American Outlaw (43 page)

There were no consequences back then, I had nothing to lose. And what scared me very badly at this moment was the fact that, my pulse quickening dangerously, I was starting to feel precisely the same way. A sick feeling rose in my throat. I saw red, and somehow I knew that if I didn’t leave that very instant, I was in real danger of doing something terribly violent.

Trembling, I shuffled away from the photographer. I walked back to my truck, where I opened the heavy front door and climbed behind the wheel. I sat there for a long moment, frightened, gripping the steering wheel, my hands like claws, knowing I had to somehow escape from this hell.

I turned the key in the ignition, and tore away from the lot.

“Yo man!” called out the paparazzo after me, puzzled. “Why you
tripping
?”

——

I drove endlessly in circles around Long Beach, and for once, no cars followed me. But I still felt completely defeated and undone.

As I orbited the blocks so familiar to me from my childhood and youth, I passed high schools, gas stations, strip joints, taco stands, and auto parts stores. None of them were open to me now. Everyone knew about me. Everyone hated me.

I drove on, faster now, drumming on the dash with my fingertips, feeling light-headed, like I was ready to take a chance, do something rash. By coincidence, I passed the black church that I’d found years before. Immediately, I pulled into the parking lot.

Maybe this spot is the answer,
I thought.
Maybe I can talk to someone—that preacher. Maybe he’ll listen to my story.

I made my way up the walk and pounded on the front door.

“Hey,” I called out desperately. “Is anybody there? Hello?”

But the door was locked. Panicked, I knocked louder and louder, again and again, slamming the flat of my hand heavily against the wooden frame of the door.

“Hey!” I said. “
Come on!
Open up!”

“Yo,” a homeless guy passing by said to me. “Nobody home.”

“I can see that,” I muttered.

“No, they
moved.
They went to Compton about a year ago,” he said. “Not enough black folks in Long Beach for a congregation anymore.”

I said nothing for a moment. Then, dejected, I began to walk back to my truck. There would be no salvation for Jesse James. Not today.

I sat behind the wheel of my truck, my head spinning. There had to be a solution, a place I could go to get away. But no clear answers came.

If only I could escape,
I thought frantically.
If only I could go somewhere and leave this fucking horrible mess behind.

Nothing came to me, so I drove home. I had no other place else to go. But I felt like a trapped animal in a cage there, too.

I couldn’t turn on the TV. I couldn’t read the newspaper. I couldn’t go to work.

And then somewhere, amid my panic and distress, I remembered a friend of mine telling me, years before, about a rehab facility he’d gone to in Arizona called Sierra Tucson.

“It’s an amazing place,” he’d said. “It turned me right around.”

With trembling fingers, I turned on my computer and found the website of the facility. I scrawled the address down on a piece of paper. It would be a five-hundred-mile drive from Long Beach to Tucson—a grueling, narrow journey down the I-10. But I knew I had to go there.

Because if I don’t,
I thought,
something terrible is going to happen. And soon.

18
 

Blue-black light hung on the horizon as I throttled down the I-10, the vibrations of the tires and the frame tranquilizing my wrecked mind.

I’m finally going somewhere,
I thought.
I’m finally getting out of this hell-zone.

It was four o’clock in the morning.

I pressed harder on the accelerator, watching my speed increase to 120 miles an hour, then 130, then higher. The industrial shitscape of Los Angeles gave way to something even bleaker as I passed out of lonely Riverside into the wide-open range of horse stables and twisted trees and spinning giant wind turbines outside of Indio. In the back of my mind, I remembered a carefree, drunken trip I’d taken once many years before on the same route . . . heading to a spring break party at Lake Havasu . . . the car full of delirious teens, everyone smoking and yelling
. . .
Hey, don’t you know what all those wind turbines are for, man?
someone said, coughing,
they suck all the smog out of Los Angeles—
and then the trusting expression of one of the girls we’d brought along—
Really?

Onward I drove, scenery melting, now dust, now desert, now mountains, and I ripped along the empty roadway through the breaking light of dawn, the blues and blacks rising into something brighter now. I rumbled by cowboy towns like Blythe and Brenda, swallowing hard, wishing I had water to drink, past Quartzsite and Tonopah,
never even heard of them, who lives there, and why,
the windows shaking from the speed and my head pleading,
just let me get there, just let me go . . .

With morning breaking, I pulled off the highway, stopping at a gas station, my shirt soaked through with sweat. I dipped my head low, tucking my chin nearly into my chest, as I filled up the tank.
Nobody better come up to me,
I thought,
nobody even come near me, because now is not the time.

I filled the tank without incident and settled back behind the steering wheel and gunned the engine. I ripped out of the gas station, flying off the mark, cutting against the wind, heading east toward Phoenix, racing against my own pulse
calm down calm down.
Then I laughed, at nothing, and the vulnerable, awkward sound I made frightened me.

Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I lowered the window and let the wind whip in at me. The coldness of the early April morning buffeted my face and neck and chest, giving me a meager sense of clarity that was gone as soon as it appeared.

I snapped on the radio, fumbling between stations. A snatch of Top 40 pop filled the front seat, somebody singing over and over
imma be, imma be, imma be . . .
The chorus tore at my brain, like some infant’s simple demands.

“No,” I mumbled, and pressed my thumb onto the dial, switching over to the next station, but it was even worse, something swoony
and pseudo-soulful,
wherever you are, whenever it’s right, you’ll come out of nowhere, and into my life . . .

“I’d rather crash into the wall again at Irwindale,” I muttered. I jabbed my thumb at the stereo again: give me something better.

“Okay, we got a
great
show today,” came the familiar, confident, nasal New York voice. “Listen, we got Jesse James with us today . . .”

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“He’s a guy who first became successful when he started building
motorcycles.
I’ve been
reading
about this guy. I guess he used to be a real badass. Listen, you talk to him, Robin. Hey, Jesse, Robin wore extra cleavage for you . . .”

I sat bolt upright in my seat, unable to believe the coincidence. I’d done the Howard Stern show one year ago; and now, today, as I sped through the desert, driving myself either toward rehab or the great beyond, they were airing it again.

As the morning heated up around me, the mountains growing brighter, sharper in their cut against the sky, I listened to my voice. It was as if the show was being broadcast solely for me.

I traveled all around the world, ten times in five years . . .

. . . that whole time, all I was doing was going to motorcycle shops . . .

. . . Yup, when I was off the road, I’d just work on my bike in my mom’s garage . . .

. . . She contacted my office, and wanted to bring her godson on a tour of the shop . . .

. . . I contacted her assistant, and said I wanted to ask her out . . .

It was just almost too much to believe.

“You were married to the beautiful,
stunning—
who I wished
I
coulda had sex with—Janine Lindemulder for a while, weren’t you?” came Howard’s voice. “Boy, she must have been a
monster
in bed . . .”

. . . Sometimes, things aren’t what they seem . . .

“She’s one of the sexiest broads on the
planet,
though!”

It was surreal. I listened to myself break down the dissolution
of my marriage to Janine, then go on happily to tell the story of how Sandy and I met: how she’d refused me at first; how I hadn’t stopped trying, and eventually, I’d won her over. I spoke about our relationship, about how completely different it was from any other thing I’d ever experienced.

The words sounded hollow and false. Suddenly, behind me, I saw the flashing lights of a cop car.

“Dammit, what
now
?”

I pulled to the side of the highway. A police officer pulled his squad car behind me and leisurely sauntered out onto the blacktop.

“License and registration.”

I handed it to him. Squinting down at the paperwork, the officer frowned, then glanced back up at me.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Are you that Jesse James guy everybody’s talking about in the news?” he said. “You
are,
aren’t you?”

“Yep,” I said, forcing a tight, small smile. “Hey.”

“Well, whatcha going so fast for, Jesse James?” The police officer looked pleased with his catch.

“Heading to Tucson.”

“Well, what the heck’s in Tucson?” the officer asked. He waved to his partner, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the cop car, motioning him to come up to my car. “I thought you were a Hollywood guy.”

“I’m . . .” I shrugged, too exhausted to lie. “Look, I’m going to rehab.”

The cop frowned. “You got a drug problem? Let’s see your eyes.”

“I’m not high,” I muttered. I widened my eyes for him to inspect. “I’m just . . . trying to get better.”

The second cop joined us. “Hey, shit. Hey, you know who this is? It’s
Jesse James
!”

“I’ve already ascertained that information,” the arresting officer said. “Okay, listen up, Jesse. Here’s a deal for you. You were going
over a hundred twenty miles an hour, so we can write you a big fat ticket. Or, you can take a picture with us.”

“You won’t give me a ticket?” I asked. “All I have to do is take a picture with you, that’s it?”

“No ticket.”

“Well, all right,” I said, almost cracking up at the absurdity of the situation. I climbed gingerly out of the car. “Just don’t sell it to TMZ or something.”

“Would we do that?” the second cop said. “Come on.”

The first police officer pulled an iPhone out of his pocket. He shoved it toward his partner, then threw his uniformed arm around me, grinning widely.

“Go ahead. Take a picture of me and Jesse.”

We stood on the edge of the blacktop, our arms around each other, as the other cop fumbled with the phone. The morning traffic whizzed by me. Sweating, I tried to swallow.

——

At around eight o’clock in the morning, I arrived in the visitor parking lot at Sierra Tucson. I’d covered over 450 miles in little more than four hours. My hands were shaking.

From the backseat, I grabbed the small bag of clothes I’d hastily thrown together the previous evening, and slammed the door closed behind me.

The air around me was crisp and cool. I looked at the main building: it appeared to have been constructed out of some sort of adobelike material. The whole thing had this Southwestern feel about it, with cacti and brush trees all around. We were in the foothills of a mountain range.

Hesitantly, clutching my bag and my keys tightly in my hands, I walked up the path to the building.

Fuck,
I thought.
Maybe I should turn around and head back. There’s still time. Back into the car. Maybe drive to Mexico . . .

“Hey, there,” came a rasping voice. I turned to look toward a silver-haired woman, about fifty years of age who was smiling at me with a twinkle in her eye. “I’m Fay.”

“Hey,” I said. “Jesse.”

“Jesse?” Fay said warmly, putting her arm around me. “You came to the right place.”

I said nothing, just felt the way her arm hung on me.

“Come on,” she said, taking in the scared look on my face. “Let’s get you inside.”

Suddenly I realized that in my haste to leave home, I hadn’t bothered to let anyone at Sierra Tucson know that I was coming. I had made calls making sure my kids would be cared for, but I’d neglected to phone this center and ask if there was room for me.

“I don’t have a reservation,” I told her. “No one’s expecting me.”

“Shouldn’t be any problem,” Fay said. “I’ll take you to reception and we’ll figure it out.”

We walked down the quiet hallways, passing only a few people, who gave us interested looks then returned to their own business. “Do you work here?” I asked.

“Sure do,” Fay said. “I’m on the kitchen crew.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you might be . . . well . . .”

“One of you?” Fay laughed heartily, the skin around her eyes coming together in friendly crow’s-feet. “I
have
been, you can believe that. Come on, Jesse, I’m going to take you to the folks in charge. We’ll get everything all squared away for you.”