We pulled into a truck stop stocked with all you could hope for: a Taco Bell and KFC; sandwiches in hard plastic; Ms. Pacman and Galaga; wall-mounted payphones; folding chairs facing CNN. Ashtrays overflowing. Reek of smoke and B.O.
Cliff gassed up the van, and Rachel and I wandered into the convenience store, where we fondled souvenir shot glasses and spoons stamped with the star of Texas, potholders in the shape of Texas. Rachel slipped a refrigerator magnet into the pocket of her cut-offs.
“I saw that,” a man with a full beard of red, white, and brown said. He wore an Army surplus jacket and jeans in the heat. He looked strung-out, used up. I identified him immediately as a Vietnam Vet.
“Saw what?” Rachel asked.
He appraised us the way men do, up and down, picturing us naked, I supposed, and taking his time about it. “Where you girls headed?”
“West.” Rachel picked up a deck of cards decorated with cowboys riding broncos.
“California?”
“That’s West,” I said, “last I checked.”
“You in that van?” He pointed his thumb at the Microbus. It was late afternoon, wisps of clouds in the distance, tails like tentacles. Through the window I could see Cliff checking out his hair in the sideview mirror, his curls long and wild. Untamable.
Rachel and I locked arms and marched to the bathroom, ignoring both the question and the creep, who, when we emerged from the store, was out talking to Cliff.
“If you see the lights blinking,” the man said, “that means trouble.”
“Got it.”
“You’ll stop, right? Help a brother out?”
“No sweat.” Cliff removed the nozzle from the tank.
The man climbed into the passenger side of a Volvo idling nearby. Cliff went inside to pay, came back with three egg salad sandwiches, and we all convoyed onto the frontage road.
“What’d he want?” I stacked the sandwiches in our Styrofoam cooler for later.
“Their car broke down. Maybe it’s fixed, but he wants us to follow him just in case.”
“I call bullshit,” Rachel said, and as soon as we hit the highway, the Volvo’s lights flashed, horn honked.
“Keep going,” I said.
“No man left behind.” Cliff pulled over. “It’s the rule of the road.”
“Since when do you follow rules?”
“Chill out, darlin,” Cliff said. “He’s cool.”
Rachel and I waited in the van while Cliff met the guy on the strip of dead grass beside the shoulder.
“I don’t want that old man with us,” Rachel said. “Bad vibes.”
“Cliff doesn’t care.”
“We live here too.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll do what he wants.”
The door slid open, and the stranger army-crawled across our foam mattress.
“This is more like it,” he said. “Name’s Jim.”
“What’s wrong with your car?” Rachel asked.
“I was just hitching a ride.” Jim plopped onto the floor, legs spread, hands on knees, straggly hair resting on his shoulders. “Not my vehicle. Not my problem.”
The Volvo merged onto the highway and zoomed away.
“Seems to be running okay.”
“Way I see it,” Jim aimed his beard at Cliff, “Cliffy here could use my help. He’s got one more chick than he can handle.”
“Hey,” Cliff said, “I’m a big boy.”
Jim took the lid off the cooler, grabbed and unwrapped an egg sandwich, and bit into it. “Got any beer?”
“No,” Rachel and I said in unison.
“Next exit we’re getting some. My treat.”
Rachel rummaged in her beaded cat bag, pulled out a paperback, and opened to a dogeared page. I understood she wanted to escape into the book, live somewhere else for a minute, but Cliff wouldn’t let her.
“Story time,” he called from the driver’s seat. “Fill us in on where we are so far, in case Jim hasn’t read it before.”
“Read what?” Jim asked.
“Lolita,” I said. “Humbert Humbert is in love with her.”
“And he seduced and married her mother,” Rachel continued, “who’s just read his diary and knows everything. She runs out of the house in despair, gets hit by a car, and dies.”
“I’ve always thought that was a most convenient plot point,” Cliff said.
I lit a Camel Light, glad we were that far into the book. I thought the action really picked up when Humbert and Lo hit the road, sleeping and screwing in cheap midcentury motels, the trip tawdry and salacious, full of gifts and bribes.
Rachel read in a kindergarten teacher’s voice: Heart, head—everything. Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer.
Jim sat in silence. Mouth open. Incredulous.
“Just one word?” he said. “Over and over?”
Rachel closed the book, finger holding her place. “This is a classic.”
“It’s about obsession.”
“And America.”
“The New World.”
“I don’t give a shit what it’s about. It can be Jane Fonda getting gangbanged by a bunch of gooks for all I care. Who reads on a road trip?” He took a bite of the sandwich, egg stuck to his beard. “Who the fuck even reads?”
“Smart people.”
“Cool people.”
“There’s sex in it,” I said.
“I’d rather do it than read about it.”
“If you don’t like our company,” Rachel said, “you can leave.”
“You three girls think you can make me?”
“Real mature,” Rachel said. “What are you, twelve?”
“I’ve been to Nam, missy,” he said. “I’ve killed people.”
“Oh, my god,” Rachel said. “I’m so sick of hearing about Vietnam. It’s been ten years, man. Get over it.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about what went down over there.”
“I know the average age of the combat soldier was nineteen,” I said.
“I remember the Fall of Saigon,” Cliff said. “1975. I’d just turned ten.”
“Not one damn thing.”
“Maybe you should’ve stayed in the Volvo,” said Rachel.
“Safest car there is.”
“Long as we get beer, I’m cool.” Jim fished a Coke from the cooler, and I had a flash of him before the war. Young and full of promise. Not yet a witness to atrocity. Not yet a murderer. Drafted, with no reason to defer and no means to flee to Canada. No doctor to claim he had bone spurs. No choice but to fight.
He gestured towards Rachel with his can of Coke. “Keep going, sweetheart. I won’t stop you.”
Rachel read a paragraph, but Jim made it hard to concentrate. He leaned forward, eyes and mouth agape, pretending to hang on the words. Rachel gave up, and we stopped at the next exit where Jim bought a case of Milwaukee’s Best. We all cracked open cans, including Cliff. No one worried about drinking and driving back then. Laws were lax; cops didn’t care. MADD was just getting started.
Rachel lifted her beer. “To Lolita,” she said. “A survivor.”
“An icon,” I added.
“A nymphette,” said Cliff.
We drank. Jim downed his in one go and grabbed another. We faced the sun, the colors orange and pink like the hook-rug I made in seventh grade for my mom’s birthday. It hung in the dining room when I ran off with Cliff, kept on collecting dust until Mom died thirty years later and I finally tossed it.
I moved to the front seat and put my feet on the dash. “Roadkill.” I sat up and pointed. “Pull over.”
“Not again.”
“Pretty please?”
Cliff curled his pouty lip and grumbled under his breath, but he pulled over.
“Why we stopping?” Jim asked.
“They want to photograph the dead thing,” Rachel said.
“What the fuck for?”
“Art,” I said. “It’s for art.”
“Ain’t no art in death,” Jim said. “Believe you me.”
Cliff and I approached the animal, another doe, dried-up, viscera picked clean by carrion birds. Skin covered her rib cage like a threadbare blanket; bones poked out. Her legs were stiff and in a running position, spindly, delicate, and ending in black hooves like ankle booties.
“That hide would make a good vest,” Cliff said. “Real leather.”
“Do they make clothes out of deer?”
“Indians did.” Cliff bent to get a closer look. “They used every part of the animal.” He reached his hand out. “Or is that a myth?”
“Don’t touch it.”
Cliff grabbed a hoof and shook. Puffs of dust rose into the dusk, and he shrieked.
“I asked you not to do that.”
“That deer gave its life for progress. Democracy. The greater good.” Cliff stood. “He was just trying to cross the road.”
“It’s a girl deer.” I focused the camera, took a few shots. “Don’t call it a he.”
“That’s not the point. The point is the deer got smeared. Girl. Boy. Doesn’t matter.”
Cliff pulled me in for a hug, stroked my back and told me he loved me. We kissed and pressed ourselves against each other in sudden passion.
“Why’d you pick up Jim?” I asked.
“I thought it’d be fun.” He grabbed my hair. “Pass the time on the road.”
“He’s a jerk-off.”
“You’ll get used to it.” Cliff licked my cheek.
I told him he was gross and wiped my cheek with the back of my hand.
The sliding door was open back at the van. Jim sat with his legs dangling out, two crushed beer cans under his feet.
“What took you guys so long?” Rachel asked.
“We had to honor the deer,” Cliff said.
Rachel opened her pocketknife and cleaned the edge of it with her Black Flag t-shirt, the classic one with four vertical bars. “Saw you making out.”
“Robin’s my girl. I can kiss her whenever I want.”
“What if she doesn’t want to kiss you?”
“Does not compute.” Cliff moved like the robot from Lost in Space. I didn’t say anything.
“I was just telling Rachel here about this party I went to,” Jim said.
We took the same seats as before. Cliff put the van in gear and eased back onto the highway. “Yeah?” he said. “I’ve been to some parties too.”
“Not like this one, brother. A trucker I’d been riding with took me. A good ole Southern boy. We didn’t fight once. Agreed on everything. Politics, God, guns, pussy.”
I moved next to Rachel in the back bench seat.
“It was at an old gas station in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt,” he continued. “Must’ve been a dozen semis, hundreds of bikers.”
“Like Sturgis.”
“Way cooler than Sturgis on account of this was secret. Someone stuck a spoon up my nose, and I went off. Booze everywhere. Girls dancing with their titties out.” He took a pull of beer and his eyes watered at the memory. “Don’t suppose you ever been to a party like that.” He squinted at Rachel. “Maybe read about it in one of your books?”
Jim grabbed another beer. I tried to send leave-us-alone missiles through my eyeballs and into his heart, but he was oblivious.
“You girls’d be prettier if you fixed yourself up a bit. Put on some make-up. Combed your hair.” Jim pointed at me. “And what’s with that dress? Hiding what the good Lord gave you.”
The black dress in question hung past my knees, two sizes too big with a drop waist and a droopy pocket over the breast. Jim reached over and crooked his finger around the collar, pulled the fabric down to expose my shoulder.
“Let go of me.” I scooched away from him, but he grabbed my wrist.
“We gonna party tonight, right?” His breath stank of beer and eggs.
Rachel kicked his hip with her cowboy boot. “Get off her, fucker.”
He released me and turned to Rachel. “Don’t you start.”
The van pulled over, stopped short, and a host of chemicals surged through me, adrenaline, fear, like when the acid first hits your system. You don’t have to ask your friend if they feel anything, and you can stop worrying you’ve been ripped off. There’s no doubt you’re tripping.
The door opened, letting in the humidity and the night. Cliff stood there, hands in fists at his sides, chest concave, shoulders slumped. The classic ninety-eight-pound weakling.
“Ride’s over,” he said.
“C’mon, man. It’s dark as hell.”
Frogs sang in a nearby pond or ditch, their chorus like bleating goats, a choir of demons.
“Get out,” Rachel yelled.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you. Cliffy, tell your women to relax.”
I kicked at Jim with the cloth slipper I’d bought in Chinatown before we left. He grabbed my foot, squeezed the toes hard. “I’ll go.” His crazy eyes beamed into mine. “But when you’re through playing with these two little Jews, look for me. I’m all over the fucking highway. I’m king of the road.”
He let go of my foot and punched his fist through the Styrofoam cooler, took two beers, and called Cliff a faggot on his way out.
Cliff hopped in, pulled the door closed, and locked it.
“Why would he say that?” I asked. “How could he know?”
“They always know,” Rachel said. “It’s like second sight.”
“What a Nazi.”
“A soldier.”
Jim knocked on the van window. I gave him the finger and he blew me a kiss.
“Drive.” Rachel flopped on the foam mattress, flat on her back. “I hate everybody.”
I peered out the back curtains. Jim hunkered on the shoulder’s gravel, surrounded by night, stars like fireworks. Like bombs. A vision shimmered behind him: a naked girl running barefoot, arms outstretched and mouth open in a wail that pierced the veil that night and pierces it still, all these years later.
I smelled gasoline. I smelled lollipops. The war was over. The war had just begun. I closed the curtains, but napalm girl’s afterimage chased us all the way west.