Ten o’clock and I’m nowhere.
I should’ve worked something out by now, but small towns don’t have lots to offer. Big cities got options. All else fails I find a all-night diner and drink coffee ’til sunrise and tough it out the next day. But you got to stay awake. Folks don’t pick up a hitchhiker out of the goodness of their hearts, but for company. Driver opens his door to you and you fall asleep? That ain’t polite.
Missions and flophouses are good if you don’t mind a sermon, or the schizo wino in the next bunk eyeing you for no good reason. If I’m hard up enough to sleep in a flophouse there’s not much I won’t put up with. And probably no one will roll you in the name of Jesus.
Out in the country I can pitch a tent by the road as long as it ain’t raining. If it is raining, I’m fucked anyway. I’m going to get wet, whether I’m hitching a ride or trying to get some sleep. You’d’ve thought people would feel for me standing in the rain and help me out, but forget that. I can’t really blame them. I’d be the same way in a rainstorm, not wanting my car seats getting all wet, though after a few weeks standing for hours every day with my thumb out I might stop for a guy just to get him off his feet, even if I wasn’t in a chatty mood.
These stinking little towns got nothing. Yeah, there was that girl from the Dairy Queen took me home and lied to her folks that I was a friend of hers from Billings. They let me sleep in the back yard in a hammock, figuring any friend of their little girl’s must be okay. She snuck out in the night and let me feel her up but that’s like a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Another time I tried a bench in a city park and got busted by a asshole sheriff all pissed off at his shitty small-town-cop life. He kept me caged up for more than a day before he let me go with a warning not to show my young butt in his town no more. I was the high point of his week. At least I ate.
Ten o’clock, sun down, on a dead street in a three-street town, not even a car to stick out my thumb at.
After twenty minutes I figured I could stand there another twenty or move on. Walking at least you feel like you’re making progress even if the place you end up’s no different from where you started. I went two blocks before I looked back and saw that old guy in his big car. I’m not even sure why I turned around—the car didn’t make a sound. Who knows how long he followed me.
“Where are you headed?” the old guy said. I didn’t know how old. He had dark hair on top and white hair on the sides so I figured fifties, maybe. He was skinny and looked like he spent a lot of time in the sun. He leaned out the car window with his skinny arm hanging down and his sleeve rolled up. He had a tattoo but what it was I couldn’t tell, what with the streetlight thirty feet away and not too bright. I told him I was going to Hayes College and he said “Hop in, I’ll take you there.”
He drove a big brown Lincoln car, new or almost by the looks of it, a seventy-three or seventy-two at the oldest. I never did ride in a Lincoln and he was alone so I figured he was safe. You always got to look out. Like those guys that stopped for me in Indiana, one in front, two in back. That ain’t a good situation. I thanked them and walked away. They looked pissed. I have no problem pissing people off if my ass is on the line.
I tossed my pack in the back seat and climbed in. He said “I’m Roy.” He smiled a little bit and stuck out his bony hand. He didn’t have no iron grip but he wasn’t no pussy, neither. I’m Danny, I said.
He got his big car underway. “I’m going to make a stop, Danny,” he said and he pulled up to a liquor store. “I’m just going for a pack of Pall Malls, Danny.” He went inside and left me in the car. I never been in a car that nice, all leather seats and wood on the dashboard. I wondered what a guy did that he could buy a car like that.
He wasn’t kidding about the Pall Malls because he was only a minute in the store and he came back empty-handed with the cigs in his shirt pocket. “Why do you want to go to Hayes, Danny?” he asked me. He lit up a cigarette and held out the pack to me. I took one and lit up. That’s another rule of mine: a guy picks you up and gives you a gift, you don’t insult him by saying no, even if it’s just a damn cigarette.
I told him I was going to hang at the union and find a place to crash. That trick works almost every time. College boys like to show off and when they see a guy on his own living on the road they want me to know how cool they are and they take me home and toke me up and drop me by the road the next day. One guy even bought me breakfast. It only gets weird once in awhile, like that guy in Binghamton who did naked yoga on his bed. I couldn’t say nothing. His place, his rules.
“That’s going to be a problem, Danny,” he said. It was starting to bug me the way he said Danny every time he opened his mouth, like he was trying to memorize my name out loud. If that was just the way he talked or if he did it for a reason, I couldn’t say, but it wasn’t like a nervous habit, more like he was thinking about it. “Hayes’s summer session doesn’t start until next week. The school’s closed.” That’s not what I heard, I said, but he just said “Oh, yes, Danny, there’s no one there, but Carver College in Ashfield started their summer session this week.” I asked him where Ashfield was and he said “Forty miles north. I can take you there.”
I thought that was damned accommodating of him and wondered if maybe he didn’t have something else in mind but so far I didn’t see no red flags so I said all right, let’s go.
We weren’t two miles out of town before he reached under his seat and grabbed a bottle. He handed it to me and said “Take the cap off that for me, would you, Danny?” It was a pint bottle of Crown Royal whisky which I always heard was good stuff though I never had it myself. He took a good swallow and gave me back the bottle and I did the same. I guess it was pretty good but not much different from what I had before. There wasn’t no liquor in my house growing up, so when I lit out I went kind of wild at first and drank a lot, but I didn’t like it much. After a couple months I tapered off naturally ’til I only had a drink now and then when it got offered. Drunks I guess can’t quit unless they stop altogether and even then it’s a chore to stay off it. I never understood that, why a guy couldn’t just make up his mind and quit. Anyway, I never drank enough to know good liquor from bad.
“I had a whole evening planned out, Danny, but it fell through,” Roy said. Sorry to hear that, I said, but didn’t ask for details. I didn’t have to. When someone gets talking, I just let them talk.
“I was going to meet this queer for a blow job but he never showed up. Have you ever been blown by a queer, Danny?” I said right away no, that’s not my thing. He said, “You don’t want to blow him, Danny, but there’s nothing wrong with getting blown by a queer. It feels just the same as a woman.” I didn’t say nothing more. I figured wherever this conversation was going, he would take it there.
“Are you hung pretty good, Danny?” he said. I told him just average, I guess, but I never told him I had no idea because I never measured and I didn’t know what counted for big anyway. He must’ve figured he crossed a line because he didn’t say nothing for about ten minutes. He took another drink and passed the bottle and I took a drink, too, bigger than the last one.
He said, “You know, Danny, you’re taking a chance at Carver College. I can take you there but why don’t you stay at my place tonight? I have a big play room.” Thanks, I said, but I think I’ll stick with the plan. I knew that was weird ’cause folks just don’t invite me to their houses. There was a trucker in Canada I rode with for three days and he put me up but you get to know someone in that length of time. I met Roy a half-hour ago. The trucker said to me “You got a good head on you,” not “How’re you hung?” I didn’t think Roy meant me no harm but I sure didn’t want to spend the night in his play room. Roy, I said, you can let me out here.
I been come on to before. It never came to nothing. I got stuck once in Idaho and passed the time with a guy who told me he went home with a driver but he never had no intention of doing nothing. He was laughing about how he beat up the driver and stole his money and his watch and figured there was nothing wrong with that because he was a queer. I didn’t laugh but I didn’t tell him neither that I thought that sucked and I always felt bad I didn’t say nothing. My folks didn’t talk much about queers but they didn’t make no secret that they thought it was sinful what they did. They didn’t know any queers that I knew of, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t either as a kid, but out on the highway some gave me rides and they didn’t seem no different from me. Hell, I wouldn’t’ve known even if they hadn’t said something. When guys came on to me I politely said no and most times they’re so grateful just to be treated like a human fucking being they go out of their way for me.
I didn’t think Roy was going to take no for an answer.
“What?” he said, “That’s crazy. It’s the middle of nowhere! The nearest house is miles away. And we’re just fifteen minutes from my place. I’ve got plenty of room, Danny.” Then he did something no one ever done to me. He reached over and put his hand on my leg. “Come on, Danny,” he said, “we’ll have fun.”
He had a pretty good grip on my thigh and I grabbed his arm but I didn’t pull him off me. It didn’t seem too safe to get in a tussle while Roy was driving. Instead I said take your hand off my leg, please, and I figured he’d let go or at least slow down but he didn’t do neither one. He started grabbing for my crotch at the same time he hit the gas. I said Roy, slow down and get your hand off me, but he leaned over and tried to stick his hand down my pants. I pulled away and the car drifted onto the shoulder of the road.
There’s lots of time between rides I spend thinking about things, like where am I going to sleep tonight, and Jesus, I’m hungry, and what the hell am I doing out here, why don’t I stay in one place and get a job? I think about how my folks raised me to be religious and maybe there’s something to that, though I never saw the point of it. But it made me try to be a good man and treat other people right so long as they treat me right, even if all the God and devil stuff didn’t seem sensible. I should’ve at least pretended to buy into that, when my folks got so down on me for being stubborn and down on themselves for not getting to me that I couldn’t stand it no more and had to get out on my own. Still, I think about how worried they are about me being on the road and the stories they heard about pervs picking up young boys and taking advantage. I must’ve told them a hundred times not to worry, those stories are mostly exaggeration and anyway I can take care of myself. But I also thought through what I would do if it ever happened to me and I had a move I practiced a million times in my head, in every car I ever rode, but I never had to use it.
I grabbed the handle of the door and opened it. I pushed out just when the car left the road.
It worked out way better than I had a right to expect. The ground was grassy and sloped away from the road in a way that slowed me down gradual. I knew I would feel it the next day but I was still in one piece and able to walk with nothing broken. Roy’s car plowed into a tree. I didn’t hear the crash but I figured I might’ve if I wasn’t rolling along the ground at forty miles an hour.
I made it to the car. The driver’s window was open and the overhead light was on so I could see pretty good. I never did see a guy with a broken neck before but Roy’s was for sure. And I could see the tattoo on his arm. It said Spiritus Contra Spiritum which didn’t mean nothing to me. He wasn’t moving and I looked at him ten minutes or more until the light flickered out.
The road where we were there wasn’t no cars on, and none passed the whole time I was looking at Roy. I got my pack out of the car and sat on the ground, thinking, what now? for another ten minutes, and then another ten, and not a car came by. I couldn’t think of no options and there wasn’t nothing I could do for Roy, so I headed back up to the road.
Eleven o’clock and I’m nowhere.
I was near a side road a half mile or so from a house with a light on. When I got closer I heard music and I saw a guy through the window who looked like he was painting his porch. I tapped on the door. I must’ve looked pretty ragged and he looked astonished to see a guy on his porch out in the country in the middle of the night. I’m passing through, I said, can I pitch my tent in your yard?
Folks generally want to think good of others as far as I can tell. That’s my philosophy and if nobody pricks me off they won’t get no grief from me. If they do me wrong I won’t have nothing more to do with them and I won’t give a shit if they drop dead. But the next guy always gets the benefit of the doubt. Whether it’s my nature or my upbringing I don’t think matters but I don’t blame folks for others’ fuck ups. I know I was asking the guy on the porch a favor and he didn’t know me from Adam, but if it was me I wouldn’t’ve turned down a stranger who just wanted a spot in the yard for the night. I didn’t know if he thought like me or was generally suspicious.
He looked me over. I think he smiled a little bit. “What’s your name?” he said. Danny, I told him.
“Danny,” he said. “Well, Danny, no need for that. You can stay inside. I’ve got plenty of room—Danny.”
* * *