A Song For the Road

by Rayne Lacko

  The one wearing a ripped black tee with a psychedelic bottle rocket graphic on the front shoved a whole cookie in his mouth. His words muffled by chocolate, he said, “We all are from Boulder,” poking fun at Carter’s y’all.

  Carter reckoned he could spot a rock band’s front man in any crowd, be it a coffee bar or a criminal lineup. He ought to write his independent research project on it, he thought. The guy buzzed with energy and an easy swagger.

  Carter pulled his own guitar into view, brushing his hair from his eyes. “What kinda music you play?” he asked, careful not to say y’all again. He hoped not everyone west of Oklahoma was as harsh as Camellia’s kid.

  “Experimental hardcore,” the one with two-toned hair-dark roots and faintly lime-green tips—piped up. “Maybe y’all heard of us?” he said, not willing to let Carter live it down just yet. “We’re Poly Virus. We get a lot of play on indie radio.”

  Carter listened to tons of college radio back in Tulsa and he tried to recall the name. “Yeah, sure,” he nodded, a twinge of excitement lighting him up. He knew these guys. “I really like the direction of your new album, especially that one song, Candle something.” Carter knew well enough to compliment a musician’s latest recording. No artist wanted their best work to be behind them, like Carter’s was. In truth, Carter thought Poly Virus kept getting better.

  “’Shotgun Candle,’” the one without a guitar corrected him. Must be the drummer. His forearms were tattooed with two halves of the same scene. Carter wondered if the image blended into one when he played. “Cookies aren’t gonna cut it,” he said to the others, pulling his cell from his pocket. “I’m starving. Let’s order pizza.”

  As the drummer put in a call, Carter felt drawn in by the energy that connects one musician to another, the invisible tie between performers when they play the same song but on different instruments. Like he had with Kaia in the SUV. “I’ll tell you the truth, I can’t reckon what ’Shotgun Candle’ is all about,” Carter began. He was also curious to find out what they meant by experimental hardcore.

  “Garrett,” the drummer yawned, “you wrote it.” The guy Carter pegged as the front man grabbed a chair and pulled it over to Carter’s table. “That’s just it, bro. It’s a hidden message, a cry for help. ’Shotgun Candle’ is like when you’re trapped, held against your will, and you fire out some sort of SOS—a candle, a light in the window—that only the one person who can rescue you understands.”

  Carter leaned forward, taking it all in. He liked it. The letters Kaia asked him to write were a kind of shotgun candle. “How’s it go again?”

  Garrett pulled out his guitar and strummed the intro. He paused to sweep back the choppy locks dripping over his forehead and introduce the band, as if the opening bars had triggered his showmanship. “I’m Garrett, and this is Dex on bass,” he nodded to the lime-tinted tips, “Austin on drums, and Nate, electric guitar.” Nate stood silent, stoic as the mammoth beard on his face. It didn’t take much to talk the other guys into joining him. Around the small table, they played an informal, acoustic version.

  “How’d you do that transition, from the bridge?” Carter asked, watching each chord as it was strummed, their hands flying up and down the necks of their guitars. Garrett showed Carter how to play the sequence of chord changes on his dad’s guitar. “Bro, pull up,” Garrett told Carter. “You’re holding it too far from your body.” Carter nodded, pretending to hug the Martin to him the way Garrett held his electric guitar. Holding it against him felt too close, too personal. The strings under his fingertips were good enough.

  Poly Virus’s sound was modern and energetic, like the whole world was within reach and they only had to open their arms to grab onto it. He about had the melody down when the pizzas arrived. Without missing a beat, the band invited him to grab a slice.

  He was more thankful than they could reckon. “Mighty kind of y’all.”

  Smirks and chuckles dominoed around the table, but he paid no mind. He was a Southern boy and y’all came natural. Truth be told, the whole episode reminded him of when Kaia had read that Blanche DuBois passage from A Streetcar Named Desire in English class. She’d put on an exaggerated drawl when she recited the famous line, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

  The Lius had been kind, and now Poly Virus was seeing him through the night, much as Tommy’d done back at the pawn shop. Tommy wasn’t exactly Mr. Nice Guy, but he’d been kind enough when it counted most.

  The kindness of strangers: that’s how he’d get to LA.

  Around three in the morning, the pizza was gone, the cookies long gone. Before calling it a night, Garrett grabbed a Poly Virus tour T-shirt from a gym bag and tossed it to Carter as a souvenir. Carter gave them a bushel of thanks, pulling it over his head. When they disappeared into the elevator, he slipped out and curled up on a chaise longue in a shadowy corner next to the deserted hotel swimming pool, where he hoped he wouldn’t be caught by security. A song rattled around in his head, a melody somehow familiar to him, but he didn’t know where he’d heard it.

  At sunrise, Carter sat up on his lounge and looked out over the Sandia Mountains. The early morning light crept across the mountain range’s long greenish ridges, the zigzagging pattern of a watermelon rind. Painted clouds feathered across the sky, the same colors as the sandhill plums, Indian blanket, and butterfly milkweed growing wild in his old backyard.

  Was his mom awake yet? He tried to picture her, righted by the doctor’s careful hand. They’re bringing breakfast to her room, he comforted himself. They’re saying everything is going to be just fine.

  Holding his notebook open in his lap, it was like the written conversation with Kaia in the backseat of her parents’ SUV had never ended. Carter didn’t even mind using her sparkly pen. He breathed its scent deeply. It smelled good.

  He told her all about Poly Virus and the chord changes he’d learned and how cool it was to learn a new song. He wrote a few lines about the mountains, asking if she could see them from her grandparents’ place. If you can, I hope you might get up before daybreak one morning and watch the sunrise sometime. He asked her to tell him what she saw, so he wouldn’t have to get all poetic or whatever. Carter turned the page and, at a loss for what else to tell her, made a rough line drawing of the Martin guitar. As he tried to recreate the pickguard, he debated whether to add the inscription. He left it off.

  At a little convenience shop next to the inn lobby, Carter used the twenty bucks Mr. Liu had given him to score a travel toothbrush, a box of envelopes, and some stamps, like it was the 1880s and he was writing home from his Frisco job, laying the St. Louis-San Francisco railway between Tulsa and Texas. He stood in line at the checkout, waiting behind a gray-haired man with deep ridges in the loose skin at the back of his neck, who bought a car charger for his cell phone. Just before mailing his letter to Kaia, he unfolded it one last time and sketched the serif letters of his father’s inscription: Creativity, Victory, Heart, and Discipline.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE SMELL OF FRESH EGGS AND TOAST LURED Carter back to the breakfast room. He helped himself to the buffet and sat down at a table next to the window overlooking the parking lot. He read license plates while he ate. Most of the vehicles were local, but some were from Texas or Arizona. A family, sunburned and loaded down with shopping bags and luggage, approached a station wagon with Kansas plates. He spotted a cube van from Colorado. He figured it must have brought Poly Virus to town. He didn’t expect the band would be awake anytime soon.

  After breakfast, Carter left the hotel and looked up the road, considering his next move. He was fresh out of bright ideas.

  Next to the curb sat a work truck with Arizona plates. Much like his mother’s, it had tool boxes welded into the bed and was battered in several places. Route 66 ran straight through Arizona and ended in LA. If this pickup was headed to Arizona, maybe he could stow away in the truck bed. He’d get that much closer to his dad’s house. Carter figured if he showed up
on his father’s doorstep he wouldn’t—no, he couldn’t—turn him away.

  “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?” A guy, maybe twenty-five or so, hollered at him. Carter turned to find the man standing so close he could count the freckles on his ruddy cheeks, whiskers and all.

  “Nothing. Sorry,” Carter said, backing away, his grip tight around his guitar case’s handle.

  “Step off, little man. Ain’t nothing here to look at.” The man adjusted his ball cap, his work boots and jeans marked with stains of a good day’s work.

  “Where you headed?” Carter dared to ask, nodding toward the keys the man pulled from his jeans pocket.

  “Back home to Tucson. Just finished a job, repairs on a—” he paused long enough to pull out a cigarette and light it, “—ain’t none of your business.”

  Carter set his guitar at his feet, and took a long look at the man. He was none too neighborly, but it was hard for Carter to dislike him. His toughness matched his work boots, and the Southern flavor of his griping made Carter feel he’d fit right in with Lola May’s off-screen work crew on Farmhouse Fancy. “I’m Carter Danforth,” he offered at last. “I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Bartles.” The man steadied the cigarette between his lips. “Darren Bartles.”

  “What if I told you I happen to be looking for a ride into Tucson, Mr. Bartles?” Carter fought the urge to clear his throat, a nervous tic he’d sooner be rid of. He didn’t expect the man to offer him a lift. This was just a practice run until he could put a plan together.

  “It’s a mighty long drive, six hours or thereabouts,” Darren Bartles said, squinting in the early morning sunlight. “Tell you what, I’ll trade you. A ride for that there guitar.”

  “Afraid I can’t do it,” Carter said, shaking his head. “She’s a family heirloom.” He’d heard this line plenty of times when his mother made offers on antique furniture at flea markets. It was the seller’s way of asking for more money. But for Carter, the guitar wasn’t for sale. Not that morning, anyway.

  “I’m making you a deal, boy. I’m offering you an air-conditioned ride to Tucson. For all I know, whatever you got in that case is a broken-down piece of junk,” Darren replied.

  “Sorry, sir.” Carter’s shoulders dropped. He turned to go. Maybe back to the parking lot to see if anyone had California plates.

  “C’mon now, don’t hang your head like a beaten pup,” the man called after him. “I don’t want to spend the next six hours talking to myself. I ran out of conversation halfway to Albuquerque and I ain’t got nothing new to tell myself on the way back.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Carter gave the man a broad smile. At this rate, he figured he might be able to get all the way to Santa Monica in a matter of a day or two.

  They climbed into Darren’s pickup. The truck roared to life, then settled into a pattering rattle. The Lius’ SUV had been comfortable, but to Carter, Darren’s old work truck was the closest he’d felt to home since the storms. It reminded him of his mom’s. Dinged and scarred from dashboard to floorboard, each mark could likely tell its own tale of woe. As it pulled away from the curb into the lemony sting of the New Mexico sun, Carter had an itch to write another letter to Kaia. He’d hitched his first ride from the first person he’d asked. Crazy, she’d call him. But he was doing it, by the kindness of strangers.

  “Are you a carpenter or something, Mr. Bartles?” Carter asked, poking his thumb in the direction of the tool boxes.

  “Yup, and some electrical. You could call me a Renaissance man, a jack-of-all-trades.” The man sure liked his own jokes. “And you can also call me Darren. Ain’t nobody called me Mr. Bartles in a dog’s age. Don’t you start.”

  Carter nodded. “My mom has a carpentry business. Restoration and refinishing, mostly.”

  “And where might she be? Ain’t often I come across a boy your age looking to travel state-to-state.”

  “Tucson.” Carter looked away. Darren seemed decent enough, but if he knew Carter intended to make it as far as the coast, he might try to call the authorities. “I was just in Albuquerque visiting a friend at her grandma’s.”

  “Uh-huh” was the man’s only reply. Carter wasn’t sure if he wasn’t listening or just not interested. “And nobody thought a spell about how you’d get back to Arizona, once you were done with your little visit?” If Carter could convince the man to get him as far as Tucson, he’d be only a stone’s throw from California. He needed to keep his cool. Darren might even let him borrow his cell phone to check in at the hospital along the way.

  “My car broke down,” Carter was quick to reply. At fifteen he looked old enough to drive, didn’t he? “The transmission’s been giving me trouble since last summer.” Carter shifted on the broken vinyl seat, wondering if Darren was buying his story. If he hoped for the kindness of strangers, his mother would probably say he had to give what he hoped to get. And nobody took kindly to liars. Carter coughed, his throat dry. He should’ve thought to pack a water bottle from the hotel.

  “Maybe I could help?” Darren turned his gaze from the road to size Carter up. “What say we turn around and go back? This old pickum-up taught me plenty about transmission trouble.” He spanked the broad dashboard of his truck lovingly. “Ain’t ya, girl?”

  Carter’s eyes grew wide. They hadn’t traveled more than a dozen blocks from the hotel, but heading back would dump him at square one, and with some explaining to do. Darren had the a/c cranked on high, but Carter felt uncomfortably hot in the truck’s cab.

  “Uh, my mom called a tow truck?” Carter said, wincing. Carter couldn’t imagine his mother paying anyone to do work she could handle herself, but Darren didn’t know that.

  But Carter’s story satisfied Darren well enough. He drove on without comment, veering left to merge onto the I-25 headed south toward Las Cruces.

  Las Cruces?

  “Hey, you took the south exit,” Carter pointed out to Darren, but the man said nothing. He just kept his hand on the wheel, directing the rattling truck away from Interstate 40—and away from Arizona.

  “What are we doing on Interstate 25?” Carter asked, loud enough to expect an answer.

  Darren lifted the ball cap off his head and wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his arm. Carter stared at his russet hair, so dense and plush he reckoned he’d skinned it off a red fox. Carter didn’t like the image of Darren Bartles with a skinning knife. “I thought we were staying on Route 66. I mean the 40—”

  He had to get out of there. Kaia was right, hitching rides was crazy. Carter pulled the lock open on his door and tried to imagine what it might be like to leap out of a truck going eighty miles an hour on the freeway. It worked in the movies. But real life was a different matter. Carter remembered what had happened to the guitars when they’d crashed to the floor back at Tommy’s. Even if he somehow managed to make it, where would he run? There was nothing but dry, rural land, and uninhabited foothills beyond, on both sides. Fire warnings marked the roads, and his parched throat caused him worry there wouldn’t be water for miles.

  “Take the 40 to Tucson?” he repeated without looking Carter’s way. “I said I’d give you a ride, not a scenic tour.” Darren locked all the doors with a click of the automatic controls in his armrest. “A boy who lives—and, as you said, drives—around those parts ought to know as much.” Carter pulled his guitar case into his lap, hugging it to him in a white-knuckled clasp. He was trapped.

  Chapter Fifteen

  CARTER KEPT HIS HEAD STRAIGHT LIKE HE WAS watching the road, but tried his best to study the man from the corner of his eye. He’d need to be able to identify Darren Bartles to the police, if it came to that. There had to be a way to stop him. He needed to get out of that truck. He considered taking a swing at Darren, but wondered whether slugging a grown man in control of the steering wheel while they were flying down the interstate would be so great for his health.

  “A little ways down the road is a town called Truth or Consequences. I
ain’t kidding.” Darren took out another cigarette and lit it. The cab of the truck was hot and stifling in the desert air and the cigarette smoke stunk. “They got a bunch of natural hot springs there.” Darren had a habit of checking the mirrors, his head bobbing between the rearview and the side mirrors like what was behind them mattered as much as the road ahead.

  Darren glanced over at Carter, taking him in from head to toe. “Don’t suppose you thought to pack some swim trunks?” Sweating like a sinner in church, Carter swallowed hard. Darren laughed at his discomfort. He pulled his guitar across his lap, covering himself. “Hey, if you ain’t into hot springs, we could always take a dip in Elephant ’Butt.’ Nice and quiet there. Lots of privacy.”

  Carter reckoned the guy was just trying to rattle him. But they passed an actual state-erected sign reading “Elephant Butte Lake State Park.” Darren was serious.

  “Far as I can make of it,” Darren said, “when it came time for naming places around here, a bunch of ’em met over a hooch still in a barn.” Saying that must have jogged his memory because Darren motioned to Carter. “I hid some bourbon there under your seat. Take a swig and pass it over, little man.”

  Carter figured now was a legitimate time to panic. His gut clenched along with the tightness in his chest, his body a mess of knotted rope, but he remembered what his father had told him about stage fright: “The second terror hits you, leave your body. In your mind, float up to the ceiling and direct your body like a marionette, a separate being from your soul. Make it do what the audience came to see.”

  Carter put on an act, sitting back casually in his seat. He pretended he was enjoying Darren’s humor, in on the joke. He opened the bottle of bourbon and sniffed it. The scent nearly burned his gullet double-wide. Pausing with the bottle near his lips, he pretended to savor a sip, then handed it over as they approached the off ramp to the lake. As they neared the lake exit, he tried to distract Darren, pointing out the windshield to bright green patches in the far distance. “Is that a golf course?” Carter asked, holding his breath while Darren took a long swallow from the bottle. “Crazy how they can make grass grow in the middle of the desert, huh?”