Jed

Jed was on the open road once again. He had never done this before outside his hometown of Pocatello. Thumbing a ride in unfamiliar surroundings was a bit different. When he was hitchhiking it seemed a particular mindset came upon him. A sort of point-A-to-point-B way of thinking, but this trip was more like point-A-to-point-Z and he was braving points B through Y in between. Starting out from Oregon, he was now in northern California, and still had Nevada and Utah to cross before making it back to Idaho. The long route seemed safer than crossing the high plains desert between Oregon and Idaho.
He’d always heard Arcata had a bunch of hippies, and although he caught a familiar whiff of cannabis once or twice, there were still no dreadlocked deadheads to be seen panhandling or busting out a drum-pulse. It must’ve been four-twenty. Maybe wishful thinking had him imagining smells. Jed had no more tobacco left, just the cut corner zigzags he used to roll his own cigarettes. You’d be surprised how many butts with drags left behind you’d find off to the side of the road. Sometimes long, full ones accidentally dropped in a puddle only to dry over time and be left lying there for him to smoke. It was a nasty habit anyway, how could it be that much nastier to ground-score free smokes? It provided something to do in his walk to the highway from the beach.
There was little light left so Jed kept moving, carrying a stick and his journal. Spending the night on the beach was illegal and there were signs posted to declare the law for wayfarers past and present. Besides, Merrit was a bit too creepy and lawless to travel with any longer. Jed was still shaking off the claustrophobia from being in his truck for the past two days. Jed had thought Merrit was pretty normal when they’d met.
A few days ago, Jed had left the campground up 1985, a logging road off of the main highway, with no word to Rhett. He and Rhett were the only ones left behind when Chuck and a couple others took Jason, one of Rhett’s second cousins, back home to see a doctor. Jason was jumping into the reservoir like all the other daredevils when he blew out his kneecaps. Jed was still pondering the drop when this happened, but had made up his mind while the others helped Jason hobble up the steep rock, back to the road and into the truck.
Most of the camping party headed back through sagebrush and lava rock they’d just crossed days before. On the way they had to stop to replace the gears they had lost on the uphill stretch just past the state line. Hauling the full load of six guys and Chuck’s girlfriend was the transmission’s last “I think I can.” Chris, the gangly New Orleans native and Jed’s best friend since his sophomore year at Poky High, taught them all how to catch the crawfish from Powder River there in Baker. After sixty or so were harvested, they picked up a packet of crab boil at the local Safeway and cooked the feast up over propane alongside the river. This took up most the time the mechanic needed to get them on their way again, only to be passing back through a few days later. Without Jed and Rhett riding along, Jason lay wincing in back sharing his agony with no one. His pee breaks were the worst, having to be helped even to stand. He mostly slept on the drive back to Idaho.
Rhett and Jed stayed behind with a majority of the camping equipment. Chuck had left his tent behind for the two of them to use, as well as a scarce amount of food. A light rain had started to fall the day after everyone had left, painting the ferns, moss, and trees greener. The clean smell of fresh earth enhanced the spring’s healing powers. Jed had met a man named Elk on his way down to the hot pools in the gravel parking lot off the highway. They walked the near mile to the springs to soak. Hoping to see Rhett there, Jed took his time, rolling up a smoke when he became too hot, or moving to a cooler pool. To get an authentic sauna effect he’d crawl up into the one person cave from where the hundred plus degree water would flow. After the steam had beaded his body and it became too thick to breathe he’d manage his way out of the tight space and dump the bucket of cold water over his head. Rhett was making new friends elsewhere and never showed. After last night’s ride on four hits of Rainbow Family LSD, Jed pictured him hiking to the top of Three Sisters. It was the closest thing to the top of the world near here. Or maybe he was taking it easy in some stranger’s campground regaining the bearings of reality so that he might find his own.
Jed left the springs when the light began to fade with Elk slouching along. The wiry-framed dread head told Jed a story about how his new name frustrated cops when they asked for I.D. Jed dragged along wondering if the rain would stop that night. The drizzle was nothing to worry about at the springs, but now he had clothes on. They absorbed the falling mist like a sponge. Elk came back to the camp up 1985 and Jed made up a pot of Ramen noodles, adding Ragu to make it spaghetti. Jed shared the dinner with Elk, whose ragged self whined of his drooping wet clothes until the warmth of campfire cooking reached his insides. They saved the leftovers for Rhett. Darkness became their miserable companion before too long as the fire died to hisses and sputters. After using up the last of the dry wood boiling noodles, Jed was harshly reminded that Chuck hadn’t left a lantern or flashlight. The soaked wood they found only spewed dense smoke. As far as Jed knew, Rhett was somewhere forming a trans-dimensional discussion group using the technological advances inside his own mind. There were no limits to what Jed thought possible of Rhett right now, whose synapses last night were firing like a pack of 10,000 black-cats looking to solve the mysteries of time, space, and the recipe for a good batch of laced paper. Jed needed Rhett that night. Elk needed help.
Jed awoke to the pecking sounds against stainless steel. His bladder impatiently awaited the dawn, and he was happy to see it finally arrived. He now had enough light to leave without waking his creepy tent mate. Jed was ashamed and too angry at himself to see Elk face to face again. His overnight attempts to cuddle made Jed no longer feel at home in this lush green paradise. He needed to leave. The rain had let up on his shortcut through the woods down to the road, but even the sun’s rays felt uncomfortable. At the springs he met his way out, a guy named Merrit Von Kerr.
“It’s short for Jared,” said Jed, taking advantage of purifying waters one last time.
“Mine’s Merrit,” the guy told him, naked and lounging, relaxed. He had that Greek beauty to him, the golden curly locks and eyebrows. The small tuft of blonde hair on his chin kept his looks youthful. His face had baby skin, tight and elastic. Though he looked like he could be, this guy didn’t seem gay. Jed was now on guard for that sort of thing. The two of them being naked having a casual conversation took away that suspicion. Not that Jed was homophobic, or thought himself to be becoming to most gay men, but this guy was willing to give him a ride after meeting him in the buff. No one soaking wore more than their birthday suit, providing the norm. All clothes were hung haphazardly upon pegs and over covered beams that faired well in Oregon’s moist environment. The pools were as natural as the people there, with a craftsmanship apparent in the laying of stones about the pools to make for a smooth walk on bare feet. There was a cold water spring that channeled through the flume of a log into the five gallon bucket you could empty over your head when you wanted to cool down fast, like no voltage shock therapy. By the bucket was a cougar etched in detail on a rock. Cougar was the name of the springs as they were known outside the Forest Service. The state guys knew them as Terwilliger Hot Springs. Cougar Reservoir was just beyond the parking lot across the highway. There were stairs to the outhouses, one each for the guys and gals, made of the same type of lumber as the shelter the clothes hung on. A lot of labor that went into this forest blended in well with the surroundings.
“What brings you to Oregon?” Jed asked Merrit. The tan said he was from California, near the ocean.
“I’m traveling around to the different hot springs. I’ve got a book that tells pretty well where they’re all at. I just came from Idaho.”
“That’s where I’m from,” Jed told him “Pocatello. Did you go to Lava?”
“Yeah, hot as hell in their pools. Too unnatural, I thought, too much concrete. I passed through Pocatello. Seemed like a nice town.”
“It’s not bad, if you can stand the Mormons.” Jed told him how no good thought provoking movies were allowed and a couple of beer companies had been scared off by strategically raised property taxes. “I’m trying to get back. My buddies took off the other day to take a friend back. They said they’d come back in a few days. I’m homesick, I guess, I can’t wait that long.” Too bad he’s going the wrong way, Jed thought.
Merrit smiled. “I can give you a ride.”
Now Jed was at the end of that ride, still a little upset from arguing with Merrit at the beach. Jed didn’t always follow all the rules, but Merrit’s actions in the last twenty-four hours had a lack of dignity. Back in Myrtle Creek Jed felt he was harboring a fugitive, with Merrit stammering on about the one cop of the town and if he was checking them out, patrolling nearby in his squad car. Jed felt abducted at the same time when Merrit suggested they go to the playground to look less suspicious. That was his logic, along with treating Jed to an ice-cream cone. Jed’s logic was to commit Merrit’s social security number to memory when he checked out his driver’s license with sincere curiosity.
Merrit had good hygiene tips, like sponging the nostrils inside to keep from phlegm buildup. He ate healthy foods and obviously kept fit. Everything else was conspiracy theories, secret societies and cover-ups. He’d lost Jed’s listening tolerance the moment he suggested they go and stay with his mother in Fort Bragg and get a job for a month. Merrit had a Native American friend who watched the UFOs dip into the earth in New Mexico near Taos, and said he knew of other places that led to a secret underground tunnel system. He wanted to raise money for that trip, but Jed was homesick and said he’d think about it. Instead he began thinking of how to break loose, without seeming rude. After all, Jed was certainly grateful for the ride.
Another incident that defamed Merrit’s character in Jed’s eyes was smuggling fruit over the border. The Californians were wary of any produce crossing the state line due to the threat of fruit flies, and Merrit had a box of cantaloupe, complete with miniscule gnats in orbit, taken from a farm they’d stayed at the night before where his friends cross-bred nothing but cantaloupe. They had quite the feast before bedding down, and none of the different melons tasted the same as another. Some had a salty taste; others like fresh cucumber, and some were sweet and had much more tang than a normal cantaloupe. It was bizarre, Jed thought, especially the gigantic hogs, Heidi and Hambone, 900 lbs. of bacon apiece who were fed rinds and bad hybrids.
The last straw was definitely the beach. Jed felt he was blatantly breaking the law with no rational excuse if they were to get caught. Merrit pleaded like he was losing the last friend he had in the world. This made Jed even more suspicious. Why was he so desperate to have him hang around? Jed was feeling more captive by the moment and he had to get out his captor’s clutches before he regretted giving him the benefit of the doubt. Even if he were to break away for a night and return to Merrit in the morning, he might at least feel safe to trust him again.
Once he was down the road, left to only his internal chatter, relief flooded over him. Jed was free to talk to himself again. He could sing a song or call on God in his reclaimed solace. Thoughts he fancied began swimming in his head again. For the last day or two he had hardly a word in edgewise. Sure, he’d learned more of how the government was controlling, invading, monitoring, and logging everyone’s lives in their many craft ways, but even the fascinating stories became overworked after so much breath. The scenery over the pass when they were above the clouds occupied Jed’s mind when the snow caused them to creep along on bald tires. When you’re hitchhiking at twenty miles per hour, time stretches like taffy. It had seemed like three days had passed, but it really had only been two.
With still enough opportunity to catch a ride before the sun went down, Jed kept trekking, wasting no time at the entrance ramp. Walking backwards to show his smile, he summoned his next ride from the freeway shoulder. The burnt sienna sedan that pulled over for him was driven by a woman. Jed thought any woman that picked up hitchhikers, disregarding his scrawny frame, had to be one tough mama. He ran up to the door and asked where she was headed, hopping in when she invited him to dinner.
She ended up pulling off at the next exit and treating him to a home-cooked meal and a warm couch to sleep on. In the morning, she dug out clothes from the garage, a baggy pair of green pants and a striped shirt, an outfit he’d thought he’d seen Ernie wear on Sesame Street. She also passed on a Guatemalan-made bag, woven by hill people high in the Sierra Madres with more colors of thread than in a box of sixty-four crayons, and a fuzzy yellow sweater. She told him to keep the clothes, but gave him her address to send back the prized bag. She then gave him a short ride to Fortuna and from there he headed east.
After a number of rides too short to tell his story, he came near the border, a place called Joppa. There he bought a Valencia orange with some spare change and walked the highway for hours with nary a ride, dogs barking at him well into nightfall. He was out of the town and in the country where he couldn’t see any longer, but continued to walk on. There were no street lamps, and few cars passed. The wind was starting to pick up, but the only shelter he found was a log off to the side of the road. It was at least three times his body length, and four times thicker than his mass. It was enough to shelter him throughout the blustering night. Waking up chilled to the bone in the middle of the night, he pulled the extra layers out of his new bag and put them all on. Even with two pairs of pants, two shirts and a sweater, he had a hard time keeping warm. He pulled his arms from the sleeves and hugged them close to his body to conserve a bit of warmth. He slipped into fits of sleep, but was happiest to see the morning light even before the sunrise. He could at least walk to keep warm.
That early morn, a commuter shuttled him to the nearest rest area where Jed warmed up with the hand dryer in the men’s room. Outside the frost had yet to thaw; frozen dew drops dangled from weeds and long grasses like chandelier crystals. Jed didn’t really have to search out his next ride. A guy passing by as Jed came out of the men’s room with his renewed storage of body warmth asked if he could use a ride. Jed said hell yeah!
The guy turned out to be a preacher, which explained the arched eyebrows to his enthusiastic reply. A glimmer of disdain flashed briefly before his eyes behind the thick lenses, but then a big grin washed away any grief and he beckoned him with his arm. “Well hop on in, then.” The man of God filled Jed in on a good deal of his secular life before he found the faith. He was once a heavy drinker, at one time a marine, but the story that Jed fancied the most was the one about working with emergency services, sparked in his memory by a verse from scripture, ’Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is going to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you’. Apparently the preacher man’s name was Hebrew for beloved. He shared with him some strange things that had happened to him. “Years ago, I was on the rescue squad. I was with the fire department for about seventeen years, as a volunteer, and an ambulance service that was called the Bellevue Rescue Squad...for ten years. Now I used to think that the rescue squad… you know, that’s the guys with the white hats, right… that everybody would be glad to see the rescue squad. Now some people don’t like cops, but I mean hey what do they got against an ambulance service or a fire department. So I used to think, hey, we’re the guys with the white hats, you know, people like us.”
“One night we got a call of a woman, difficulty breathing, and we headed out in the ambulance, myself, a female attendant named Debbie, and our driver was Billy. Billy was a local guy, he always hung around town, always walked the streets, did odd jobs, and Billy was the Human Siren. Since he was a kid, he used to mimic the sound of the emergency siren of vehicles going off…wooooo… and man, did he get good at it. I mean he sounded just like one of those penetrator type sireens, and he could still do it when he got older, when he was in his twenties and early thirties. Well he was our driver. Now this is a no-kidder, do you remember the program “Real People”? Used to be on TV, they’d find all these strange people out there that could do something strange. And they put them on T.V. Real people. Billy was on “Real People” as the Human Siren. That’s a fact.”
“So off into the night we go, me, Debbie, and the Human Siren, to a call, difficulty breathing. And it took us out, way out into the country, into a very poor section, lot of shacks. These were migrant workers, some people from the hill country, and I mean, they can be kind of strange. We went up to this little shack and Debbie and I went inside to make contact with the patient, and Billy was getting equipment out of the rig. We got inside, you couldn’t hardly see, it was so dim in there. And there was three big guys in there, well two big ones, and one not as big as the others. This woman was in the corner, on this pile of rags, or something, I’m not sure exactly what, and as we tried to approach her, she lashed out at us with her fingers like claws, and was hissing. She was hissing at us, just swinging. And it was like, whoa, what’s the matter? And this one guy said, ‘Well, she thinks she got cancer in her throat, and she don’t want to go to hospital.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know, if she really don’t want to go to the hospital, you know, we can’t force her to go.’ And this one guy said, ‘You’re going to take her’. And I kind of let that slide by. But in this shack was a pot-bellied stove in the back and there was something back there and it was making these strange growling and snarling noises. And I mean I’m like, what in the…And this one big drunk dude, because the whiskey, you could smell it, it was strong. And he said’ You shut up back there!’ And he took a piece of firewood off a pile that was right by and started hitting this thing. And the commotion, I mean this thing is snarling and growling, he’s ‘Shut up!”, and just beating it with this chunk of firewood. Well, while that’s going on, Billy is trying to bring the cot through the door of the shack, and it ain’t fitting, because when you come through the door, it makes an immediate left. I mean, it’s like a vestibule and a six and a half foot cot don’t make a turn like that. So we’re trying to talk to this woman, she lashing out at us, and I told the guy, I said’ Look, she don’t want to go and we just can’t force her to go. We just can’t take her.’ And this guy said’ You going to take her’. And he had that piece of firewood in his hand. All the sudden I realized, Houston, we have a problem. And I realized real quick, this situation’s going downhill.
“Billy’s got the cot stuck in the door, this woman lashing out at us, and I’m trying to explain to him,’ Look, as long as she is conscious and doesn’t want to go we cannot force her to go, but if she should lose consciousness, that’s implied consent and we can load and go.’ Now that was a poor choice of words, right there, because that dude said, ’Well, get out the way, I’m going to knock her out.’ And I’m like, ‘That would not be a good idea.’ And I looked and Billy’s got the cot now standing straight up trying to come through the door with it straight up. If it comes in that way it means it’s got to go out that way, with her on it? And I’m like ‘Billy! Leave it outside.’ Now he’s got it stuck and we are trapped in there, me and Debbie, with the lion, the witch, and the woodsman. Finally, one of the other guys, the shorter guy said ‘Come on, Lily, why don’t you go with them to the hospital?’ And she finally nodded her head okay.”
Jed wiped his eyes with a fuzzy yellow sleeve, having turned crimson from laughing. The preacher man had pulled off the first exit in Reno, the “Biggest Little City in the World”, and they were inside one of the local Taco Bells.
“You see, when I first became a Christian, I thought it would be easy, like I thought the rescue squad would be. Living for Jesus every day is like it says in first Peter, chapter 4, verse twelve: ’Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is going to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.’ After ordering his own food the preacher asked, “What would you like?”
Jed picked from the menu the least expensive item to put the smallest burden he could on this man’s charity. Preacher man instead purchased for him the best bargain listed, three soft tacos for a buck. Jed nervously shifted when the man handed him fire sauce without asking. Chewing with his eyes down, Jed thanked the man at the last bite, and bid the man good luck.
“What’s the big hurry?” The preacher asked Jed, “Let’s give a little charity. Even the casino owner next door must have mouths to feed.” He gave Jed a few George Washingtons and coaxed him to the Desert Nugget across the parking lot. Jed played a nickel ante one-armed bandit and made a few bucks last for at least a half hour. The place was filled with ding-ding-dings and chiming tunes of the machines paying out. There was even enough cigarette smoke in the place to curb Jed’s nicotine craving. He’d had his fill of fun and went to thank the preacher for the ride when he noticed the stretcher heading out the door. He thought paramedics a strange sight and started to laugh until he saw who they carried out. The preacher had hit his lucky number 12, and then the floor, as the croupier retold from behind the idle roulette wheel. The guy with the greasy mustache and 1920s haircut mentioned that the preacher had only bet eighteen dollars on the number. The odds were 37 to 1.
“That’s only six hundred dollars or so.” said the croupier, as Jed weaved through the gathering curious crowd. “Usually a much bigger payoff makes a guy pass out, but this is the first I’ve seen below a grand.”
Jed multiplied in his head and came up with amount $666. The preacher must not have liked that number. Jed walked with haste to the double doors and a gorilla working security came up behind him and seized him by the shoulder.
“Son?” said Vito, as indicated on the nametag. This guy’s breath even smelled of bananas and jungle foliage. Jed thought the time for third degree had come, but instead the hairy, monstrous fingers handed him the book he’d been carrying since the trip began, his journal. “You left this behind.”
Jed thanked the guy for more reasons than he let on, and made for the freeway, hoofing it past the next town of Sparks within a few hours. After several miles of walking the shoulder, he came to the sign: Mustang ¼ mile ahead. Mustang, Jed thought. That sounded familiar. Jed marveled at the numerous wrecked cars laid out, like dominoes in a lone pasture. The train trestle crossing the river beyond the salvage yard sparked his interest. He thought of a short story where Gordie LaChance and the fat kid had to outrun the train to get all the way across. He figured he could do the same, just with no train. The barbwire revealed a flexible space to provide him an entrance to some carefree wandering. Passing Edsels, Novas, Pintos, and Le Cars brought to mind mysteries of when these cars sputtered their last spark. The windshield spider webs told of head impacts, front ends like accordions told of high speeds brought to an abrupt halt. Most of them were well-preserved as though they’d been abandoned, given up, or seized. Jed, given the time could’ve put his own custom make together to get the rest of the way home, but supposed he had neither the tools nor the permission, though the potential was present. The stretch of barbwire on the far side relaxed for him also, allowing him to leave before he got himself in trouble. The span of the tracks across the river surely looked longer up close. The gurgle of the water over rocks below voiced its assurance. His nervousness washed downstream with the swish of the current. His first few steps felt out the distance with careful precision until he caught the rhythm. His cadent walk carried him across in time with his heartbeat, until he safely made it over the river and heard “Hey!” making his heart stop as swiftly as his feet. It was the only cop miles around, thought Jed, and he’d had the pleasure to meet him.
“You got I.D., brother?” At least he’s calling me brother, Jed thought. That might be a good sign. This guy’s thick mustache matched the shade of his dark sunglasses, and came well below his upper lip. The shades hid the ferocity of his eyes and the mustache hid the absence of a smile, dulling his seriousness. Uniforms command a certain authority, complete with the glinting star. Jed’s only identification was a high school activity card that got him a discount at football games he was coaxed to attend by buddies looking to score with flag team sweeties.
“Yeah,” Jed handed him the picture taken years ago dotted by acne and faded by runs through the wash.
“Why don’t you just hop into the back?” he opened the door for him, still looking curiously at the card handed to him. “This helps me none. What’s your social security number?”
Jed was tempted to pass on Merrit’s number he’d memorized for safety’s sake, but figured that might put him behind bars. He rattled off his own, letting the man do his job. There was no warrant for his arrest in the collaborative database of the Northwest, so Jed just got a funny anecdote of how Deputy Coletti had one time also been a carefree kid, but got his ass whooped by his daddy for his mischief, and how he should do the same to him. Jed squirmed at the arrogant display, and made sure not to rile him with any defiant words. Just then a car pulled around the bend, a billowing cloud of dust behind its back bumper. As the mercury silver Chevelle with black racing stripes growled to an idle, the passenger side window rolled down. A glossy-lipped, gum chewing mouth asked if there was trouble.
”You harassing someone again, Jack?” She called him Jack, and Jed wasn’t sure if she knew his name or not. He was made more sure when he found the cop knew hers.
“Nothing to worry your pretty little head about, Noel, just a trespasser,” he said. Jed saw her lip was pierced, and deduced she had a past with Deputy Coletti from the batting of fake eyelashes. “You two must be heading to work.” How he could tell, Jed had no clue. They appeared more looking to score, all dolled up for an evening out in the middle of the day. After some reminding of who paid his monthly bonus, a change of heart came over the deputy and he delivered Jed into their hands with a warning. “I’d best not see you around these parts again.”
When he hopped into the backseat, all the while bewildered, he saw the driver actually had real eyelashes, and maybe even longer. Her name happened to also be Noel. The Camel Wide between her lips spurned Jed to bum one from her. The mild, Turkish delight helped him adjust to the miracle he’d just witnessed. The girls, Noel and Noel, had been given a specific request by the lawman to give Jed a ride to the freeway. Jed was relieved to be free again, but was not so clever to think these girls were employees of the first legal house of ill repute there in Mustang. They dropped him at the crossroads where the road to nowhere they’d been driving on intersected the road to everywhere else.
Until his next ride, he wasn’t made aware of the notorious Mustang Ranch.
About five minutes later, a semi driver kicking up plenty of fine gravel and coarse dirt came to a halt for Jed. To go through so much hassle for a hitchhiker surprised Jed and he ran to the door before the trucker changed his mind. The trucker just wanted to hear the story, as he suspected Jed may have traded in his car for a night of unbridled pleasure as he’d heard others before had done. Jed’s tale of the trespass and twin Noels was less than he’d expected, but it was enough to earn a ride to Utah, the delivery destination of the load being hauled. Because driving time ran out about 5 pm for the guy, they stopped at Winnemucca’s Flying J. He was happy to treat Jed to a filling plate of mashed potatoes and chicken-fried steak. Jed expressed his gratitude by washing his rig’s high windshields, standing on the provided stepladder on wheels to reach and scrub the crusted bugs.
After the two ate, Jed went on a tobacco hunt and found some generous skinheads hanging out front, asking for change from leaving customers. There was a Bic-bald ex-Mormon named Felix and a girl with safety pins being her favorite adornment. She had them on her shoelaces, pant legs, all through her rusty colored jean jacket, and completely around the brim of her stocking cap. Blue braids dropped a few inches below her hat. They shared many a smoke with him, and spoke of their cosmic experiences with the coyotes while on mushrooms the other night in the white surroundings of the desert under a bright swollen moon. The dogs with them were singing and yelping with frenzy that night while the stars danced to the chaos that seemed “ironically choreographed” according to Felix. The dogs nor the mushrooms were theirs, but rather belonged to a friend of theirs that had ended up jailed five nights before due to lack of driving privileges. They were just passing through from Salt Lake, trying to make it to San Francisco for some rally. Now they had to wait until their friend made it through the court system, holding on to his Jeep Wrangler, his drugs, until last night, and his dogs, Blue, a heeler, and a rottweiler named Rusty. Jed spent the next several hours exchanging tales of childhood woes and joys with the Aryans, as they called themselves. He saw much similarity in their pasts, but little of the same qualities on the surface now. The truck driver told him at midnight that they’d have to wait it out a while more, as an accident had happened that had the freeway closed off.
Jed found out shortly after one in the morning what exactly it meant for a cattle truck to jackknife and leave its disastrous remains of messy tragedy lying alongside the shoulders on both sides. It smelled like rancid meat. Even peripheral snapshots in the headlights’ edge at seventy miles an hour burned into his head scarring images of half heads and stray hooves to never again be forgotten. There were gallons of ketchup spread out for the hamburger holocaust he witnessed. The same visual he later learned his friends imagined of him after hearing of a bear roaming around camp 1985, after coming back to Cougar to find him missing. Jed knew he was much closer now, only two and a half hours from home once the truck rolled into SLC, and had yet any thought of them worrying over him.
When the guy called back to the comfortable cab, housing a bed, fridge, microwave, and most importantly, air shocks, Jed roused. Morning had the sheen of fresh but familiar surroundings. The air smelled of lava rock and sagebrush, smells he’d known growing up. After walking away from the warehouse the driver was about to dock, Jed learned there was a bus that drove to Ogden for regular local transit price. Once he’d begged two quarters, four nickels, and twelve pennies using the legitimate excuse of bus fare, he changed in the pennies for a dime, tossing the two extras.
With shaky care on the bus, Jed wrote in his journal for the first time since the hot springs and why he left. This gave him a chance to jot down his thoughts that festered against Elk. ‘The man was just lonely,’ Jed scribbled. ‘The night of unending cold dampness made him search out a warm body more out of instinct to survive. He wasn’t trying to make it with me just making do with the warmth available. It was sickening to hear the pleading whines of a grown baby as he pulled me closer. He only had his palm on my stomach but it was enough to make me seem too giving, too tolerant, and too spineless to confront him in the middle of that miserable night. We were both cold. I had one blanket to share and it helped little against the drops forming inside the tent. This time I fled to avoid conflict and my scolding may have been the thing Elk needed to wake up to the real world. This older man may now develop a want for what I allowed him to have. Now I am to blame for any others he wills his intimacy upon. I am to blame for his being beat for being too clingy in the middle of the night with someone else who is not as passive as me. I have not changed the world for the better but rather escaped from my own shame to allow this evil to persist. I’ll never find him to know the truth. Who finds a guy called only Elk? His whines summoned pity from my soul. We were two bodies keeping warm somehow, not two faggots looking for a cheap thrill, right? Other men like men like that and that is their way, not mine. Hand on belly. Nothing more, but I wanted to resist him. I couldn’t and just let it happen just like when I was five. I remember the babysitter being very pretty and she was the one laying on the bed naked. I remember it being fun to do what she told me and my little brother to do as we straddled her stomach. ‘This is for Mommy’ or ’grandma’ or ‘grandpa’ she had us say as we kissed her breasts and put our small five- and three-year old fingers inside her. The babysitter must have put my brother down for a nap. My next memory happened twenty minutes later of her fat friend coming over and the two of them teaching me how to French kiss. The pretty babysitter’s mouth waiting on one end of the couch after I’d had my tongue in the big mouth of the other girl on the opposite end. I can only remember childlike joy between each kiss. Then when I was eight I played Tarzan with the neighbor girl a couple years older than me and her cousin a couple years younger. I usually went shirtless for the game. The two girls would follow me to the bathroom in strange fascination to watch me pee. How were we curious before hormones? This time it was a man and that bothers me most. It makes me think something is wrong with me that would let a man touch me. I can speak of my road trip as adventurous when I get home, because it was. This thing with Elk I can only speak of here. I did things others don’t get a chance or the nerve to do, and I wouldn’t have done them if not for Elk. I want to see and know more experiences of random consequence through sticking my thumb out. Most told me it was my smile that pulled them over. My thumb they expected.’
His heavy mood lifted as he run back over the words, some spaces blotched with running ink, the impressions still legible. His writing dodged some of the salty drops that had landed on the blank page before he got there. Jed could breathe more air, the tightness that had hugged him since Oregon left him to fill his lungs contently. He had filled forty miles worth of writing, ignorant to the scenery, all feeling from within. He needed a cigarette. He stepped off the bus and his stomach tightened like he wanted to laugh, but instead he just beamed a full smile. The letting go was a forgiving feeling.
On the entry ramp leaving Ogden, an elderly couple picked him up. The wrinkled Mexican man driving put the passenger’s wheelchair into the trunk so that Jed could ride in the back seat. They took him several miles up the road, turning off at Plain City/Farr West and leaving him out among the pastures dissected by freeway traffic. No one stopped for him here. Even his joy faded. His smile endured for an hour or two, but somewhere in between the third and the fourth hour, he observed his waning hope dwindle with the daylight. There was still time until darkness fell, but the light had dimmed and small bits of snow began to fall. These weren’t the precious individual snowflakes you catch on your tongue, and not exactly hail. They most resembled the Styrofoam pellet stuffing found in bean bags, light and easily drifting about.
Jed knew sleeping out here could be avoided. He backtracked to Plain City, finding it still five miles off the freeway. He had to call collect, as there was no one to solicit outside the sub shop with the pay phone. For Jed to hear a familiar voice again seemed a longing he’d harbored since the day he departed from Cougar.
“Oh my God Jed, Where are you? What happened? Are you alright?” The panic laden concern caught him off guard. He told his mom he was fine, stuck in Utah, and needed a ride. “Some of your friends called telling me they thought you might’ve been bear food. I knew the story was too ridiculous, but you disappeared without a trace. No one knew what to think. You had me worried sick. We have some bad news, too. Grandma Hazel passed away.”
“Oh….” Jed’s lack of words made sense to him, and knew it made sense to his mom. He felt like saying how she wasn’t his grandma, but his mom knew that. He felt happy tears fill his eyes and wondered how happy his mom must be. Respect for the dead kept him quiet, but this was the woman that tried to ruin both of their lives. She used to make up stories that Jed’s mom was fooling around. Jed’s mom was married to Hazel’s only son. He still lived with his mother when Jed’s mom met him almost a decade and a half ago. Jed had written his journal entry without her biggest lie coming to mind. He must still believe her rather than the truth he lived. After Hazel failed to convince Jed’s step-dad of adulterous lies, she constructed a story that Jed had molested his little sister. Jed denied it successfully, and managed to maintain his step-dad’s trust. Two years later, that evil bitch Hazel went after Jed again, this time making it sound as though Jed’s mom covered for him. She bribed the seven year old girl into pretending she’d been touched in the most personal of places. Jed’s innocence was robbed by a Sheriff knowing those who messed with children deserved punishment beyond slow and tormenting death. He told the meek teen Jed that the polygraph test was against him. Jed had to make up a statement, and though it differed from the story Hazel told, no one questioned. “Good, mom, I hope there really is a Hell and she gets what she deserves.” His mom was silent and sounded at peace to hear him letting it out. She had even believed the lie for a couple of years, until Jed summoned the courage to plead his case. His step-dad still assumed Jed guilty, and Jed had hoped for years that Hazel would redeem him by admitting her falsehood. Her death meant Jed would now have to do it on his own. “Could you please find someone to come get me?”
“I’ve got a few of your friends’ numbers around here somewhere. I’ll try to send someone down. Where are you at exactly?” His mom grabbed a pen to write down directions.
“Plain City, you take exit 354 off I-84. I’m at a Hoagies Heroes sandwich shop, the only neon sign in town, besides the two signifying the motel and bar. I guess I’ll just hang out inside, if they let me.” With plans established, he hung up. He appreciated his mom for going through all this trouble for him, but still had no idea if or when anyone would show. He was allowed to wait inside to escape the cold, and even granted complimentary lemonade and some day old bread. He hadn’t eaten today, and expressed his gratefulness by sweeping and mopping, duties the little round, balding man running the store was happy to shirk for one night.
Two hours later, the sub shop closed, but the man kept the sign lit for Jed. Once again wearing all the layers, Jed sat outside on the curb hoping each pair of headlights came for him. He whistled the time away and not much traffic came through. He thought he might have to sleep in a storage shed, or somewhere that might shelter him from the biting wind that had grown from a breeze the last hour or so. He wasn’t sure what sense that would make to whoever might come to get him, so he persisted to stay put outside Hoagies Heroes. A car came flying down the road and Jed thought anyone for him would be driving slow, unfamiliar with the area. The headlights were coming right at him going straight at the bend. Tires squeal in front of him, revealing a ’73 Camaro and its still smoking wheels. Chris, always the lead foot, was behind the wheel and threw out a suggestion. “Hop in!”
This was one of the friends Jed had last seen back in Oregon. He started to tell him of the cantaloupe farm, and the crazy conspiracies passed on to him from Merrit Von Kerr. He told Chris of the preacher man, the two Noels, and the trouble with the law in Nevada. He shared his skinheads’ story and was just getting into the gory details of the cow mishap when he noticed they were backtracking to Salt Lake City. When he asked where they were going, Chris flashed him a grin of reassuring mischief. He had different plans, which explained the pile of clothes, the leather travel bags, and his dog, Simba in back. He wasn’t planning on taking off until the morning, but knowing how much Jed liked to travel he packed for his trip to see his friend Heber and headed out.
“Chris, why are we headed south, what’s going on?” Jed was weary, and he needed a good warm bed. But home was where the heart was and with a good friend near, his home was here, and his heart was happy.
“Southeast, actually, we’re going to Tennessee, Jed.”
Jed started writing after Chris convinced him it was what he needed. The friends, Jed worried, needed time to cool off and a couple more weeks on the road were no big deal. At the next exit, Jed asked Chris to buy him a much needed toothbrush.