[LOBO]
othing deepens bonds like a family vacation.“Hey baby,” I says into the cellphone.
”Where are you?” Terri crackles over the tiny speaker.
“Wyoming, I think.” I look around for visual clues. While it’s definitely flat wide-open sprawl, there is an ever-diminishing hint of green, and a subtle rise in the highway. “Maybe Nebraska,” I concede, cutting the engine. "Are you guys bonding yet?"
"You wouldn't believe it," says Terri.
I open the car door, and the initial stretching is simultaneously painful and strangely gratifying -but all this is mitigated by a sudden cold burst of rainy wind I’m poorly dressed for.
“I’ll know more in a minute," I shivers. "Feel like helping me do some navigation?”
”Sure. Hang on. I’ll pull up Mapquest.”
The size of these truck stops never ceases to amaze me. Indeed I’ve been in smaller cities. Crossing the vast and icy parking lot under the soft pulse of pop music (Republica maybe?), I can feel the throb of a thousand idling diesel engines under my feet. Throwing the glass door wide, the delightful rush of heat overtakes me -and as an afterthought I look back at the distant car.
It looks as if it has been to war.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, still shivering. As someone with a lot of experience traveling, I’m typically a bit psycho about a given vehicle’s overall condition. But this trip was wholly unanticipated … and the car and I have just endured some of the worst weather I’ve ever encountered; lulled into a false sense of So-Cal weather, taking this trip in February was spectacularly, well, dumb.
”What?”
“Nothing baby,” I says.
“Okay,” she says distractedly. ”I’ve got the site up. What do you need?”
Turning to face the inside of the travel center, I squint as my sleep-deprived eyes are assaulted by the intense wash of a well-lit reception area and the screaming colors of a billion products. “Well, they’re saying I need chains once I get past Salt Lake City. This means those storms are even worse than when I came in. If I can avoid I-80, I think it would be a good idea.”
I should buy a map. There’s really no excuse not to have one really, but the route –up until this point- was pretty straightforward.
”You can drop down to I-25 to I-40 in Cheyenne,” Terri offers. ”But I don’t know how much better off you are on that route. Once past Las Vegas, you’ll have the Tehachapi Mountains.”
Absently, I walk up to a turnstile display of maps and spin through them. Anything near a highway –gas, food, whatever- is just simply rape in regard to price, and I’m not shocked to find that the good maps, the ones I could use, were around $20.
I'm skeptical. “Can the Tehachapi Mountains really be that much worse than Donner Summit?”
”Actually yes,” she replies. ”We go skiing there. Why don’t you give me a few minutes while I check the weather reports? I’ll call you right back.”
And I'm thinking maybe she’s right, you know? I mean who has ever heard of anything bad happening on Donner Pass?
“Okay,” I says. “Love you.”
”Love you too. Be careful.”
“Hey, it’s me,” I remind in my best Han Solo.
“I know,” she replies. “Be more careful than that.”
“I promise.”
Clicking the cellphone to my belt, I approach a group of largish, grubby looking guys I presume to be truck drivers.
“Hey! You! Where the fuck am I?” I ask diplomatically.
Eyes behind a deep beard blink at me quizzically.
“Excuse me?” the beard says.
“This dump,” I says, gesturing liberally around. “Where the hell is it?”
The beard, up above a mountainous figure of a man, peers at his friends curiously. Casually setting an item he was checking out –a power converter I think- down on the shelf, he guffaws. “You can’t be much of a driver if you doesn’t know where you is.”
It occurs to me that this guy is assuming –based on my unwashed, unshaven appearance- that I’m a truck driver too. And before I know it, I’m staring eye-level into his massive chest while his buddies flank my sides.
Suddenly, I feel like I’m standing in a human well.
“Well I’m good enough a driver to know,” I says, pointing at a small congregation of rolled boogers attached to his considerable sternum, “That you should probably go ahead and eat those if you’re too cheap to buy Kleenex.”
The sternum right laughs. “Aw man, Bandit. That’s gross!”
The beard –‘Bandit’ apparently- glowers. “Shut the fuck up,” he says to his pal.
“Yeah buddy,” I says into Sternum Left. “Shut the fuck up. This is between me ‘an Bad-Knit here.”
“That's Bandit, driver. Where are you headed?”
“Southern California,” I says.
Bandit whistles. “Jesus Christ. You’re shitting me.”
“Nope,” I says to the heaving chest.
“Well you ain’t going today,” he says. “The weather station says all westbound travel is nothing but storms. We’re stuck too.”
“Yeah well you guys maybe,” I says, thinking of Terri and the kids. “But I gotta roll.”
“That’s fucking suicide,” says the Sternum Left.
“It’s important,” I reply
“What’re ya hauling?” asks Bandit.
“Eh,” I says, thinking fast. “Emergency supplies. For Haiti.”
“Fer who?” asks Sternum Right.
“Haiti, ya dumb fuck,” says Bandit. “They just had some major earthquake or somethin.”
“Exactly,” I says. "Now if you gentlemen would be so kind as to-"
“I thought you said you was goin to Southern California?” Sternum Left asks.
“I am,” I says with a resolved sigh. “Jesus Christmas. I would’ve thought truck drivers would know a little something about geography. I need to cross the border in So-Cal to Mexico, where my load gets airlifted to Haiti by the National guard.”
Bandit whistles. “So this is a government job?”
“It’s exactly a government job, Nitwit.”
“That’s ‘Bandit’.”
My phone rings “Yeah whatever,” I says, unclipping the phone from my belt. “This is going to be my boss. Now are you guys going to give me some directions, or are you going to obstruct my load, and thusly cause an issue of National Security? ‘Cuz if it’s the latter, I wouldn’t want to be you. I mean everybody knows Obama hates white people … he’ll have you assholes stuffed into a wood chipper.” I click ‘Answer’ on my phone quickly.
“Hello?” I says into the phone.
”Hi baby,” says Terri.
“Yes sir.” I says.
"What?" she says.
“No sir,” I trail into the call. “I’ve just found some resistance. It seems some local truck drivers have a problem with our humanitarian efforts in Haiti-”
“Hey!” Bandit objects.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” demands Terri.
“Yes sir,” I says into the phone. Looking Bandit square in the beard, I put the phone to my chest to muffle it.
“Bandwidth.”
“Yes,” Bandit replies.
-the fact that he does not correct does not escape me.
I pause. “Have you ever seen someone thrown into a wood chipper?”
“I seen it once,” says Sternum Left.
Needless to say, we all turn to Sternum Left.
Sternum Left shrugs. “I used to work at a Starbucks.”
“Well you all should know,” I says. “That the Obama Administration only puts white people in the wood chipper feet-first.” Finding the slowly-whirling carosel of heated hot dogs (obligatory to any truck driver ‘travel center’), I stare thoughtfully. “That means you’re alive while your legs are ripped apart by rusted, dull, fast-moving steel. And when it gets to the balls, oh man. I hear even Obama admits it's hard to get those screams out of your head ... "
Sternum Right wobbles noisily against a Pringles display, and crashes noisily on the grimy bleached linoleum in a full-blown faint. During the spectacle, I lift the phone from my chest to see if Terri is still on the line.
"-so help me God I’ll-!"
Even as Sternum Right hits the floor, I replace the phone to my breast.
“So what’s it gonna be Rammit?” I inquire coolly.
“Hey, fuck off,” says Bandit. His raised hands, I observe, are the size of my head. Like bear paws. “I just needed a new converter. I didn’t have nothing to do with this Haiti shit!”
“I didn’t think so,” I says, watching Sternum Left -who has rushed to the aide of the now-horizontal Sternum Right. “I suggest you citizens carry on.”
As an alarmed truck stop cashier approaches, I put the phone back to my ear.
“Baby?”
”What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing baby,” I says, adding quickly. “Why do you ask?”
The alarmed cashier, an overweight, acne-riddled woman in her mid-forties, scowled at her toppled Pringles display.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“I can’t find the coffee,” I says.
