Prodigal Blues

by Gary A Braunbeck

  I thought about it for a moment. "You know, I don't remember seeing it come on. Why?"

  He chewed on his lower lip, then shook his head. "I just got a… a feeling about something, is all. Nothing for you to worry about. Would you like to shoot it or should I?"

  "I can't do anything to it, and I can't just leave it here; it doesn't belong to me."

  "Then let's get you and it back to something resembling civilization."

  Fifteen minutes later we were heading toward the truck stop with my brother-in-law's loaner behind us. I'd tossed the fallen fender into the front seat, tearing the upholstery. Just let Perry try and charge me for the repairs.

  After about two minutes' worth of travel, Cletus said, "Mind if I ask what brought you to these parts?"

  "Had to sign some papers so my sister could get her share of an inheritance."

  "Inheritance? You lose a parent?"

  "No, my grandmother."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. I truly am."

  "Thanks." I didn't want to get into the specifics—not because I figured it was none of his business, but because the less I said about my grandmother, the better. The important thing was that my sister now had a nice pile of money that was enabling her to move back to Ohio with my niece and nephew—and as far away from her hemorrhoid of an ex-husband as she could get.

  I checked my watch; right now she and her kids were boarding a plane that would take them to O'Hare, where they'd transfer to a flight into Columbus. Tanya was going to pick them up at the airport and drive them back to Cedar Hill, where they'd stay with us for a week or so, until my sister found her own place. I was looking forward to having my niece and nephew around the house; their being nine and seven, respectively, would give Tanya and me a chance to rehearse being parents.

  I felt a sudden twinge in my nether regions and looked up. "Oh, hell."

  Cletus laughed. "Let me guess—you gotta make a pause for the cause?"

  "Two Cokes within an hour in hot weather."

  "That'd be a 'yes' then?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "I hate to spread even more sunshine over your day, but we're a good twenty minutes away from the garage, so you can either try to hold it or…" He reached under the seat and pulled out a plastic, hand-held urinal, complete with snap-on cap, the kind they use for bed-ridden patients in hospitals.

  I looked at the thing and blinked. "You're not serious?"

  "I'm not the one who's gotta whiz like a diabetic racehorse. I also don't much embarrass easy. For the record, I like women and don't have any you-should-pardon-the-expression fetishes, and if you're worried about maintaining your dignity, you pretty much gave that up when you climbed into that abomination back there." He shook the urinal in front of my face. "I promise not to look."

  "Why in hell do you even have that thing?"

  "You think you're the first guy I ever picked up who's had to go after being stuck on the side of the road? Don't look at me like that, it's been sanitized." He shook it one more time. "It's calling your name, hear it?"

  "Anyone ever tell you that you're an evil man?"

  "I get a lot of complaints about that. Especially from the fellows who play Pinochle with me. Did I mention I cheat?"

  I took the urinal and popped off the cap, then looked at Cletus.

  "What?" he said. "You need me to talk you through it?"

  I turned a little to the side, unzipped my fly, and did what needed doing.

  "Make sure that cap's on tight when you're done."

  I did. "What do I do with it now?"

  Cletus looked at me. "No offense, but I sure as hell ain't gonna hold it for you—this friendly roadside service only goes so far."

  I started to say something, then blinked from a startling, blinding glint of light in the rear-view mirror.

  "Talk about your blasts from the past," said Cletus. "Get a load of this."

  The twin silver butter dishes drove past. I wondered how anyone could have missed the same exit twice—unless the driver had been having my kind of luck today. This time when the little girl looked at me she neither smiled nor waved. She seemed tired, hot, and bored. I hoped they could find their exit this time, for her sake.

  4. Coincidence, Be It Meaningful or Not

  Before we'd even gotten in sight of the garage, Cletus—after pontificating on the glories of Pinochle, letterboxed movies, good books, and women who had "…a little meat on their bones…"—informed me of the following: "I'm not saying I can't fix it, understand—it'd take a couple of days, probably—but whatever I did would be: A) expensive, and, B) really, really temporary. I'm talking a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound, got it? At best, I could slap that thing back together good enough to maybe, maybe get you another two-hundred-fifty, three hundred miles farther along, but it'd just crap out on you again, and the next time it goes, it's gonna be a helluva lot worse than it was this time, and it's gonna be permanent. So I'm sorry to tell you, but unless you absolutely insist on it 'til you're blue in the face, I will not send you on your way in a car that I know isn't going to get you home."

  I sighed and rubbed my eyes. "There any motels near the truck stop?"

  "There's a nice one that don't cost too much and they give discounts to my garage customers."

  "What about the car?"

  "They don't allow cars to stay in the rooms so the discount doesn't apply. I see that once again my Mark Twain-like humor has flummoxed you. Tell you what, give me your brother-in-law's number and I'll call him and make arrangements for the burial. He can either sell it to me cheap for what parts are still working, or pay my appalling storage prices while it sits in the garage waiting for someone to come down here and haul it back to his lot. Besides, I'd like to say a few words to him about the quality of automobiles he's pawning off. As far as what you owe me goes, call it thirty dollars for the tow."

  "There any place I can rent a decent car?"

  "Not in the immediate vicinity, but we're not all that far from Jefferson City and you can rent one there easily enough. I'd offer to take you on over right now but today's busy as hell. Be more than glad to drive you there in the morning before I open the garage, though; otherwise you'll have to beg a ride off one of the truckers coming through and I wouldn't recommend that—not that they're bad fellows, most of them are top-drawer, but you don't strike me as the trucker-befriending type. My guess is country music has never insulted your stereo's speakers."

  I was hot, I was tired, I was nine-squared levels of aggravated, and—despite the sandwich and carrots—still hungry; I didn't feel like dealing with any more crises today. I told Cletus I'd take him up on his offer. I'd get something to eat at the truck stop, then check into the motel and call Tanya.

  "A man with a plan," said Cletus as we pulled into the garage.

  I was happy to see that the motel was also adjacent to the truck stop; at least there'd be no worries about crossing the highway. If I got lost, I could always use their flagpole for a marker; it was about thirty feet tall and was currently flying the biggest American flag I'd ever seen. Right now the flag was caught in a crosswind and was snapping back and twisting around like it was trying to bite itself on the ass.

  "I'm not exactly the sharpest tack in the box first thing in the morning," said Cletus, pulling a business card from one of his pockets, "so in case I forget, or if something happens and I gotta have one of my boys drive you over instead, take this and make sure you call me once you get home." He wrote something on the back. "This here's my home number, call this one if you get in after nine in the evening. I'm usually up until about midnight, midnight-thirty Ohio time. Otherwise, call the garage number on the front."

  "Mind if I ask why?"

  "I'm a worrier, is what I am. My girlfriend—Muriel, she's the gal who runs the restaurant—tells me I worry too much, but personally, between you and me, I think she finds it kind of erotic. Plus it's good for business, being concerned that the folks whose cars you fix are happy with the service." He smiled as I too
k the card from him. "Besides, Mr. Mark, you strike me as a damn nice fellow and I've enjoyed our little adventures in Kerouac-land today."

  "Me, too."

  I tucked his card into my shirt pocket and we shook hands. The last thing I'd expected today was to make a new friend.

  I unloaded the four medium-sized boxes of toys, knickknacks, and family keepsakes that my sister (not trusting airline baggage-handlers) had asked me to take back to Ohio, grabbed my suitcase, made sure I had everything else I needed, then gave the car one last good solid kick before heading toward the garage's rest room to dispose of something.

  After a moment's consideration, I turned back, popped the cap off the portable urinal, opened the passenger-side door, and emptied the contents into the back seat. If Perry had someone come down to haul this back to Ohio (and he would, he was just that type), I wanted to make sure the smell when he opened the door would let him know just what I thought about his assessment of "top-notch condition."

  As I was leaving the garage I could hear Cletus behind the closed door to his office shouting into the phone, "…kind of a brain-damaged, greasy little, no-balls-to-speak-of pickpocket are you, anyway, Mr. Perry of Perry's Used Cars on Fifth Street in Cedar Hill, Ohio? Don't bother answering that—the smell of your breath'd probably come through the phone lines and knock every buzzard off of every shit-wagon in a fifty-mile radius. You got any idea the outright, call-the-mortician danger you put your brother-in-law in by letting him drive off in that miserable excuse for transportation? What's that? I am calm, dunder-dunce! If I was mad, I'd be getting unpleasant…."

  Oh, yeah: I really liked him.

  The woman behind the motel desk was in her sixties and wore the type of horn-rimmed glasses that had been around for so long they were actually fashionable again. She took one look at me, smiled around the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, and said, "Hello, you. I'm Edna. You must be that Mark fellah Cletus went after."

  "Word gets around fast here."

  "That it does, son, that it does. 'Course this has been one of them days where we got nothing new or interesting to talk about, so your little predicament's the big topic…that, and my new cookie recipe, which I finally got right after about a dozen tries. Don't look at me like that; you work a stop like this, you get your kicks where you can. Now, let me see…oh, yes. I got just the room for you." She slapped down a key. "Number Twelve, near the end, first floor. You got nobody above you, and nobody on either side right now, so you can get yourself some rest and have some peace and quiet… if you can get past the trucks rolling in and out of here."

  "That sounds lovely." I watched the dangling ash at the end of her cigarette grow longer; no matter how much she moved and spoke, the ash never fell off.

  As I was signing in, she looked past me to the small stack of boxes I'd left outside the door. "If you want, I can have my husband store them boxes in a room we got for that stuff. We don't have many thefts from here, but you never can tell."

  I checked with my back and found it didn't feel like hauling any more than necessary. "I'd appreciate that. How much more will that be?"

  "It's free for Cletus's customers."

  "Sounds like he's quite a popular guy."

  "Cletus? He's a stinker, is what he is, but you gotta love 'im. Unless you're a Pinochle player."

  "So I gathered."

  She laughed and shook her head and still the ash remained in place.

  "How do you do that?"

  "Do what?" she asked.

  I pointed. "Not lose your cigarette ash?"

  She grinned. "It's a gift."

  "You have no idea, do you?"

  A wider grin: "That'd be telling, and I got to leave folks with something to remember me for, don't I?"

  I left just as Edna's husband—who looked as if he'd been an even more powerful specimen in his younger days than he did now, which was nothing to sneeze at—began moving the boxes to the back. He gave me a wide and bright smile and I waved at him. He, too, had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and just like his wife's, the ash on the end of his smoke did not fall off, in spite of all his movement. I figured it was some kind of family secret, passed from one generation to the next. Maybe they'd turn it into some kind of roadside attraction for a little extra cash. I'd buy a ticket.

  I was suddenly glad that I'd had car trouble, otherwise I'd never have met any of these wonderful, interesting people.

  The room was clean and surprisingly spacious—it had a king-sized bed complete with "Magic Fingers" (twenty-five cents for "Fifteen Minutes of Bliss")—although it appeared to have been last remodeled by some groovy decorator around 1974, but I dug it, anyway.

  I decided to grab a shower and a change of clothes before doing anything else. Once out of the shower, I called Tanya (who'd taken the day off from work) and got our voicemail.

  "Are you naked? Touch it for me, baby, touch it slooooooowly. Hey, hon, it's me—Jesus, I hope you knew that. Do me a favor? After you pick up Gayle and the kids at the airport, stop at a Radio Shack or someplace like that and buy me a frigging cell phone, please? You were right, but more importantly, I was wrong. Alert the media. Listen, I'm in a motel just outside Jefferson City. I've had serious car trouble and… it's a long story, complete with motifs and subplots and nebulous symbolism and would probably bore you into a coma, so….

  "I'm going to head over to the restaurant here and get something to eat. I'll try you back in about an hour or so. I miss you. Hope you still love me when you get this." I ended by giving her the motel's name and phone number, as well as the number of my room, then breathed heavily for a few seconds before hanging up. I am nothing if not a class act.

  Tanya was probably talking to Perry at this moment; after the earful he got from Cletus, he'd feel compelled to call his sister and yell about how her doofus-janitor of a husband had ruined a perfectly top-notch car. Tanya would let him go on for a few minutes, then tear him a new one. Perry had never won an argument with her. Come to think of it, neither had I. My wife was a force of nature. Lucky, lucky me.

  God, I missed her. Home seemed so very far way. Maybe some steak and eggs would help with that, though I doubted Muriel's cooking (assuming she did the cooking herself) would be half as good as Tanya's.

  The parking lot was crowded with SUVs, minivans, assorted cars and pickups, along with semis and their tractor-trailers—

  —and, near the far end of the lot, almost-but-not-quite hidden between a pair of semi cabs, sat the twin butter dishes.

  I stopped for a moment, staring, wondering why, if they'd twice missed their exit, they hadn't just stopped here the first time to check their map or trip-tick or simply ask someone how to get from here to there. I'd've done it that way, had I been in their situation; but, then, I'm a lot less stubborn than most male drivers, and lack the prerequisite pride to be injured.

  I chuckled at the thought of the little blonde girl or her mother finally screaming at Daddy to for goodness' sakes pull off and ask for directions because they had to go to the bathroom and it was getting hot in here; I imagined Daddy, shoulders slumped in defeat, pulling into the parking with all the majesty of a dog with its tail between its legs. Lassie at her most heart-wrenching probably never looked so sad.

  I entered the restaurant and was immediately overwhelmed with the smells of coffee, bacon and hamburgers, coffee, eggs and home fries, coffee, fresh doughnuts and toast, coffee, cigarettes and engine-oil-stained clothes, coffee, cheap perfumes and after-shaves, coffee, coffee, and something that might or might not have been coffee.

  A tired-looking, but friendly and pleasant young waitress seated me at a booth near the middle of the restaurant, handed me a menu, and asked if I'd like anything to drink.

  Oddly enough, I ordered coffee.

  While I waited for her to come back, I took in the surroundings while looking for the little blonde girl among the customers. I wondered if she'd recognize me.

  One of the things I've no
ticed during my road trips over the years is the tendency one has to keep running into the same people at rest stops and restaurants along the way. There's always a portion of the trip where you start recognizing certain cars and their drivers because, at least for a while, you're all traveling in the same direction, so it only makes sense that you're going to see each other during stops. It's an at-best tenuous connection to another human being because, even if you recognize each other, you rarely speak. But sometimes that silent fellow-traveler acknowledgment is all the road can offer, and as long as you can find a familiar face or car along the way, you feel like you're on the right track. It's not quite as lonely.

  So I was looking for the little blonde girl and her family.

  The waitress returned with my coffee (each customer got a pot all to themselves), took my order, then said, "Muriel said to tell you that she's gonna fix your meal herself because Cletus asked her to. You must be special to rate Muriel getting behind that grille."

  I looked over to the counter where a large and quite attractive woman in her early fifties gave me a big wave and an even bigger smile; she looked enough like Edna from the motel to be her younger sister—which, when I thought about it, made sense; a lot of truck stops/restaurant/motels like this were family businesses in Ohio, why should it be any different here?

  I returned Muriel's wave and poured my first cup of coffee.

  It was exquisite, with a hint of hickory that curled up inside me like a favorite pet by the hearth in winter. Restaurants and trendoid coffee houses in Ohio would charge you four bucks a cup (no free refills) for stuff this good. Once more I found myself being glad that car trouble had landed me here. Sometimes it's easy to forget that there are still genuinely friendly places in this world.

  I looked around a little more, soaking up some local flavor by reading the notices and fliers pinned to the bulletin boards that hung on the walls seemingly every six feet: the one nearest me had ads for babysitters, 15%-off coupons for dinner at "Bubba's Catfish Shack," used car and motorcycles for sale, a sewing machine repair service, AA contact information, stop-smoking clinics… and a couple of missing children posters. One of them was old and faded, torn at the corners, but the other looked more recent.