Corn on the Cam - Part 2 (the end)
Read Part One please.
"Hey! Get back in the car this instant!" I screamed out the window at 10 as the bikers ground to a stop, a splinter spray of tumbleweed and peacoat gravel behind them. My son left the hood open, and I watched dust swirl around us, into the engine, coating the little silver lunches with ancient ocean dust. I locked the doors.
The bikers lifted helmets from heads, left legs supporting machine, a row of black studded dominoes one right after the other, and the man closest to our car lifted right leg over engine and strode quickly to my window. I pressed the button to lower it one inch.
"Everything ok, Miss?" His face was red-brown from a thousand desert drives, and tiny beads of sweat collected around the black hair pulled back from his face into a short ponytail. He kept his hands at his hips, fingers splayed across the edges of his leather chaps. I tried not to stare at the extra pinky on his left hand. The strains of Fleetwood Mac blared through the radio, and I reached to quiet it.
"Yes, thank you, but we're doing great. Just taking a break. Thanks for stopping and asking. Have a great ride!" I spoke fast, my words shot out of the window, bounced off his leather vest into the dirt between his boots, and in the rear view mirror I saw three of the other bikers swarm around my car, make a beeline for the open hood.
"Hey! Don't touch our lunch!" 10 rolled down his window and stuck his head out the window. "I spent eighteen miles making that lunch!"
The bikers turned and stared at 10's coarse dark hair standing at kewpie doll attention in the Mojave wind.
"You're cooking, son?" A tall biker in worn black leather strode to 10's window. "What's for lunch?" He looked just a bit older than me, but sand-blasted, as if his clothes and skin and dirt-swept hair rose from the Palo Verde roots beneath us, grew a man tree with legs like leather-clad trunks, arms carved with initial, twisted in muscle. I held my breath, ready to gun the engine, hood up and visibility at zero, do what I needed to do to protect my family.
"I've been slaving over a hot engine all day." 10 smirked and waited for laughter that didn't come. The biker's eyes faded a bit, tried to make sense of 10's banter. "For lunch, I am making roasted potatoes and corn and warming up left over pizza. My mom got this book at a yard sale, and I am just following the instructions." He held the book up, carefully, reverentially, then slowly turned it side to side, front to back. The biker nodded his head. A lock of natural highlights fell into his right eye.
As 10 explained, the rest of the men gathered close to the engine, lifting and examining the foil squares.
"Excuse me, boy. Did you add any herbs to the potatoes? Rosemary? Olive oil?" A burly man in a vintage AC/DC long-sleeved t-shirt leaned to the left of the hood and rubbed his full beard with one hand. "Sliced or cut?" His belly hung over the silver skull and crossbones buckle set below his waist. "Got any more of that foil?"
My son reached below his seat and pulled out the cardboard box housing the wrap. "How much do you want?" He yelled outside but the wind carried his words in the opposite direction.
What the hell, I thought. Culinary bikers can't be all that bad. "Ok, guys, we can get outside and check on the lunch."
10 passed around pieces of foil while the bikers opened pannier bags and coolers and found bits and pieces of foodstuff for their own cookout.
"Am I doing this right?" A man with a fringed jacket and a snake tattoo slithering along his neck stuffed a foil wrapped sandwich in the cylinder head cleavage of his bike. "How many miles do you think?" 10 walked to the bike with book in hand and gave it the once over.
"Looks good. I'd give it 45 miles. But not a mile more!"
The bikers and their roasting dinners peeled back onto the highway, and we hit the road too, drove slow and easy as the sun moved from noon to the high heat of early afternoon. We stopped again to retrieve our finished potatoes, corn, and pizza along the shoulder of old Route 66. An elderly couple saw our raised hood and pulled behind us. I walked to greet them at their car door, foil packet in hand.
"Hello! Thanks for stopping but we're not in car trouble. We're just cooking lunch. Here, I am offering all good samaritans samples of pizza, corn on the cob, and roasted potatoes." I held out a box of plastic forks and an unopened lunch packet. The woman held her husband's arm, kept him from accepting our bounty. A transparent blue scarf held her up-do in place. "Don't you people have a stove at home?"
A few hours and two more meals later the engine started smelling like my Gramma's house three days past Thanksgiving, an unforgiving odor of overheated oils and cheeses and meats and burnt vegetables.
"Mooooooooom,I think that smell's gonna make me barf." 8 curled next to his open window, holding his nose with forefinger and thumb.
What to do? I stopped the car for fuel and opened the hood, tried to find bits and pieces of leftovers that might contribute to any smell, but the cavity was relatively clean. I opened my purse, hoping to find a demo bottle of Avon fragrance to mask the smell inside the car, but the only thing I could find was a tube of bubblegum flavored lip balm. I opened the cap, twisted it, let it slide along my top and bottom lip, passed it to 10 and 8 to do the same. "Here, use this while I've got it. Our lips will chap in this desert heat."
And then I did something that I wasn't sure was good for the engine. I ran the lip balm along the engine, let it melt into a fine layer, and as we drove into the red flash city of greed our noses met the sweet scent of overheated Avon.
I shook the boys awake and they dragged backpacks and action figures into the smoke-filled lobby of the Hilton casino hotel. The clerk handed me room key and brochures detailing the sights and sounds of Las Vegas. She chomped grape flavored gum, and as she breathed I smelled the all her unheard hopes inside a cloud of cigarettes and artificial flavor.
"Welcome to Las Vegas. Enjoy your stay. Oh! And you came all the way from San Diego, you must be hungry after all that road food. Here are some coupons for discounts at our 24-Hour Buffet. I bet those growing boys are hungry!"
I saw 10 reach into his backpack for his road grill bible. The slot machines chimed and cursed behind us. I grabbed the key and coupons and gave the kids The Look that meant Shut Up and Let's Get The Hell Outta Here, and I pushed them toward the elevator.
And as I used all my mom's strength to get the boys attention toward bed and away from the spinning lights, I heard 10 yell back toward the lobby desk.
"Ma'am! Road food can be sublime!"
3:01:29 PM 
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