The night air was cool and brisk. Roger staggered alongside a lightly driven road toward a shopping district. He was destined for the downtown some ten miles away, traveling the shortest route, which included the Pleasant Place Bridge. As Roger walked, a few passing cars honked their horns at the man they assumed was nothing more than an unstable bum. This, however, didn’t stop Roger’s drive as his mind and body focused on reaching the heart of the city to rebuild his memory.
This road was the one that Roger drove every time he had traveled into the city to work. From his current angle, the highway appeared unfamiliar. The upper-middle-class man had never actually walked the road, which made him second-guess his charted course. After about a mile, his right leg began to hurt again. Each abnormal step caused his left leg’s knee, the better one, to bend unnaturally, which induced more fatigue in his ailing body. He calculated it was the fact that his liver had finally removed his body’s painkiller—the alcohol. Roger began to lose sight of the downtown. His burning drive to uncover more pieces of the puzzle was quickly fading from a blazing fire to a candle flame starving for wax. Roger recognized his idea to walk was brainless, and he knew he had to do or find something quickly.
Should I hitchhike? he wondered.
Roger figured it was a viable option. He saw a car’s headlights racing toward him, but as he raised his arm to gesture the world-recognized “thumbs up,” a sharp pain traversed his bicep. The car flew by, nearly blowing Roger off the road. He was in bad shape and was quickly getting worse. His immediate goal was to find a way to kill the pain receptors in his exhausted brain.
Up ahead, Roger saw lights in the distance. It was the trite gas station he always passed on a ride into the city. He never stopped at the business because it always looked like the type of place robbed more than a bank with an open vault. However, it was a place to rest. Tall oak trees obstructed the full view of the store, but the blinding sign lit the sky like the constellation Orion. Roger stumbled toward the structure. The sign finally revealed itself, “Raj’s Quick Mart.”
The place was small with only four gasoline pumps in front and a diesel station on the side. No cars filled their tanks, probably due to the overpriced fuel grades. However, several cars were parked outside the convenience store as well as a large tractor-trailer lacking its load stationed near the diesel pump. Roger made it to the door as he sighed with relief under the bright lights of the canopy. The intense radiance hurt his sensitive eyes, but he saw the inside was even brighter.
Roger entered the compact store. Six aisles stacked with junk food, trinkets, and soda offered patrons a choice of the bare necessities of life and nothing more. The clerk was none other than Raj himself, the owner and operator originally from Pakistan with a stereotypical Middle-Eastern English accent. As soon as Roger entered his store, the owner’s eyes swiftly studied what he perceived as a potentially troublesome beggar. Quirky music from another decade belted from a cassette player near Raj’s side. In front of him, an elderly woman was indulging herself with a daily dose of lottery tickets.
“That’ll be four dollar,” Raj rasped.
The woman handed the man four crisp bills from her recently cashed Social Security check and proceeded to exit the store. As she did, her eyes filled with the image of Roger’s incapacitated frame. She let out an instinctive gasp as Roger scanned the store for a cure to his uncommon cold.
“Where is your aspirin?” Roger asked the suspicious owner.
“Aisle three,” the man replied with his chin held high.
Roger suddenly stopped cold. He stood in front of a large display of bottled water directly adjacent to a small section of automotive products. A seemingly innocuous bottle of fuel injector cleaner was the object entrancing Roger. It wasn’t so much the item, as it was the writing on the label. “Dynamite Fuel Injector Cleaner” was plastered on the side. Roger’s mind shifted to his lost wife. He thought of the way her hair flowed in the breeze and how she subtly raised her eyebrow from one of his witty jokes. His mind was removed from his body as he stood there absorbed by a single word.
Suddenly, a pop erupted from behind the register. Raj bent to pick up a phone book he had accidently knocked to the floor. While the noise was abrupt, the patrons did nothing more than give a quick glance toward its origin. However, Roger did something much more than just shift his eyes. His oversensitive mind, lost in another world, reacted strongly to the impromptu noise. His brain triggered a surge to the muscles throughout his body, sending him off his feet and into the bottled water display behind him. Bottles burst and rolled throughout the confined store. A couple deciding between cheese fries and barbecue chips peered over aisle five toward the outburst.
“Okay. Okay. Get out! Get out my store!” Raj demanded. His suspicions panned out.
Roger picked himself up and hustled toward the exit.
“Leave my store,” the owner added as Roger moved past him.
“Ah. Calm down. Calm down,” a boisterous voice bellowed from somewhere.
As Roger reached the door, the man attached to the voice revealed himself. He was a tall, hefty fellow about fifty years old and seemed to be on the side of the American-born man. His name was Jack and he was the driver of the monstrous truck parked near the diesel-pump.
Roger collected himself under the bright lights outside the door as Jack gave him a big, friendly pat on the back, which nearly knocked him to the ground.
“Ah, these dune coons. They come to our country and don’t even have the brotherly love to give a good guy a break. Don’t worry about him,” the loud trucker roared.
Jack was the type of man who said what he felt even if it wasn’t politically correct. He liked to drive a tractor-trailer for the sense of power and respect on the road that the magnificent vehicle demanded. Jack traveled the country in his power wagon and frequently stopped off at strip clubs and dive bars, and was proud of it. He had filled his diesel tank up and was browsing the beer specials when fate seemed to bring Roger and him together.
“Hey. You look like shit, man,” Jack remarked with a chuckle as he studied Roger.
Roger nodded.
“Where’s the flood? Ha! I couldn’t resist,” he added as he glanced at Roger’s ankle-high pants. “Jack’s the name,” he said, offering his sturdy hand.
“Roger,” the businessman replied as he instinctively gripped it.
Roger’s mind entrenched the action from his high-profile job, the job that seemed to be in another chapter of a partially burned book. Roger somehow felt a sense of relief in the presence of this man. His worries appeared to get a temporary push aside. He knew he would never have met this type of character in his real life and there was no way to explain how he reached this moment in his journey thus far. But the trucker’s force and conviction seemed to be just what Roger needed. Let someone on his current level stand up and offer his hand, Roger figured.
“Hey, where’s your ride?” Jack asked as he scanned the nearly deserted lot.
Roger didn’t know how to answer the question because he didn’t even know the location of his black SUV. For all he knew, it could be in the same place where his lost wife was hiding.
Roger’s lack of response didn’t stop Jack from offering his help. “You must be a nomad. I can see that… Do you need a lift?” the trucker solicited.
“Um. Well…” Roger muttered as he perked up. He realized his search for a ride presented itself in an unusual way, but he was glad the trucker offered.
“Come on,” Jack said.
Jack took the lead and walked toward his truck. He strolled with a limp on his right leg and moved slowly because of it, which was just the right speed for Roger.
“We got the ol’ war wagon here. I’m heading into the city. Got to drop it back off and get my check. I’m just finishing up from a week’s trip,” Jack explained.
The venerable truck presented itself on the side of the gas station. It was dark, dirty, and meaty as Jack waved his hand presenting it like a model on a game
show. Roger neared the grill and immediately took in the word “Mack” and the famous Bulldog emblem proudly plastered on the front. Jack banged on the hood as he smiled with pride. This was the trucker’s job, his home, and his life, and he was anxious to share it with a weary, fellow traveler.
As Roger approached the grill, he noticed remnants of dried blood and fur stuck in the truck’s teeth.
“Damn varmints. They don’t stand a chance against this here beast. Hah!” Jack added with zest. Then he yelled, “Hop in.”
Jack walked around to the captain’s chair as Roger moved to the passenger’s side. He noticed a confederate flag proudly flapping in the night air, which seemed fitting for the against-the-grain truck driver.
Roger hopped up into the truck’s cabin. The throbbing pain in his leg and arm, which had driven him to the gas station, was suddenly alleviated. He didn’t need aspirin or even more alcohol to cure his aches; he simply needed the companionship of someone on his level. While Roger didn’t exactly know this trucker’s true identity, he was glad that Jack’s helping hand seemed to block the pain.
The cabin was cool with a slight smell of some sort of masculine stench. Roger glanced behind him and saw a single bed with adult magazines scattered on top. He realized this was really the man’s home on the road, which explained the foul smell only produced from the griminess of an unkempt male’s room.
“Let’s blow this joint,” Jack yelled as he started the semi.
The powerful twelve-cylinder diesel roared to life. It rocked the cabin with its idle as Jack gave the animal a few revs to clear its throat. Roger watched as Jack smiled with each push of the throttle. As the monster howled, the trucker looked at Roger and nodded his head in acceptance.
“Feel that power. Succumb to it. Make love to it.”
Jack maneuvered the gears and took charge of the truck. As he pulled out, a sudden motion in the side view mirror caught Roger’s attention. He saw Raj, the Middle-Eastern clerk, flailing his arms with a look of rage consuming his face.
“Did you pay for the gas?” Roger asked.
“Screw this place! I’ll never come back here. That guy can shove it.”
With those words, Roger shook his head. He knew that Jack really was going against-the-grain with his actions. However, his actions at least proved that Jack was a man with principles. Roger was glad the trucker was on his side.
Jack power-shifted the truck with elegant grace, like a perfectly choreographed ballroom dance. He was the lead and the steering wheel, shifter, clutch, and gas pedal were collectively his eager partner.
The storeowner ran with all of his energy but saw the powerful machine had a clear advantage, the advantage of horsepower. He had one of the bottled waters from Roger’s bout with the display. Realizing he had lost the battle, the clerk threw the bottle in desperation. It bounced off the semi’s armor, and then burst on the ground, covering the macadam with water.
The truck plowed forward on the night road. Off in the distance, a faint glow from the city lights radiated in the sky. With danger behind them, Roger glanced around the cabin and analyzed the trucker’s home. Suggestive pictures of naked women, the scruffy man’s female companions, were plastered within his immediate view. Junk food wrappers and crumpled newspapers covered the floor like the bleachers following a sold-out baseball game. Roger could understand the pornographic images and refuse, but the item that was stuck to the dashboard seemed bizarrely out of place. An alligator bobble head doll, staring at the duo, chattered with each jostle of the truck.
“Where did you get that?” Roger asked.
“On the road, when I was passing through Florida. I hit a rest stop off the ninety-five. It was dark and late and I remember hopping down from the truck, and there he was.”
“Who?” Roger asked as he squinted his eyes, intrigued beyond his wits like a kid in the middle of his grandfather’s war story.
“A gator. He had to be twelve feet long lurking there in the darkness. He lunged at me but I wrestled him down. I had his head around my arm in the Anaconda Vice.” Jack curled his arm simulating the move.
“You wrestled in high school?” Roger asked.
“No. I like to watch women’s wrastlin’ on TV,” Jack replied with a smile.
Roger chuckled. He was holding the barbaric man on too high of a pedestal, as he only knew the road and had unique street smarts that were beyond Roger.
“Anyway, he was a fighter. I could see it in his eyes. He had those crazy eyes,” Jack added.
“Crazy eyes?” Roger muttered. He realized the trucker’s dictionary consisted of bizarre sayings and obscure definitions.
“He was a powerful bugger. We flipped around on the ground. I stunned him and went for the pile driver, but he took a chunk out of me,” Jack continued.
Roger’s mouth dropped, but he couldn’t have predicted what the trucker was going to do next. Jack reached down, grabbed his pants leg, and lifted it to reveal a prosthetic foot attached to his ankle.
“After that, he took off like he was the winner in the Belt Match…and that’s why I got that bobble head. Kind of a parting gift from Florida.”
“You wrestled an alligator? You wrestled an alligator?” Roger added in awe. He mouthed to himself, “Who the hell is this guy?”
Roger thought that if someone had told him yesterday he would be driving shotgun in a meaty tractor-trailer with a loud, foot-less man, he would have called him crazy. This proved his life was no longer predicable. If that person he would have called crazy had actually predicted this exact situation, Roger would have asked him his most burning question, “Where is she?”
Jack continued to babble about his life on the road as the city lights grew brighter with each passing moment. Roger suddenly felt sleepy, a feeling he experienced only when he had felt safe and in-control of his surroundings. For the first time since he had awoken into this nightmare, he felt a hint of security. Roger wished that if he closed his eyes, he would not fall asleep, but fall awake and turn this bizarre dream into a clear reality.
Chapter 12
Clouded Rainbow Page 11