by Craig Moody
I nodded, realizing he was right. My brain was too heated and my stomach too upset for proper thought. I moved to join him beside the bike.
“What’s that smell?” Gauge asked, moving his head toward mine.
“What smell?” I replied coyly.
“Something smells like puke. Did you throw up?”
He drifted his nose a few centimeters from my lips, confirming his suspicion.
“You did,” he answered himself. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes,” I responded, embarrassed that he caught me. “I think it’s just the heat.”
He stared at me, his eyes reading mine.
“You’re not okay,” he replied, lifting his hand to my forehead. “Dustin, you are burning up!”
“Well, of course I am, Gauge. How else do you think I am going to feel after walking miles in over a hundred-degree heat?”
He moved his hand around my face, pressing his lips to my forehead when his fingers no longer provided enough information.
“No, Dustin,” he said softly. “You have a fever.”
I looked at him, too exhausted to argue and too scared to deny the truth.
Before anything more could be said, a sole police cruiser pulled in front of us.
“Is there something I can help you boys with?” a gruff voice asked.
I didn’t move as Gauge stood to greet him.
“We broke down, officer,” he started, leaning against the open passenger side window. “We’ve been walking for miles. Someone slipped our cash out of our pack somewhere along the way. We’re kinda stranded.”
I couldn’t see the officer from the ground, but I could hear him begin to fidget with his police radio. He murmured some abbreviated jargon before responding to Gauge.
“Is that your bike?” I heard him ask.
“Yes, sir,” Gauge replied, turning his head toward the Indian.
“’49 Indian?” the officer asked.
“Yeah,” Gauge answered, his voice lifting with a bit of interest. “You know motorcycles?”
“My dad had a ’49 Indian. Just like that one. His was blue. I’ve been trying to get my hands on one for years.”
The radio began to crackle and mumble.
“This one was my pop’s,” Gauge replied. “I’ve been slowly restoring it. Takes a lot more work than you think.”
“Oh, tell me about it, son,” the officer laughed, his gruff voice both comforting and slightly alarming. “It’s an old piece now, you pretty much have to replace everything.”
The chit-chat regarding the Indian continued for about ten minutes. Finally, the officer called a tow truck and asked us into his cruiser.
“Is there someone you’d like to call?” the officer asked as we climbed into the backseat.
“Uh, no,” Gauge responded, looking out the back window at the tow truck driver, who was slowly finishing up with the Indian.
“Here’s the deal,” the officer started. “I’m going to take you boys down to the station. I have to do a report on this. You’re not in trouble or anything. It’s just a formality.”
I looked over at Gauge, who kept his eyes focused on the officer’s, which peered back at him through the rearview mirror.
“But then you boys are going to have to come up with a plan,” he continued, shifting his eyes over to mine. “Where are you going to stay tonight?”
Gauge and I looked at each other, both too tired and caught up in the day’s events to fathom any form of proper response.
“Okay, look,” the officer continued. “Byron, the tow truck driver, will take a look at the Indian for free. He will do it for me. I can’t have you boys stranded on the streets, though. I can let you both crash in the loft of my garage, but you need to make some calls or figure out some way to be on your way.”
“Thank you, officer,” Gauge said, clearing his throat from both nerves and heat. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”
“Jenkins,” the officer replied. “Tyrone Jenkins.”
“Thank you, Officer Jenkins,” Gauge retorted, smiling as the officer nodded his approval in the mirror.
***
After an hour at the station, Officer Jenkins stopped off at a small diner, its décor and vibe heavy on the nostalgia. Each staff member greeted the officer as we entered, bee-lining for what I imagined was the officer’s designated booth.
“I come here all the time,” he announced as we sat. “Best pancakes this side of the country. I swear it.”
I glanced at the menu, the description of each of the entrees twisting and squeezing my churning stomach into tighter knots.
“You boys just get whatever you want,” Officer Jenkins continued. “I can tell you have had a day of it.”
“Well, look who it is,” a high-pitched voice chimed. “Geez, Tyrone, it’s been what, eight hours since I saw you last?”
The waitress was a short woman, boisterous and heavy set. Her face was caked with makeup, as though a child had brushed every color in its paint palette across her skin. Her appearance was both charming and disturbing.
“Yeah, yeah,” Officer Jenkins laughed. “These are some boys I found stranded out on Main. Poor guys have been pushing a heavy-ass motorcycle for miles.”
“Heavens!” the woman cried in what appeared to be genuine shock. “Well, say no more. Let me get you boys some water.”
She disappeared behind a distant pastry counter.
“That’s Pamela,” Officer Jenkins revealed in a low voice. “She’s had the hots for me for about twenty years now. Poor thing. One of these days, I’ll just have to throw her a bone and ask her out.”
Gauge and I only stared.
“Hell, with that kabuki face, I’d be afraid to go any place where they might mistake her for an escaped clown.”
He laughed at his own joke, clearing his throat in an attempt to regain his composure as he realized neither Gauge nor I responded.
“Anyway,” he continued, smoothing out his menu with his hands. “She’s a good girl. Kooky as all get out, but with a good heart.”
“Here we go!” Pamela announced as she rounded the corner with a tray full of condensation-heavy glasses of ice water. “Please, drink up!”
She watched with a careful smile as Gauge and I downed two glasses each. I felt my stomach jump and waver at the sudden invasion of the ice- cold liquid. I closed my eyes in an attempt to mentally stabilize the feeling.
“Well now, what will you hungry fellas be
having?”
As Officer Jenkins and Gauge rattled off their orders, the visual image of each selection mentioned flashed before my eyes, its appearance and smell so vivid in my mind that I could nearly touch and taste it. By the time Pamela made it to me, I was covered in vomit.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed, stepping back to avoid what had spilled to the floor.
I felt Gauge grab me, wiping my face with a napkin.
Officer Jenkins stood up as Pamela ran to fetch some rags. They both stared in silence as Gauge carefully cleaned me, cycling the rags over my face and shirt until each was weighted with the contents of the mess.
Their words became muffled as I was shuffled back to the police cruiser. I wasn’t able to hear clearly again until we reached a nearby clinic.
“What is your name?” a short, mustached man asked me, his face so close to mine that I could smell chocolate on his breath.
“Gauge,” I replied, my voice strained and sore.
There was a commotion before the doctor’s face reappeared.
“That is not your name. What is your name?”
I closed my eyes as my head began to spin.
Thoughts and images passed before the screen behind my lids like a film projector gone mad. It wasn’t until Gauge gripped my face in his hands that the spinning stopped.
“Dustin,” I heard him say. “You have to focus now. Look at me, Dustin. Focus.”
His face began to clear the longer I stared.
The intense l
ook of concern and fear that stretched over his expression sent an alarmed jolt through my heart. I had never seen him so terrified.
“Okay,” I whispered.
The world continued in a shadowed haze as the doctor diagnosed me with severe heat exhaustion and recited a list of home instructions.
I felt Gauge carefully guiding me as we exited the cruiser at Officer Jenkin’s house. I could hear him and the officer chatting briefly as I was led to a small bed in the corner of a garage. The smell of old oil and burnt rubber filled the air like an unmoving cloud. I closed my eyes and fell into a very deep sleep, not waking or moving for what must have been hours.
It was pitch black when I opened my eyes. I looked around, searching for a trace of light, but found only darkness. I began to panic as I slid my hands beside me, drifting them into the unseen distance. My right hand felt a wall, my left found Gauge’s thigh.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered, jumping into a sitting position. I could tell that I had woken him.
“Are you okay, baby?” he asked, lowering his face to mine. “Do you need anything? What’s the matter?”
The panicked race of my heart slowed as the warm, familiar smell of his breath caressed my face. I was focused on controlling my breathing, when I felt him lift me from the pillow.
“Here, babe,” he said, placing a cold drinking glass to my lips. “You need water.”
Carefully, he tipped my head back with the glass, ensuring a mouthful before lowering both to center.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, the sound of his voice wrapping around me like a warm and welcome blanket.
“Better,” I whispered, my stomach churning from the water. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Gauge fumbled in the darkness, eventually producing a small flashlight. A dim yellow beam led the way as he guided me slowly toward a small door in the corner of the loft.
I closed the door behind me, barely making it in time as I sat on the toilet. A singular bulb provided a soft light as the contents of my bowels groaned and splashed into the commode. The smell was rancid, my eyes watering from both the putrid stench and the ache of my convulsing torso.
“Babe,” Gauge said in horror, dropping to his knees beside me. I didn’t realize he had opened the small bathroom door. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
I shook my head, grimacing as more fluid escaped into the bowl.
“No,” I managed to whisper. “No more hospitals.”
“But, babe, you’re really sick, we need to–” “It’s just exhaustion,” I interrupted, my voice finding volume and control. “Heat exhaustion, you heard the doctor.”
I didn’t listen as Gauge continued to suggest further medical intervention. Instead, I closed my eyes as he leaned me forward to clean my backside. Never in my life had I felt so completely helpless.
Leading me back to the bed, he tucked me in and sat beside me. I drifted to sleep knowing he wouldn’t find slumber for himself. Instead, he would remain awake the rest of the night, lovingly and carefully observing me until the dawn.
***
One week later and I was feeling a bit better.
I still suffered near-constant nausea and an unrelenting dizziness, but at least I was now able to hold down solid food. My bowel movements remained inconsistent and watery, but I could manage as long as I was no longer vomiting everything that went into my stomach.
Thanks to Officer Jenkins, I was washing dishes at the small diner, while Gauge was assisting Byron at his auto shop. This way, we could save a bit of money to help get us back on the road to LA.
This time around, the Indian only needed a few minor repairs, and Byron had agreed to let Gauge work off the parts and labor it would require.
When we weren’t working, we were together in Officer Jenkins’s lawn, gazing at the brilliant display of stars above us. It was amazing how intense and beautiful the night sky was in the desert. Much like the stars above the Everglades back home, each flickering dazzle of light appeared to shimmer its glow as if vying for individual attention. Gauge would tease and taunt my fear of stories about spacecraft and aliens. He would joke that they would more than likely visit us in the night, carrying us off to some secret location far within the desert, performing painful and invasive experiments on us the way schoolchildren dissect dead frogs in a science lab.
Officer Jenkins remained helpful and friendly. He gave us rides to our jobs each morning, always dropping Gauge off first so he could stay at the diner to eat his breakfast after we arrived.
I was becoming close with Pamela, her joyful laughter and cheery disposition hypnotic and inviting. A perk of my job was access to leftover food items, but I often found myself wrapping them up to take home to Gauge, as my appetite had dwindled to near depletion.
The heat exhaustion had completely annihilated my system. From the top of my head down to the tips of my toes, I felt an off-key presence. It was as if the spiked drink had made way for some sort of infection or illness to enter my body, or perhaps weakened my system enough to expose one that was already present. Whatever the case, I had not felt like myself since before we left Las Vegas.
It was a Friday night when I decided not to wait for Officer Jenkins and ventured the short trek home alone. Gauge was already there when I arrived. The Indian, freshly washed and polished, gleamed in the faint light of the setting sun.
“She’s up and running, babe!” he announced excitedly as I walked up the driveway. “She will have us purring into LA like movie stars!”
I smiled, entertained and comforted at Gauge’s unfaltering enthusiasm. At this point, not making it to LA would seem like the definite end of the universe.
“She looks amazing, babe,” I replied, holding up a plastic bag full of Styrofoam food containers. “Dinner.”
“Mmm,” he said, his eyes watered with hunger. “Thanks, babe.”
I walked inside the garage and made my way to the loft. As I was rounding the thin wall that separated the two areas, I felt my vision begin to sway and my stomach churn and gurgle. I managed to flip the light switch on just as I relieved myself from both ends. Instantly, the room smelled of a putrid mixture of excrement and bile. The involuntary action brought me to my knees in tears.
I couldn’t move as I knelt within the puddle of my own filth. It was several minutes before Gauge came to look for me.
“Babe!” he shouted, falling against my back. “Oh my God, babe! What happened? What’s going on?”
I stared in a stunned silence as tears quickly edged his lower lids. They began to fall as he lifted me from my pool of shame and onto the bed.
I could only watch as he hastily mopped the floor and stripped off my clothing. He carried me to the small bathroom, which touted a tiny walk-in shower, and placed me within it. I didn’t flinch as a blast of cold water iced over me without warning. Gauge scrubbed my body as the water slowly began to warm.
We didn’t speak as he dried and carried me back to the bed. Dressing me quickly, he lifted me into his arms and began walking toward the Indian. Officer Jenkins was pulling in just as we exited the garage.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, popping out of his cruiser like a curious mongoose from its burrow.
“I need to get him to the hospital,” Gauge announced, adjusting my weight in his arms. “Not the clinic. The hospital. He’s burning up with fever.”
“Here,” Officer Jenkins replied, opening the back door of his police car. “Lay him in here.”
The ride to the hospital was nauseating and terrifying. What was wrong with me? How could a drug linger in my system for so long? Was it something else? Did I have some aggressive stomach flu that wouldn’t let up? I didn’t know, yet in my worried confusion, I could only think of my mother.
The small community hospital was quaint and efficient. Either due to the severity of my condition or the presence of Officer Jenkins, we sailed past the congregation of the waiting area and directly into an examining room.
A
nurse took my vital signs as Gauge and Officer Jenkins briefed her on my symptoms. I drifted in and out of consciousness as we waited for a doctor.
When I came to, I was in a hospital bed, a plastic bracelet secured around my wrist, a starched, stiff blue gown draped over the front of my body. I looked around the small room, the contents sparse and sterile. I saw Gauge piled into a chair beside me, his knees tucked against his chest, his head resting on his shoulder. He looked to be asleep.
“Babe,” I whispered, my voice too weak and broken to speak.
Instantly, he lifted his head and looked at me, a slight drapery of sleep clouding his eyes.
“Hey,” he said, lowering his feet to the floor and inching toward me. “How are you feeling?”
“What’s wrong? What have they found out?” I asked, my heart beginning to race with the pace of each speeding thought. I was terrified to hear what Gauge was about to tell me.
“Whoa, whoa,” he cooed. “Calm down, baby. It’s just a stomach bug.”
An immeasurable ton lifted from my chest. Relief poured over me and through my veins like a welcome rain.
“They are running more tests, but the doctor is sure you’ve just been dealing with a really nasty stomach flu.”
I sighed as he placed a hand over my cheek.
I closed my eyes and pressed my face into his touch, allowing the familiar warmth of his skin to ease my rambling mind.
“They hooked you to an IV,” Gauge spoke gently, allowing his voice to accent the soothing touch of his hand. “You were severely dehydrated. The doctor said it could also be your body adjusting to the heat here.”
He smiled as I opened my eyes. I gazed at him lovingly as he continued to speak.
“It was hot back home in Florida, but not like this, right? It’s like someone left a giant oven on around here or something. I’ve never felt anything so damn hot and dry. It’s like being cooked alive. I’m like, ‘Give me some humidity!’ Right?”
I closed my eyes and smiled as I rested my face back against his still open hand. The smell of his sweat and skin seeped into my brain like a lifesaving medicine.