I laughed. “Good luck with that.”
He didn’t get the joke. “Can I see some form of identification?”
“Form of identification like what?” I asked, and he named some things, driver’s license, school ID, nothing I had or ever did have. It dawned on me that I could get run over flat on the highway out there, and nobody would know or care what to call the carcass. Roadkill.
By this time the whole place is on edge, crazy lady caterwauling, people shifting around in the checkout line, and Willie throws a sucker punch that doubles me over. Grabs my backpack. Professional-quality moves. I can’t even catch my breath before he’s pulled out the jar and is asking all high-handed, “What do you call this, you little fucker?” Shaking it in my face like now he’s got me ha-ha, while the rage blows up in my gut, and the hooker bitch is all, I told you! Only she’s wide-eyed, seeing we are talking money plural, major bucks. Her shrieking goes sky-high. Singing her happy song of getting shitfaced for the foreseeable month of Sundays.
It doesn’t even seem real, seeing this guy put my money in her hands. With all those people watching, not one soul on my side. Nothing to do but punch the magazine rack so hard it crashes over, spilling free brochures all over the fucking welcome mat. Where the screaming is coming from, who knows, it doesn’t feel like me telling this guy he’s a Nazi and I worked all year at my job for that cash so he could give it to a lying fucked-up whore. Telling her off too, getting up in her little wrecked face, telling her to go buy herself a fucking overdose.
I did that. With all the hate in my heart, I told her to go ahead and die like my mom did. Go have a party and get rid of her ugly self all alone behind a dumpster.
I walked out the door. It opened for me, and closed behind me.
My heart was pounding so hard I felt it in my eyes. I walked past the pumps where travelers in a haze of fumes were gassing up their cars. Past the big lot where the tractor trailers idled in their sleep, waiting out this godforsaken night. Shadows of people hung around the trucks, cutting their bargains. Part of me was waiting for somebody to come after me saying this hell is not real and you are not this person. It’s a mistake.
That’s how I left Virginia, walking down the shoulder of 26 with my thumb out, headed towards my grandmother with the exact same naked-ass nothing I’d had the first and last time she saw me.
25
My words came around to haunt me. Before another night passed, I’d be hunkered in the dark between a dumpster and the back of a gas station, wondering would I die there by morning.
I got shed of that hell-hole truck stop in a hurry, picked up by a long-hauler with a fist of skoal in his cheek and nothing to discuss. His radio was all Garth and Reba, fine, just no Willie please. I was wiped out from what had happened, so I told him I was Tennessee bound and then I guess fell asleep. Mistake. Tennessee turns out to be something ridiculous like four hundred miles long. We covered over half that before I woke up to see the sun rising over these skyscrapers like a freaking movie. One building had horns like Hellboy, I’m not even kidding.
Nashville, says the driver, and I’m like, Mother fuck, mister, Nashville? Simple as that. How I got farther away from Murder Valley than I’d ever been in my life so far.
This did not sink in right away. I asked if Nashville was anywhere close to Unicoi County, which was all I knew about where my dad was buried other than the valley with the downer name. The driver didn’t know Tennessee counties but had a map that he unfolded all over the wheel. He gave it a good study at the same time he’s roaring down the interstate, changing lanes, eating a sandwich. Scary. After a while he gave up and pushed the map at me. In due time I found Unicoi, and Nashville, and asked if he could let me out right there please because I’d spent the last five hours going the wrong way. Son of a bitch. Off to seek my fortune, and on day one I’d put myself in the hole by some-odd hundred dollars and half of Tennessee.
The trucker pulled over on an exit to dump me out. I stood breathing air that didn’t smell like egg sandwich and farts. The signs said my options were three flavors of gas station, a Taco Bell, or a hospital. It was too much daylight for pissing in public, so I headed for a restroom. If I dared. I was starving. I dug in my pack for an apple and ate it as I walked along, thinking of Mr. Golly I’d stolen it from, charging it to the McCobbs. Thinking of Creaky calling us pissants if we didn’t eat the apple seeds and all. Interrupting this report card of my happy life, somebody yelled “Hey brother!”
I jumped. I’d had my eye on the Phillips 66 and totally missed this couple camped by the road. The guy came staggering out of the tall weeds with his dirty Jesus hair and pale glassy eyes, asking am I his brother and am I saved. The girl tagging behind him was all hangdog, hair in her eyes, like he was the master. They both had the look that comes of hard living, clothes and skin all the same drab color of washed-out leather.
“I’m as far from saved as it gets,” I told him and kept walking.
“Give me five bucks then,” he yelled. “The Lord will bless you for it.”
“I got no money.” I didn’t turn around. “Reckon the Lord’s got nothing on me.”
The guy came around and grabbed the apple out of my hand. He walked backwards in front of me, teasing me with it. “Repent!” he said. “Whosoever sows generously will reap!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Really?” I stopped walking. “Somebody already stole everything I had, and you’re going to take my last half an apple?”
That threw him. We stood in the empty gas station bay while he stared at my apple in his hand like he thought it might speak up and settle this. “Who is this coming from the wilderness?” he asked it. “Beneath the tree I awaked thee where thy mother was in labor and gave thee birth.”
Hangdog girl came edging around behind him, looking at me and shaking her head, like: Seriously friend, be afraid.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I walked away fast while he and the apple were still working things out. Sidled into the men’s, slammed the door. Luckily it was the one-person type around the back where you can lock it from the inside. It smelled like a cesspool, but I planned on staying there until homeless Jesus moved along. I stopped being hungry, due to the stink, but was dying of thirst. I drank out of the smelly tap, and sat on the trash can to face various facts. How I had no money now, zip. How hungry I would be, after I got out of that bathroom. How I was farther away from home than I’d ever been. And if I really had to go that many hundred miles on accident, damn: how I could have gone the other direction and been at the ocean by now.
Also, that being a long way from home isn’t really your problem if you don’t have one.
Twice somebody banged on the door and then went away. My brain wormed its way to the worst place and got stuck there: I’d cursed another person to die. She was probably better off than I was right now, if God or whoever was paying attention. Which probably they were.