: Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso - "Steve Ferry's tragic death on morning TV - prophecy fulfilled in blood and bullets"
📖 Full Table of Contents: Surfing the Interstates: Complete Chapter Guide
🎸 The Lost Guitar: Jerry Garcia's blessed 1935 Harmony Cremona - stolen at Big Bend, marking the end of the musical journey that began at Grateful Dead headquarters.