Chapter Three: God In The Pickup Truck

The bell tower of Venice was rebuilt in 1912.

Other things take more time to heal.
My father was a drunk. A door to door salesman, who never sold anything, and spent most of his time in the bar. It was better for all of us that he was away. All of my memories of him are the same. Him, tie hanging loosely around his neck, a three day old beard, a suitcase in one hand and a six pack in the other. When I was younger I would run up into my room and hide under the bed when he got home. I can clearly remember the sound of his old Dodge, coughing and sputtering down the street. My mother would stand there in front of the door, wringing a dishcloth in her hands. After my baby brother was born it was my job to keep him quiet while dad was home. While dad was getting in the door and asking mom for his dinner I would be spinning wildly in front of my brother in our bedroom upstairs. I tried everything to keep him happy; dance, make faces, whatever it took. When he wouldn't keep quiet me and my mom would do our best to keep between dad and my brother.

Dad died one night in a car crash. It was his fault, he was drunk and drifted into the oncoming lane. He ran into a van full of Mexican immigrants. Dad was killed on contact, but the van flipped over the shoulder of the road, and caught on fire. In the newspaper the next day they said that a number of people tried to help them but all of the doors were jammed shut. They talked about the children screaming for help, but when they broke the windows the car exploded into flame. That was a long time ago.

I can't sleep. My dreams are always nightmares. Many times they begin with the sky turning red and a large thundercloud rolling in. It reminds me of those summer days when you can just watch a storm move across the fields, huge black anvil head cumulous clouds rolling like a diesel train across the sky. I spend most of the time in my dreams looking for a place fto hide, or on my knees begging to be forgiven. I'm twenty five now and still have those dreams. I drink, not like my father, but I drink. I do it mainly to stop the terrible dreams.
"Yeah, I hear ya boy." Johnny slapped me on the back while handing me another beer.
"I didn't mean to ramble on man." I said as I cracked open the beer, "But you asked."
Johnny pulled the rust red pickup to the side of the road. "Thanks for the lift."
Johnny nodded pulling his mesh cap low on his forehead, "Keep that beer low, the five-o comes through here all the time."
"Thanks man." I pulled my old tattered backpack out of the back of the truck. Johnny waved as he drove away.

It was about five and hot as hell. I was guessing that it was around ninety five or six and the beer tasted damn good. I sat on my pack for a while, enjoying the beer, and smoking a few cigarette butts I had picked up in front of a grocery store thirty miles ago. I looked up and down the road and enjoyed the view. Thick with pine trees and heavy with hills the ozarks were spread out in front of me. This thick four lane highway seemed like the throat to this lumpy slack jawed teenager that the ozarks always seemed to be to me. I sat there and watched the traffic speed by, there was no need to press anything right now, I don't have anywhere I need to get to. That's the beauty of this lifestyle, no time limits, no can'ts, but no money or food either. Right now it seems like a pretty fair trade to me but I don't think I would do it forever.

I left my mother when I was sixteen. She had worked so hard for so long that I felt that I would make it easier on her. I write about once a week, more often when I'm in jail. Since then I have been floating around. Living on couches throughout the U.S. It's been pretty nice. I take care of myself the best I can, I don't think that I smell. I take a shower as often as I can, change and wash my clothes in sinks, rivers, creeks, wherever I can find water. I have seen other people like me and I just can't stand to be around them. They look like they are crawling with things. I hate bugs. Anyway it's easier to get a ride when you look like your not just full of dirt.

The last letter I got from my mother when I was I was in jail in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. I just want to let it be known that the only reason I have ever gone to jail is strictly due to my status as a vagrant. That's a bad word, vagrant, it makes you want to frown when you say it. I'd rather be called a number of other things. Gypsy, has a romantic tone to it, or rambler, which really gets across the idea of constantly being on the move. Well, the reason that I have been in jail (and that has only been twice, each for ten days) is because I have been termed a vagrant.

I never won at anything in my life. I'm not feeling sorry for myself or anything, it just seems that whenever I put my lot on one side of something it always went bust. Even things that I believed would be a sure thing ended in catastrophy. Once I was stranded along highway 44, what most hitchhikers seem to think is an easy ride. It's southern, full of pickup trucks and people nice enough to give you a chance. Even with all of those factors in my corner I failed to get a ride for three days. After six hours of not having a ride you are venomous toward every car passing you. I would issue about a thousand curses an hour, from, "I wish that your teeth would fall out" to, "Let your firstborn be born with horns." I don't know, you just get so frustrated out there. The life I lived though somewhat protected me from all of the normal types of disappointments. I didn't have to worry about a girlfriend, If one was there when I went to bed that was fine, no matter what I would be gone in the morning. I didn't have to worry about bills, or a job, or if the right people liked me or not. All there is on the road is pure survival. You never think, "Ah, it would be nice to have this or that" instead it's, "Boy, I would like to eat tonight, or have somewhere warm to sleep." It just seems to simplify things a bit.

A truck with a bed full of scrap metal pulled over unexpectantly. I hadn't even put out my thumb. Quickly I hurried to the passenger car window.
"Where are you going to?" The lady on the driver seat shouted at me over the roar of her newborn child loosely fastened into the seat next to her.
"As far as I can go down this road."
"Well, I'm only goin' about ten or so miles, you're welcome to hop in the back if you want."
"Thanks," I climbed in the back of the pickup truck warily. The good thing about pickup trucks is that people no longer fear picking you up. They feel safe behind the thin window of plexiglass, it affords them security with the knowledge that they are truly helping someone out. It is like generosity without any of the risks. I climbed into the bed cautiously, thinking to myself that I don't know how smart of a plan that this was. Surrounding the place where I sat were the various cutting ends of harvesters, each one rusting and perched in such a precarious position that any sudden application of the brake by the lone toothed driver of this truck would most certainly decapitated me. I rode ther in horror, as the women drove down the road. At one moment she would be fixing her makeup, at the next she would be trying to feed her baby, all the while the metal creaked miserily in the bed.

That was the first time that in over fifteen years that I actually prayed. When I was younger I was taught that God listens to prayer. I always felt like I was just talking to a wall. But here among these menancing pieces of metal I feel like Daniel in the lions den. The truck hustled up the road. We passed about a million different churches. One had an old rusted sign parked in front of it stating "What does God think- Sun. 9 AM." I wish I was going to be around for that. The truck stopped in front of a Sav-alot grocery store. I thanked her and headed for the store, rescued a few butts out of the ashtray parked outside the automatic doors. I got some bad looks from a few of the people walking in. What really pissed me off is that a lady the size of Texas muttered, "disgusting" under her breath when she passed me.

I was getting hungry and the sun was going down quick, bruising the sky into a nice deep purple. I had enough money to get a can of corn. I slapped the money down on the barrelhead and headed out. I was sitting on my bag outside wondering to myself whether I should save the corn for later, when I finally got to the place where I was going to sleep tonight, or eat it right now, when an older man approached me.
"Where are you heading to?" he said, his long wispy gray hair floating around his head like a cloud.
"South or West, are you heading in any of those directions."
"Sure am, I am going south, but you'll be stuck out in the middle of nowhere. There is a good place around there that you can hop a freighter down to Texarkana."
"Well, as long as we're getting out of town it's fine with me." I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder and followed him like a dog out to his old pickup truck. By the look of it I would say that it had to be a late fifties model Dodge, a real lackluster one too. It had a good worn in look about it, good bondo work on the fenders and a nice primer coat. He offered me a seat up front with him. I climbed in on top of the duct taped front bench seat.

We started out, his old truck coughing, sputtering and making all kinds of ungodly noises. He had a kind face and was one of those old people that you feel like its an honor to meet. He wasn't bitter about anything, just content. I hope I can be like that when I get to that age. He told me about a railroad crossing about a mile or so up the road from where he would be leaving me. I don't know about all of that hopping train stuff. I had met a few people who really dug it. They would say that it was the only way to really make it across long distances in short amounts of time. On the other hand I have heard numerous talkes of horrible things happening on the rails. People getting their legs chopped off, or being locked in a boxcar and baking, or meeting mysterious figures who would kill you for your boots. Granted I have heard numerous horror tales about hitchiking and I always carried a knife in my back pocket, just in case. But I had been hitchiking for almost five years now and I've never even had to think about using it. Truth be told most of the people who pick up hitchikers are generally a generous lot. I still stored the location of the rail crossing in my memory, just in case. "I'd have you at my house for supper but Dory would give me hell." he laughed.
"No big deal, I 'preciate the ride."
He slowed and pulled over to the shoulder of the road right across from a roadside tavern that looked more like a couple of trailers welded together than any kind of reputable drinking establishment. We said our goodbyes and he took off down the road.

When I arranged all of my stuff and sat down on the ground to examine my newest prize butts from the grocery store, that's when I first saw him. He was standing about fifty yards down the road, his head was halo'ed by a twisted road sign directly behind his head. The sign was twisted in such a way that it perfectly reflected the last gasp of sunlight. At the time I didn't really know if he was real or not. I had heard a number of stories about ghost hitchhikers on the road. You know the ones, someone picks up a hitch hiker. drives with them a while and suddenly they disappear. The driver obviously shaken from the whole experience pulls in to a gas station, or a roadside tavern like the one across from me at this moment, and there he finds out that the hitchiker they had picked up was actually a ghost of this or that person that had died on the same stretch of road many years before. I was thinking about that, but I was also thinking about how the culture surrounding hitchiking. This was a very precarious position in hitchiking, because I, though completely unintentionally, was horning in on his chances to get a ride. I figured that the best thing I could do is go over and talk to him. If it felt like he didn't want any company I'd walk a few miles up the road and give him his space, or move on down to the rail crossing.