Have you ever had a conversation truly free of consequence?
People pick up hitchhikers because they feel sorry for them standing in the rain, the blowing snow, the bitter cold, the cruel sun; because they’re bored; because they’re shitfaced and need somebody to grab the wheel; because they want to call another person home to Jesus; because they need somebody to keep them awake; because they’re people who recognize that another human’s miles of need don’t disappear just because they’re no longer in the mirror.
Hitchhiking is getting involved for a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, a thousand miles with a person you would never know were it not for happenstance, luck and a shared fate. At the end of the minutes and miles, parting will happen and there will be no last names. Conversations are rattle-mouth stupid, deeply personal, ego-laden, spellbinding, dull, giggly and high, slurred and drunk, cries of despair so wrenching a driver pulls his longnose Peterbilt onto the shoulder to sob out his loss, all entirely free of consequence, no debt to upbringing, environment or occasion. And no shared future.
Once in a while there is silence, no conversation at all, the driver doing right and nothing more.
Everybody — doctors, cowboys, housewives, tie-dye hippies, traveling salesmen – everybody picks up hitchhikers (except lawyers, lawyers never pick up hitchhikers). They drive shiny Cadillacs, rusted Beetles and loaded Freightliners. They pull over slowly and cautiously or explode the brakes and skid smoking tires onto the shoulder, flashing right red invitation. Through the open passenger window, cautious greeting, assessing, judging, sometimes bartering (windshield sticker from the day, “Ass, Grass or Gas, Nobody Rides for Free”). And, of course, the questions that determine the future: “Where are you going?” and “Where are you going?”
Standing thumb out, back to the horizon, watching fate motor toward you and wondering whether this one or that one will be your ride into the future is hot, cold, wet, frustrating, boring, infuriating, and, ultimately, liberating having cast off the bonds and obligations of dollars and schedules, trading them for the largess of humanity, offering in exchange for a flick of the turn indicator and nudge of the wide pedal, entertainment, companionship, sated curiosity, the joy of giving, bread broken and shared, and maybe, just maybe, a damn good story.
Of course, there’s risk. For everybody. People die out there.
It was December, 1974 and I was living in Solana Beach, California. I’d joined the Army in October but wasn’t going on active duty until April. I’d been trimming trees and painting houses since I’d graduated from high school in June and I was broke. My mother had moved to Minnesota and I thought I’d spend Christmas at her house, maybe get something to eat while I was there.
Standing in the dark on an onramp to northbound Interstate 15 in Barstow, a fifties Chevy truck braked onto the shoulder, Gold’s Plumbing stenciled on the blue door in chipped and faded gold paint. The window stayed closed and I pushed the button on the door handle and the door swung open and the guy in the passenger seat fell out of the truck into my arms. I caught him and the guy driving, young guy, grabbed his sweatshirt, and between the two of us we wrestled him upright onto the seat, “Kid brother, fell asleep. Where you headed?”
“Minnesota.”
“Louisville. Money for gas?”
I had twenty on me, I could spare a couple of bucks for a good ride and part way to Kentucky was a good ride. I nodded, “I can help out,” and threw my bag in the back of the truck, pushed the kid into the middle of the seat and climbed in.
“Skeet.” He nodded his head toward the kid, “Eddy,”
I reached across and shook hands with Skeet. Eddy reached out his hand and I took it, his fingers were cold and limp and didn’t return my grip. When he pulled the hand back, he let his body slump against me and laid his head on my shoulder.
Rumbling up the freeway at fifty miles an hour, Skeet asked Eddy if he wanted a cigarette. He didn’t wait for an answer; he lit a Kool and handed it to him, Eddy reached for it and dropped it. It was glowing on the floor between our feet and I picked it up, took his hand and wedged it between two fingers. His head didn’t move against my shoulder when he put the cigarette to his mouth and took a pull. Skeet offered me the pack and I took one, too. Skeet had the truck heater on high and the windows closed. The air in the cab was a hot, thick fog. It was a good ride.
We stopped for gas just off the freeway, seems like I remember it being a Texaco. Under the fluorescent lights, I got a look at the two of them. Skeet looked tired. Standing next to the truck pumping leaded regular, his eyes were a faded grey-green, his skin in the flickering blue light yellow and dry like he hadn’t slept in a long time. His hand on the nozzle was big for his body and muscly and stained with what looked like mud or dirt. His upper lip was smashed and scabbed black.
Eddy, he stayed in the truck, his head leaned back against the rear window. Standing next to the open door, I could see that his left eye was scabbed and crusted with pus and sticking out in a swollen lump. Below his eye, the side of his face hung limp like the bones had been smashed and what was left was pulpy flesh held up by sagging black and purple skin. His right eye was open looking back at me. He was smoking another Kool; when he took it out of his mouth, he crooked the fingers holding the cigarette to motion me close and I leaned in so my ear was near his mouth. “Out of the ballpark,” he whispered so I could barely hear him. I stepped back in time to see the lips on right side of his mouth twitch upwards for just a flash like he was trying to smile.
Skeet saw me talking to him, “He’s okay, he’s going to be fine.”
“How old are you guys?”
“Thirteen. I’m fifteen.”
“What’s in Louisville?”
The handle of the nozzle clanked. Skeet banged it back on the pump and walked around to the passenger door, “Come on, Eddy, let’s take a piss.” Eddy put his arm around Skeet’s neck. When he tried to stand, his legs wobbled and buckled like he couldn’t control them. Skeet grabbed his belt and mostly carried him into the gas station. I leaned on the truck and smoked my cigarette.
Back in the cab, Eddy asleep on my shoulder, I asked Skeet what happened.
“The old man was drunk and beating on me. I heard Eddy yelling at him to stop and when he didn’t, I guess Eddy grabbed his slugger and came up behind him and hit him, hit him so hard I could hear the hollow crack of it and his blood sprayed on my face and the wall. The old man turned around like it was nothing, like he hadn’t been hit, grabbed the bat and hit Eddy in the face with it. Eddy went over backwards and the old man dropped the bat and stood there staring at him lying on the floor bleeding and not moving. I picked up the bat and hit him in the back of the head with it and kept hitting him until he fell on his face on the floor and quit moving. I took his keys and wallet and we got in the truck.”
Two o’clock in the morning, we rolled into Las Vegas, got off the freeway and drove around looking for a gas station. We were headed back out of town when Skeet ran a yellow and a block later the red lights lit up behind us, “Fuck, Rollers. Eddy, we ain’t going back, don’t worry about it.”
The cop came up to the window and asked Skeet for his driver’s license, the red lights bouncing off the windshield and flickering through the cab. When Skeet told him all he had was a permit, the cop told us to get out and stand on the sidewalk.
“Let’s see some IDs, boys.”
I handed over my license, “I’m just a hitchhiker,” I told him. He ignored me.
Skeet had his arm around Eddy holding him up. “Let’s see some ID, kid.” The cop held his light up to Eddy’s face, “Holy God, what in hell happened to you?”
“He fell and banged his face. He’s okay, he’s fine.”
“Where you boys from?”
“California. We’re going Kentucky to live with our mom.”
“Whose truck is that?”
“It’s our dad’s company truck. He works for Gold’s.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
He fiddled his gun belt for a while just looking at us then he said to me, “You, over here.”
He stood with his back to Skeet and Eddy tapping my driver’s license against his flashlight, tap, tap, “I’m off in a few minutes and I don’t want to deal with this shit. So, here’s what we’re going to do; I’m going to get in my car and you and those two boys are going to get in that truck. You’re the only one with a driver’s license so you’re going to drive. You’re going to go straight for three stoplights, you’re going to take a left at the third one, you’ll see signs for the interstate. I want you to get on 15 and drive until you pass a sign for the Las Vegas city limits. Once you’re out of my town, I don’t care what you do. But if I see you again, you’re going to jail, all of you. I’m going to follow you just in case you get lost.” Tap. He handed me my license.
I got behind the wheel and turned the key and pushed the starter pedal, the truck coughed and fired up. I squashed the clutch, ground a gear dropping it into second, first gear was a granny gear in those trucks, and we rolled down the street, took a left where he told me to and got on the freeway. The cop didn’t follow us up the ramp.
The sun was coming up when we stopped for gas, we’d been in Utah for a while. Skeet shook Eddy, asked him if he needed to take a leak. Eddy didn’t move, “He’s asleep,” Skeet said and got out and filled the truck with gas and I gave him ten bucks. From Utah, there are a couple of routes across the Rockies, Interstate 70 through Denver or Interstate 80 through Salt Lake City. Skeet had told me they were planning to take the southern route through Denver. I’d told him then that either route worked for me, that it didn’t matter. Now it mattered and I told him I was going north through Salt Lake.
Interstates 15 and 70 come together in a desert on the western slope, desolate, gray, enormous and, other than long curving slabs of interstate concrete and the occasional tiny truck or car, empty of humanity. Skeet pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the eastbound 70 exit. As I was getting out, Eddy slumped toward me, his good eye closed, his eye lashes resting on the pale, young-child skin of his cheek. I touched his neck, feeling for a pulse. His skin was cold and after a minute I said, “Skeet, I can’t feel his heartbeat.”
“He’s still sleeping. Push him over here so I can hold him.” We laid him on his back so his head rested on Skeet’s lap and I closed the door. As I grabbed my backpack, I saw a baseball bat lying in the bed of the truck; it was in two pieces, split longways starting at the label and running through the barrel, the long, straight grain exposed by the split a pure and shocking white against the stains.
I shouldered my pack and walked back down the ramp toward northbound 15. As I walked, I kept looking over my shoulder. The truck never moved.
