The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  I found a bank of phones next to the snack machines. Pavan had wired me what was left in my bank account a little after he’d hung up with me, about seventy bucks.

  Initially, I considered offering Abe some money for fuel but after watching him fill the first time, I realized my donation wouldn’t get us out of the county. Maybe not out of the gas station. Instead, I “sang for my supper,” trying to keep Abe awake arguing about politics and talking about movies we’d both seen.

  The South American Rubber Duck had lent me his phone card after I promised to reimburse any minutes I used up.

  “Glad you’re up,” I said when Pavan answered the phone.

  “I wasn’t until the phone rang, man.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said dismissively. “When are you back?”

  “We should be in Birmingham by the early morning.”

  “We?”

  “I hitched a ride. Trucker from Guyana.”

  “Guyana?” Pavan said. “You guys hauling explosive vests or something?” he said and laughed sleepily.

  “He lives in Birmingham, so my ride ends there.”

  “Aw, Birmingham? I suppose you want me to come get you in the morning.”

  I watched the bugs swirl above me in the lamplight. It seemed the swarm should have been thicker being this far out in the sticks. That’s when I finally noticed that just above the collection of flying insects were a smaller, albeit far weightier, group of bats swooping down and eating the bugs.

  “No, not right away.”

  “That’s good. I hate getting up early.”

  “No, still get up,” I said. “I want you to go into the library.”

  “Ugh, too much library time lately. It’s gonna make me lame.”

  Several cars had come into the rest stop. Riders and drivers dribbled from the cars like drunks, heading toward the bathrooms.

  “Get all the books on tape you can,” I said, watching the zombie-like people. “Anything science related.”

  “This about your listening trick, Rainman?”

  “Definitely about my listening trick” I said. “Get all you can get. And I need to borrow your portable CD player.”

  “Busted. Only one channel works.”

  “No, that’s perfect, actually.”

  Over the phone, his yawn sounded a little like a deep-jungle reptile seeking a mate. After Pavan finished, he said. “Anything more specific. You know; science… sort of a broad field.”

  I thought for a moment. “Man, I wish I knew. Physics, I guess. But, not only. Biology, Geography. I think a majority of the stuff at the library up the road is fiction. Whatever isn’t, clean them out.”

  “Okay, that shouldn’t take too long,” he said. “I’ll gas up and head to Birmingham after that.”

  “I’ll be headed your way from Birmingham.”

  “What? How’s that?”

  I shrugged. “Gonna walk a bit. Chance to think.”

  “You’re walking from Birmingham? On the interstate?”

  “I probably won’t even make the interstate, but yeah, I gotta walk a bit,” I glanced down at my dirty shirt, and I looked about five months pregnant. Obviously, it'd be breech. “I need to start losing weight. Sooner the better, I think.”

  I gave him Abe’s home address.

  After we hung up, I looked longingly at a Three Musketeers bar in the snack machine but convinced my fingers to punch in the number next to some trail mix. It landed in the metal basket below with a thunk, and when I lifted it out it felt like used kitty litter.

  Holding it to the light, hell, it looked like used kitty litter.

  This was going to take some getting used to.

  I grabbed a Coke from the machine—baby steps, right?—and walked vaguely in the direction of Abe’s rig.

  My shadow grew large along the concrete sidewalk but dissolved into the blackness when it met the road. To my left was a large swath of brilliant green grass— in the sodium lamp light it was the most emerald green grass I’d ever seen. I headed toward it with the idea of maybe laying down on the soft earth and eating my half-healthy dinner. When I saw the sign next to the stretch of lawn that indicated this was a “dog run”, then looked down to see a pile about ten feet away that was as large as the spare tire for a Honda Civic, I decided to hit a nice, hard bench somewhere.

  The air was still good, not yet thick with summer’s oppressive humidity. In the weeks heading closer and closer to the solstice, the night air still whispered stories about the fury of winter, ice and wind that can stop the flow of time.

  The night air's sharp edge felt good in my lungs and I took in as much as I could then breathed it out slowly. It left me a little light-headed, and when I did it again, slower this time, the haze of sleep lifted from my mind a little.

  The bench was colder than the night air but, within a few moments, it warmed beneath me, no match for my bulbous bottom. Elbows propped up on the back of the aluminum bench, I looked upward, taking in the stars that peppered the night sky.

  The cosmic late-show was dulled by the very bright lights of the rest stop—the lamplight seemed more appropriate for a prison yard, searching for reluctant tenants. Naturally, it was for security purposes—to protect anyone traveling, especially foreigners who were dumping Euros or Yen or whatever ducats they carried into our shops and stores. You’d never see lights like these, say, at a bus stop on Fourth and Lake in Minneapolis or anywhere down Ponce de Leon in Atlanta. You know the sorta places where many folks would welcome the opportunity to turn night into day. But out there in the middle of nowhere, the lights are so bright the people on the International Space Station have to pull the shades down if they want to get a good night’s sleep.

  Standing again, my knees complained. But, I wanted to move to a darker area, away from the bright lights of the rest stop, so that the stars were easier to see.

  The long cement sidewalk darkened with my every step and with each shade toward black took with it another degree of heat from the air. I zipped Abe’s yellow coat to my chest.

  My eyes fell upon a silver Chevy about a hundred feet ahead of me. The vehicle’s sole occupant was the driver, who’d leaned the seat back, apparently hoping to catch a few z’s between long stretches of blacktop.

  If it was dark enough to nap over that way, should make for some good stargazing. And, checking the watch he’d given me while he slept, I saw that Abe was still in his first sleep cycle, leaving me with time to burn.

  Taking another scoop of trail mix in my fingers, I was thankful it was already too dark to see exactly what sort of treasure the cellophane bag had given me. As I chewed, I couldn’t identify most of it because, while there were many, many bits to get stuck into each and every tooth, there was little taste one could savor and enjoy.

  Anxious to rinse the dry, bitter taste away, I tipped the Coke into my mouth a little too quick, and it foamed up, and froth and bits of trail mix bubbled up to my lips and began dripping from my chin. I looked better suited for the green, green path next to me rather than the sidewalk designed specifically for the non-frothing humans. Wiping my mouth with the jacket’s sleeve, I came about thirty feet away from the driver napping in the Chevy.

  I perked up a little because from the curvature of the person’s body, it was apparent this was a woman.

  And, no, for my part there were not any illusions that a car-seat-canoodling rest stop-rendezvous was slated for my evening's near future.

  But after sitting next to a little brown man hopped up on speeders, which squeezed an odd, chemical smell from his pores into the cab’s air, it was nice to see the sensual shape of a girl’s body.

  Up to my left, the shape of a picnic table began to form in the night’s dark blues and purples, and I planned on making that my cot for about two hours. But, after seeing the super-doo back on the dog run, the sidewalk seemed the best path until I got a little closer.

  When I was just a few feet away, the woman in th
e car stirred. At first, she just seemed restless; it’s tough to fall asleep in a car, for sure. Then, with the seat back, her hair draped over most of her face, I could see that she had an eye open; now watching me.

  Instantly, feeling horrible because she seemed to be afraid of the man coming down the sidewalk, I thought about making my turn into the grass toward the picnic table, but with just the one pair of shoes, and the very real possibility of a fecal landmine, the sidewalk was still the best choice.

  A moment later, she sprang up and started the car.

  “Hey!” I raised my hands up, arms bent at the elbows, as if she’d pulled a gun on me. “I’m just going to the bench up there,” I called out and pointed. She wouldn’t turn to me, terrified, and slammed the car in reverse.

  Inside the car, her arm flew up to the back of the passenger-side headrest and she gunned the engine. Seconds later, she clipped the back end of a station wagon that was just entering the rest stop, splitting the faux wood paneling along its doors.

  The injured car blared its horn as it spun clockwise two, if not three, times.

  I said under my breath, “Holy cats…”

  As the spinning car came to a halt, the two people in the front seat of the station wagon fought off an avalanche of clothes and black trash bags and boxes and what was likely the entire contents from their previous residence. The passenger maneuvered the front door open and a waterfall of shirts, pants and shorts cascaded over his head, as he fell onto the ground.

  In the Chevy, the woman I’d scared to death was fumbling with the keys, trying to fire the ignition after it had stalled.

  “Are you okay?” I called to a kid, who was trying to stand, stepping out the open door and over a pile of clothes. “You guys okay?”

  “Shit,” he said, stumbling. “Yeah, I think. Lemme check my bro’ here,” he said and wobbled in front of the car to the driver’s side.

  I ran up to the woman’s car and knocked on the passenger side window.

  “You okay in there?”

  Stunned, her head spun toward at me, locked onto my eyes for only a second and turned her face away.

  “Hey…”

  The next moment, the car started and leaped forward, made a wide arc onto the grass, spitting up dirt, found the road again and melted into a pair of red demon eyes as it sped away, eventually turning and heading up the interstate, swallowed by dark of night.

  The young guy who’d come out of the car shouted something at me, but I was so stunned. That woman—

  “Hey, man,” he said, helping his friend from the driver’s seat. “You get a license plate?” Checking on his friend sitting on the pavement, he then walked around to see the damage. I stared in the direction the Chevy had taken off. “Man, look at this! Look at my car!”

  Still in shock at what I’d seen, I mumbled, asking, “Your buddy okay?”

  He walked toward me. “Seems alright, just dazed. You catch a license plate on that asshole?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, man.”

  “Get a look at the driver at all?”

  “Looked like a woman but, uh, didn’t see her face.”

  He swore to himself and walked over to the pile of clothes, digging around.

  Of course, I had seen the woman’s face. And it was actually the second time I’d ever seen her. But, it was the hair I’d noticed first when I’d gotten close. Before, she’d been with three others, and had tossed her hair back— I remember thinking— like in a shampoo commercial. The first time I had seen that woman was by the fountain at the Marietta Square.

  Just outside my apartment in Marietta, Georgia.

  Nearly five hundred miles away from the rest stop.

  "YOU WANT BREAKFAST, AT least?”

  I said, “No,” and my stomach growled at me, but it was time to get on the road. I wouldn’t get very far on foot but just the idea of moving, any motion, appealed to me. Lately, I’d felt very Blanche Dubois-y with my serious dependence upon the kindness of strangers and needed to shake that off a little. It was time to take manhood back a bit.

  “How about a fruit bar?” Abe said, smiling his brilliant, white-Chiclets teeth. “For the road.”

  Nibbling at my handheld breakfast, it wasn’t very long before Pavan eased up next to me.

  I looked back and the house I’d just left was still in sight. “Dude, I walked, like, a block.”

  He popped the door open. “Hey, awesome, man.”

  Abe had given me a composition book—the ones with the black and white marbling on the cover. It looked like he had a stash of them, with five kids I didn’t blame him, and he said he didn’t mind letting me have one.

  Once in the car, I started taking some notes of what had happened over the past several days. When I snapped the pen into the book and stuffed both inside the glove compartment, Pavan took this as his cue to speak up.

  “So, you think you know this chick? The one at the rest stop?”

  “I don’t know her. I saw her outside my place that first night, when you and me were hanging down stairs in the square.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Pavan ran his fingers through his mop. “Damn, man.” He thought for a moment. “Doesn’t make sense. You’re really sure?”

  “That’s the least of my worries right now. I can’t go home or The Mentor’s going to show up, without notice. I’m off to la-la land again.”

  “Wha? You’re calling this prick your mentor?”

  “Gotta call him something. ‘Mentor’ has a nice ring of irony to it.”

  “’Asshole’ has a good ring to it, too.”

  “Actually, it was your idea. You called him that first.”

  “Oh? Yeah, then, that works. Good idea.”

  I looked into the back seat. Thankfully, when your best friend is a stoner, there’s always munchies around. But sometimes, not for long. I reached back and pulled up a bag of chips, cheddar cheese flavor. The moment before I popped the bag, I stopped. My shoulders slumped a little. I said, “You don’t have anything—“

  “Dude, I’ve got EVERYTHING back there,” Pavan said, puffing with pride.

  “You got anything, you know, kinda healthy?”

  He shot a look at me. “Well, no, I don’t have that back there.”

  Well, the choice had been made for me. Either it was cheesy chips or starve. I chose the former and my stomach, for the moment, was happy with me again.

  “You get the discs from the library?”

  Pavan’s hair bobbled for a second. “Yep, fourteen all together.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, all sorts of stuff. Physics, geology, horticulture—“

  “Horticulture. Dunno if that’ll come in handy.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know what it even means,” he said and grinned wide. “I do know that it had the word ‘whore’ in it, though, man.”

  I chuckled and settled back into the spongy seat.

  He said, “They’re in the backseat in the little kid backpack. Player’s in there, too. I took the batteries outta the TV remote control since there’s never anything good on anyhow.”

  “Hey, awesome.”

  “And, I put my copy of Drink & Drain in there, as a bonus. You said put everything in, so I’m donating it to the cause.”

  “Drink and Drain.”

  “Yeah, got it for a birthday present when I turned twenty-one. It’s how to say ‘I would like a beer, please’ and ‘where exactly is the restroom in your fine establishment?’ In one hundred sixty-two languages.”

  “Very helpful.”

  “You said everything I could find.”

  Leaning into the back seat, I unzipped the mouth on Spongebob Squarepants, and reached inside. The jagged edges of CD jewel cases were nipping at my wrists as I pulled out one, randomly.

  “So, what’s the plan? You can’t go back home, man.”

  I’d nabbed a disc by Steven Hawking called The History of the Universe. Seemed like a good place
to start. Popping the bud in my left ear, I hit play. As the introduction music swelled then faded, and words began dripping into my skull, I turned to Pavan.

  “Actually, we’re headed there first. My apartment.”

  “You wanna go back home? That’s f-in’ nuts, man.”

  “Just for a min—“

  “No way! He’s probably totally casing the joint.” His hair shook with panic as he took an aggressive drag on his cigarette.

  “We’ll sneak in. Around back,” I said thumbing volume down a little on the CD player, half listening. “Don’t worry about it. You can wait in the car.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a good idea. What do you need from there? Undies, socks? I mean, you’re pretty ripe, but I got stuff you can wear.”

  Looking at him through the haze pouring from his mouth, I shook my head. “You want me to wear your underwear, dude?”

  “Not the ones I’m wearing,” he said, and then thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, we better stop by your place.”

  Listening to the universe’s story, as we thought we knew it, I could still take some notes and collect my thoughts. In high school and, as I was beginning to recall bits at a time, this was an easy way to study. My eidetic audio memory could split between two sources fairly easy.

  Studying is far more enjoyable if you can do it while watching a Godfather marathon on TNT.

  At the apartment, I wanted more than to just get a change of clothes or two. A shower, certainly, but mainly I wanted to look under my kitchen sink.

  When my new “landlord” barged in on Laura, he went and fiddled under the sink. It’s doubtful he was fixing the plumbing, despite how bad it needed to be tended to.

  “So let’s say you find a Mr. Microphone under your sink, then what?” Pavan whispered a few hours later as we slowly trolled the dark alley behind Wicked Lester’s. Both of our heads were swiveling slowly from side to side, like those old dog figurines people used to put on their dashboard, checking for any sign him.