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.
Finally a guy came with jingling keys and hollered there’d be no loitering in his facilities, so I eased myself out and looked around. Coast clear. I told the attendant sorry, and headed out. Crossed the interstate to the other on-ramp to catch a ride headed east, but there wasn’t a lot happening. An ambulance screamed by, and I thought of how one of those carried me off from home. The last day of my life I really had one. The little does anybody ever know.
The sun got high and I was still on the shoulder with my thumb out, wondering if I looked homeless yet. As long as I’d been in that bathroom, I could have changed out of the T-shirt and underwear I’d had on forever. Cars went by, business guys, moms with kids. Nobody looks you in the eye whenever they’re leaving you flat. I kept thinking about the food in my pack that was all I had, so I needed to save it. Then ate the candy bars and beef jerky, one by one.
It did dawn on me, this was Nashville. Amazing, given who all lives there, Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, etc. Carrie Underwood. Too bad, but without money the city is no place you want to be. I knew that much, even if this was only my second one. I remembered guys on the streets in Knoxville with their deer-carcass eyes and pitiful cardboard signs: “Help Please,” “Hungry,” “Disabled Vet.” Or the name of someplace they wanted to get the hell out of there to. Bingo. I got out my drawing pad and made an amazing sign using all the colors: UNICOI.
Freaking unbelievable. The very next car to come along pulled over, a yellow VW, not a Beetle but one of those sporty sedans. Power windows. The girl driving it rolled down the passenger side and said, “Go you!” so I did. Headed the right direction at last.
Could this girl ever talk. The first subject she got onto was how she had a thing for unicorns, same as me, was that too bangin’ crazy or what. I had no idea what to say, being actually not a fan, but I was not needed for this conversation. I watched the miles go by while her list of favorite unicorn items went in one ear and out the other. Bedspread, raincoat. I spent all that time trying to figure out how old this girl was. She had to be Miss Barks’s age or so, because of driving a car for one thing, and for another her too-small T-shirt was showing off her bare middle part and plenty else. On the other hand, glitter nail polish, pouffy bangs, those little butterfly clip things like bugs in your hair, pretty much on par with Haillie McCobb, second grader.
She moved on eventually to TV shows, her favorite one being Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I told her I liked comics better than TV. It might have been the first thing I’d said since I got in the car a hundred miles before, and she was like, “Go you!” It turned out she said that a lot. If I told her I knocked off an old lady and hid her body in a thirty-foot roll-off, I’m pretty sure this girl would have said, “Go you!” She was slugging down a giant thermos of coffee and driving barefoot to keep herself awake, with her shoes up on the dash which were these red sandals with gigantic bottom parts made out of wood. All new shit to me, I was out in the world now. She’d been driving all night since Memphis, going to see her boyfriend in Knoxville that looked exactly like Paul from Mad About You except younger. Nerdy in the cute way.
Knoxville, damn. Probably Emmy had moved now. I would be in Knoxville soon, she’d be in Lee County, and whoever was sitting at control center of the universe, laughing his ass off.
My Unicoi sign was still on my lap, and it finally did hit me that she’d read it wrong, duh. Unicorns. The entire three hours of me in her car was a mistake. We started seeing signs of how many miles to Knoxville, countdown on me getting ditched by the roadside again like the stray cur I was: unwanted, not yet drowned. I’d gone past hungry into crazed, and was wondering if I had anything in my backpack I could sell this girl. If I’d learned one thing from Mrs. McCobb, it was that people will buy the weirdest shit. I had my marking pens, but was not parting with the best gift anybody ever gave me. I wondered if Aunt June even remembered.
Barefoot driver girl asked where I wanted left off, and I said anyplace but a truck stop. So that was that, an exit marked Love Creek. One last “Go you!” and off she flew.
The sky was dark, clouding up. I felt too beat up to stand on the shoulder getting ignored, and too hungry to think what else to do. I left the interstate and walked down Love Creek Road because, hell. You never know. It started pelting rain, and I ran for a little mini-mart similar to Golly’s. I could see the lights on inside, an old guy at the counter settled in for a slow night. He would never know I’d been there. Around the back of the building, I curled up between the block wall and a dumpster where it was almost dry, and pawed through my backpack like an animal. I ate the last Slim Jim I had to my name, stolen from Mr. Golly.