Published September 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 8

Route 9

by Quinten Collier
Illustrations by Ross Evertson

Behind the rehab clinic and directly across the street from the work release compound, right on the dividing line between “Historic” Downtown Grand Junction with its fortress-like courthouses, octogenarian cottages and shop windows filled with irrelevancies, there lies the mute, oppressive warehouse atmosphere of the barren industrial district. Here, with the police station not a block away, amidst the street-hardened ex-cons and addicts, many with the famished eyes of those who have seen so much corrosion of the mind, body and soul they have ceased to notice anything else, with bestial tattoos like old war maps encircling their arms; here, in the desert heat that erodes the sidewalks, where 7th Street and South Avenue intersect, here is where a person looking to take the GVT (Grand Valley Transit) will find the main transfer point for busses.

I usually take the Route 9 to Clifton, a section of Mesa County composed of undernourished, deteriorating suburban neighborhoods, clustered trailer parks and stucco shopping plazas eaten by the sun. But I don’t often come to the transfer point. I did today just to see what it was like.