I knew this would happen. I knew that one day I would find myself in a town in which I could not find lodging for the life of me. My most recent ride had left me stranded in El Paso, gloomily looking out at the hotels with signs that read "VACANCY." But I know those rooms were not vacant, at least not for me.
I stand outside of one motel in particular, The Alamo, for a while. I watch the elderly woman working the front desk. Every once in a while she looks up at me with an expression that is simultaneously nervous yet guilty. My eyelids are drooping; my head grows heavy. I begin considering sleeping on the ground against the wall of the motel, where there would at least be an offensively bright fluorescent light over my head.
A voice interrupts me to say, "This one's no good, huh?" I look over to see a small black man in a suit, futilely trying to straighten out wrinkles in his shirt in an embarrassed fashion. He is wrinkled and travel weary, but has a distinguished air about him.
"No, sir." I begin. "I'm thinkin of just staying here for the night. I've got no relatives near, you see."
He gives me a knowing smile and walked over with a green book in his hand. He opens to a certain page with a list of hotel names and says,
"It's really a shame. The Alamo was actually listed as one of the recommended hotels in this guide, but they must have changed management. That's been happening a lot, so much, in fact, that I've been starting this little map here," he thumbs to a blank page in the back of the book which he had covered with a crudely drawn map.
"See!" he says, proudly. "It's real useful to know where you can go before going through the trouble of getting there. I should send it out to some people. Maybe they can do a new edition of the book."
I could find no words in response to his drawn-in map. All I could feel was a helpless sense that the world of my dreams, my America, was shrinking before my eyes into a few scribbled X's in the back a guidebook.
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