SKIP TOWN – Part 2

At my room at the Melvin hotel, I packed up in a hurry, taking only what would fit in my backpack. In ten minutes, I was hustling through the streets to the outskirts of town. Stopping at a bridge heading North, I started hitchhiking, half expecting to see union guys with baseball bats pull over and offer me a lift. But it didn’t take long to get a ride, and after getting safely out of Denver, I was able to let go of that nightmare scenario. It was a sunny afternoon, and my first ride was friendly and harmless.

       By nightfall, I’d had a succession of short rides, never having to wait too long between each one. It was about 10:30 pm when my last ride picked me up. The driver was only going about twenty miles, but I was grateful even for that. It was beginning to get cold in the foothills and the heater in his car felt most welcome. When we came to where he turned off onto an even smaller road, there was a little country store nestled at the corner of the intersection. I got out of his car and thanked him, and he wished me luck and then disappeared. There was a single light above the door to the store. It was dark inside and obviously closed. Looking up and down the two-lane highway, there was nothing but a wall of tall fir trees fencing both sides of the road in both directions. No traffic, no headlights, no sound. And the night was getting darker as clouds overhead closed in.

       I crossed a small empty parking lot to the front of the store. There was a porch with a wooden awning covering the store’s entrance. Setting my backpack on a bench by the door, I stood still and listened, hoping to hear the sound of cars approaching. But there was nothing to hear. I walked back up to the road again and looked left in the direction I had just come from, hoping to see faint signs of headlights in the distance, but there was nothing to see. The other direction was the same silent darkness. Crossing back to the porch, I sat down on the bench and lit a cigarette.

     Halfway through my smoke, I remembered the little transistor radio I had. I pulled it out of my backpack and switched it on, hoping for a little company. But the reception was terrible. A scratchy country music station squeaked through the static, too difficult to listen to, and on another station was the nearly indecipherable sound of a man preaching. Putting the radio back in the pack, I thought I heard the sound of a car, and I hurried up to the road again. But there was still nothing to see. 

     Standing in the middle of the road I began to feel the haunting sense that I was disappearing. It was the blackest of nights, and every minute seemed to crawl on its knees. I had never felt so overwhelmingly alone. Only the dim light from the single lightbulb kept me connected to the world, and I knew that without that small light, I would be swallowed up into the darkness forever. I had left New York without a plan. Nobody knew where I was, nobody had asked where I was going. My brother didn’t know where I was, nor did my father, neither had inquired. No mention had been made about returning for my third year at Columbia. My mother had died five years ago. I had never dealt with witnessing the phone call between Gloria and David, which shattered the last thread of illusion I had about our relationship. When all that happened, I thought there was nothing to do but jump off into the unknown, and attempt to stay one step ahead of an unacknowledged mountain of grief. I called it adventure, it had all the outward appearance of being that. But it was really pretense. Cocky, to be sure, but under the surface, I wanted to disappear. In Denver, I found a little bit of joy in building a small life but got chased out of town. And there I stood.  

       When I felt something soft and cold land on my eyelids, I looked back toward the store, and saw the air was filled with large floating snowflakes. Rushing back to the porch, I stood looking out at the thickening cascade. The snowfall gently gliding downward, covering the ground like a quilt, seemed to quiet the night even more.

       Then I heard the unmistakable growl of a truck. It was distant but real. I made tracks through the fresh snow to the road and sure enough, I saw headlights far off down the highway. My heart began to pound. It was well past midnight.  I began to wave my arms, sticking my right thumb up as high as it could go. Please see me, I yelled to myself. The snow fell even thicker. The truck was getting closer and I started to jump up and down, shouting, “Hey! Stop!” I could tell by the deep sound of the truck’s engine that it was an eighteen-wheeler, and I knew that truckers were more likely than regular folks to pick up hitchhikers, so my chest burst with hope. But the truck didn’t slow down. It barreled toward me at a monstrous speed then exploded past me with a rush of wind.

       Jostled by the tailwind, I backed up a few feet and watched the truck recede into the distance.  Walking back across the parking lot to the porch, I sat on the bench and watched the thickening snowfall. But it was too cold to sit. I got up and shoved my hands deep into my pockets, and started to pace back and forth. The night returned to its heavy silence. Then I heard what sounded like a foghorn. And it startled me. Could it be the truck that had just blown by? I ran up to the road and looked in the direction it had been heading, and sure enough, there it was, parked on the side of the road a hundred yards away, its red rear lights blinking. He must have seen me.

        I yelled as loud as I could, “Wait!” And ran back down to the bench and grabbed my backpack, and ran as fast as I could back up the parking lot and down the road to the truck, yelling over and over again, “Wait! I’m coming!” Just as I got to the back of his truck, I heard the driver shift the truck into gear and begin pulling away. I ran even faster and I got to the shotgun side door and looking up through the window, I shouted, “Stop!” The driver turned and saw me.

       Once he had brought the truck to a full stop, the driver indicated for me to climb in. Opening the door, I felt a burst of warm heat coming from the cab. Shivering, I closed the door.  The trucker said, “Hell, son, I waited five minutes, figured you didn’t want to ride with me.”

       “No. God, no. I just didn’t realize you had stopped. I heard you blast your horn, otherwise, I would’ve missed you altogether.”

       “Well, alright. Where you headed?”

       “Oregon. A little town just outside of Portland called Lake Oswego.”

       “Ok, well, I can get you near halfway there. I’m crossing to west Wyoming, to a little hole in the wall called Rock Springs. There’s a truck stop and you can get a decent breakfast.

       “Sounds great.”

       The trucker and I shared stories for a while, but after twenty minutes, I fell fast asleep mid-conversation. When the trucker saw me hunched over, he reached over and tapped me on the shoulder and said,

       “Go ahead and climb back into the sleeper.”

       I did as he said and was asleep again the second I stretched out. Six hours later I woke up in western Wyoming. The sun was out, brilliant and bright, and I heard the trucker say, “Come on, son, let’s eat.”