fiction: Toni Todd

Detour

 

Just outside Amarillo, we were a sorry pair of crispy hippies, tailbones aching, balanced on lumpy backpacks in the emergency lane of the freeway, thumbs outstretched, pointed east.  At that moment, I’d have signed over my trust fund for a sandwich and a cushioned seat on an air conditioned bus.

The day began with a lofty ride in a long-haul truck out of Sparks. Next came two hundred miles with a kid from Santa Fe, squeezed into the back seat of his over-stuffed Echo.  Finally, the Phish fry, a ride that had us mashed into the nether regions of a dilapidated Subaru with five, jam-band groupies en-route to their next gig.  This was a shower averse group, but by then we didn’t smell much better, so who was I to complain?  They dropped us in Amarillo.

“It’ll be our signature sojourn, Danny, our last frontier.”  Jazz had decided, and I had agreed against all reason, that we should hitchhike to Miami from California after graduation.  It would be the last time we’d spend together before moving on to the next phases of our lives.  Once in Florida, Jazz would hop a puddle-jumper for Haiti, where he had signed on to work a summer internship with a rural medical clinic.  I would catch the train to Boston to start work in my uncle’s CPA firm.  Jazz would attend the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the fall, while I would take a flaccid stab at the CPA exam.

“Why Haiti?” I had asked.

“It’s in the Caribbean,” he said.

“It’s not St. Bart’s, Jazz.  Why be so extreme?”

” That’s always been your problem, Danny.  You’re risk averse, always playing it safe.”

“I like safe,” I said.

 

Jazz had a shock of black, sweeping bangs that had gone uncombed for days.  His threadbare purple t-shirt read, “Envision whirled peas” in green with a spiral below the letters that looked like a target on his abdomen.  His armpits were dark with sweat.  I was channeling Bob Marley with a two-year cultivation of flaxen dreadlocks. They were short, so Jazz said they looked like shit, and he meant that literally, like turds, sticking out all over my head.  I planned to cut them when I got to Boston.

“What ever happened to that girl you dated, the one who dumped you for the Italian Instructor?”  I was accustomed to Jazz’s chiding, but this jab caught me by surprise.  We’d been sitting there, squinting in the glare and scratching our sunburns and bug bites for hours, staring at the shimmering mirage that looked like puddles across the pavement.  An occasional breeze was kicked up by a speeding car, but the hot blast provided no relief.

“Last I heard, she was married to the guy, living in Florence, and popping out little bambinos.  It was a long time ago, Jazzy.  I really don’t care anymore.”

“I was just making conversation.”

“Why don’t we converse about walking back to town, getting a room, taking a shower, grabbing a burger, and buying a plane ticket?”

“Can’t.”

“Yes, we can.”

“No, we can’t.  We agreed, no creature comforts.  Just us and our wits.  I thought you were tougher, Danny.  I thought you could handle a little adversity.”

“This is self inflicted adversity, which makes it stupid.”

Stupid, but I didn’t leave.  I might have hoisted my pack and hiked back to town on my own, but I didn’t, and he knew I wouldn’t.  I was always more afraid of disappointing Jazz than anything, least of all perishing from boredom and a sore ass on a roadside in Amarillo.

“Buck up, Danny.  People hitch across the country every day.”

“So what about you?  Heard from Sara Smile?”  Women flocked to Jazz like geese to Canada.  She was the first woman ever to dump him.

“Not a word, but I hope she’s miserable.”

“Does it help that I’m miserable right now?”

“A little.”  He grinned, then leaned to punch me in the shoulder.  You’d think we were eight years old.

The sun hung low in the sky but refused to go down.  I looked at my sandaled feet to lament the dirt imbedded in my toenails.   An enormous Chevy 4×4 rumbled by.  The truck slowed and lurched across the fog line, laying black rubber on pavement as it screeched to a halt.  We grabbed our bags and ran.  Back fenders stuck out like bulging muscles over knobby, dual rear tires.  There was a Texas state flag decal on the bumper.  A spray of fake bullet-hole stickers peppered the tailgate.  The truck was jacked so high you could see the suspension underneath.  It quivered, all shine and chrome in the twilight.  There was a shotgun in the rack, mounted inside the cab’s back window.  Two large, young men with thick necks and tight t-shirts sat on the bench seat.  A freshly tattooed arm poked out the passenger window and waived toward the open bed.  “Hop in,” he said.  It reminded me of that corny joke I used to tell my parents as a kid: What do say to a one legged hitch hiker?

I hesitated.  “I don’t think this one’s….”  But before I could finish, Jazz tossed his gear into the back.  He hooked his thumbs into his pits and flapped pretend chicken wings.  I chucked my pack over the side and climbed in.

The truck engine revved and we whipped back onto the freeway, then shot into the fast lane.  Inside the cab, the men were laughing, their faces reflected in the rearview mirror.  Country music blared from the radio.

Within minutes, the truck veered back across the lanes and caught an exit.

“Where are we going?”  I shouted.

“Detour,” said the driver.  “It won’t take long.”  The driver leaned to punch his pal square on the shoulder, not so hard it seemed, as Jazz had punched mine.

We were jolted by a sudden, right-angle turn onto dirt from the frontage road.  The truck flew, bumping through the bleakest of landscapes, dust billowing behind us.

“Jesus, Jazz.  Where the hell do you think we’re going?”  He didn’t answer.  His eyes were like dinner plates, his mouth contorted.

We hit washboard.   My teeth rattled like an anatomy class skeleton in an earthquake.

“Oh shit!” I couldn’t hear him, but I could read Jazzy’s lips.

“Maybe we should jump,” I yelled, but not loud enough to overcome the whir of tires, the clamor of metal, the boom of the radio.  Sage and cactus whizzed past in a blur of brush and earth.  Even if we survived the leap, we had no idea where we were, or which way to go.

The truck ground to a halt.  The passenger flung opened his door, stepped out, leaned back into the cab and grabbed the shotgun from the rack.

“Shit!” Jazz whispered.

“Get out,” said the driver, then slammed his door shut on the other side.  He was standing next to the cab.

We jumped over the sides to the ground.

“What about our stuff?”  I said.

“Leave it,” he said. “Follow us.”

The driver’s t-shirt was red and said, “Don’t mess with Texas” in bright white.  His head was shaved bald, stained by a shadow where his hair had grown, his round face smeared with an auburn goatee.  The passenger’s shirt showed the black silhouette of a wild boar – a razorback  – on dingy yellow.  His hair was brown and military cut.  Long sideburns striped his cheeks.

The pair of them walked a few steps ahead, the shotgun slung over the passenger’s shoulder.

“Maybe we should make a break for it,” I said.

No answer.  We walked on in silence, the only sound our footfalls thumping the dirt.

Suddenly, Jazz dropped to his knees.

‘Please don’t hurt us.  Please!  Oh my God! I don’t want to die! He dropped his face into his dusty hands and sobbed.  The men turned.

“Come on, Jazzy.  You’re OK.” I spoke softly as I tugged him up by the elbow.

The driver stepped toward us.  He looked down at Jazz. “Get up,” he said.

Jazz wobbled to his feet.  We stumbled along in the twilight.  Every few minutes, the passenger would pivot on one boot in the dust, swing the gun across his torso, walk backward a few steps, then spin back around.  The men walked close together, leaned toward one another and whispered.

We entered a stand of cottonwoods along a dry creek bed.  Stumps were arranged around a fire circle.  A pile of kindling was stacked and ready to light in the center of the stones.  It was dark.  The driver drew a pen light from his jeans.

“Have a seat,” he said, shining the beam like a laser on the stumps.  We sat.  The passenger sat too, knees splayed, facing us from the opposite side of the circle.  The shotgun rested across his lap.  I could see the tattoo on his forearm.  It was an intricate inking of a rattle snake, mouth open, menacing, fangs dripping, coiled and ready to strike.  The driver knelt to build a fire, then sat on a stump.  Pitch crackled and sparks flew like kamikaze  fireflies around the flames.  He turned to his partner.

“Gimme the gun, Zeb.”

Zeb passed the firearm.  My hands shook.  I slipped them under my ass, palms flat against the rough-hewn wood.  I looked at Jazz.  Perspiration streamed from his temples, despite the cooling air.  Tears boiled over the corners of his eyes and slid down his cheeks, leaving salty trails.

“We have cash,” I said, still sitting on my hands.  “It’s in our packs, back in the truck.  You can have it all.  We just want to be on our way.”  It made no sense, I know.  I was terrified, yet somehow my voice was steady, calm, like a negotiator in a police drama, the one who persuades the kidnapper to free the hostages.

The driver cocked the gun.  I jerked.   Jazz whimpered like a wounded puppy.

“Danny, I’m so sorry,”  Words sprayed out of him like champagne from a shaken bottle.  “It didn’t mean anything.  I swear.  It was only once, and she came on to me.  I need you to believe that.”  He shook his head back and forth, eyes wide, his gaze set hard on the ground.  The driver and Zeb gaped, eyeballs shifting from Jazz to me back to Jazz.  “I’m just so sorry.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It was just once, Danny.  She said she had already broken it off with you.  It was right before she left for Italy.  I swear man, I didn’t know until after.”

The driver lifted the stalk of the weapon. He squeezed the black rubber butt between his fingers and twisted.  Digits like tweezers, he reached into the hollow stock and pulled out a plastic baggy filled with weed.  He looked straight at me, and grinned.

“You look like you could use a smoke.”

Zeb had since risen from his stump and returned from the woods with a cooler.  I stared at the driver and Zeb thrust a Bud-laden mitt in front of my face.

“Brew?” he asked.

The two men exploded with laughter.  The driver smacked his own knee, then came over and slugged me in the shoulder.

“C’mon, hippy boy.  Did you really think you were going to get plugged by a couple of Texas rednecks?”

Jazz began to giggle like a little girl.  I grabbed the sweaty can from Zeb and drained it.

“I think we had ‘em a little nervous, Toby,” Zeb said.

“Toby, huh?  Were you born a complete asshole or did you have to work at becoming the asshole you are today?”

“Well hippy boy, I believe I was born this way.  It’s Danny, right?  Danny, you oughta meet my Daddy.”

Jazz howled like a rabid coyote, kicking his feet on the dirt.

“Do you know what ya’all look like?”  Toby asked.  “Do you know where you are?”  I’d just taken a long, deep pull on the joint he’d rolled.

“You don’t have hippies in Texas?” I asked.

“Sure we do,” he said.  “But they aren’t dumb enough to hitch.”

Higher and drunker, the mood lighted.  We ate strips of jerky, bags of chips, Hostess Snowballs washed down with what seemed an endless supply of The King of Beers.  Satiated on all fronts, we staggered to the truck by pen light under a fingernail moon.  Toby and Zeb drove us to the bus station in Amarillo where we caught a Greyhound red-eye, headed east.

Jazz passed out in his seat.  I remained conscious long enough to feel the brain fog thin.  I pictured Jazz, all of it, the begging, the sobbing, the forced laughter.

I woke to the glare and warmth of the sun, mellowed through the tinted glass.  Jazz was awake, flipping through the pages of a crumpled copy of The Onion.  The diesel growled, low and steady.

“I’m not going to Haiti.”

“What?”

“I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“Call them for me, Danny.  Here’s the number.”  He handed me a torn corner from the paper.  “Make up a good reason.  I’ll catch a flight north and get a head start on finding an apartment near campus, get to know the city, maybe work for a few months before school starts.”

I stuffed the slip into my pocket, slumped into my seat and dove, nose-first into a paperback.  Jazz dozed.  We parted with little sentiment in Atlanta.

“Good luck,” I said.  No handshake.  No hug.  It was the best I could do and he knew better than to try.  I watch as he walked through the station.  When he got to the door, Jazz turned, and waved.  I re-boarded the bus and continued on to Miami, which had been our goal, after all.  I’d clear my head there, enjoy a few mindless days on the beach before settling into the real world.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the woman when I phoned to tell her that Jazz had chickened out.  Again, it was the best I could do.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’m an accountant,” I told her.

“Medical knowledge is helpful,” she said, “but there’s plenty you can do.  Won’t you consider it?”

“OK,” I said.  “I’ll do it.”  There it was again, that negotiator’s tone, measured, confident.  The next thing I knew, I was staring down at the Atlantic, the azure Caribbean Sea, through the tiny, scratched window of a shimmying Piper.  My hands shook, so I slid them under my ass, palms flat on the warm leather.