Long Road Into The Sunset

So what I did was I turned to the driver and uttered the exact phrase: “You, sir, should find it appropriate to know, I think, I would think, that is, that is to say, I most certainly believe, that, ah hah, hum, continue, you should proceed to continue doing what, um, ever it is that you’re in the middle of doing, I would think that I should let you know, which I am.”

His response was that of a vague smile and a nod, dilated pupils hidden behind sunglasses.

The windows are down and the landscape is a flat waste of sand and heat, rushing by us like some sort of fascinatingly obscure vortex of thought. Cactus, maybe it is maybe it isn’t, off in the distance I think I see, but it’s probably just a lonely soul abandoned by fate to this little corner of hell. Can’t say I blame him, though I know not of what is being blamed or where even the blame came from.

“You might want not to drink that stuff, dude.” His voice is a shouted hoarse yell over the enormous roar of the wind in our ears. The top is down, my hair is out fully, feels weird on the scalp, you know. “Like, the stuff, dude. You might not want to drink too much more.” This guy is calling from the back seat, collect call, charges accepted, front seat me the receiver and victim of what he’s saying. “It messes with your head, like, seriously. Totally threw up just now, and dude, it’s like, awesome, watching it all, you know, hit the road at this spectacular speed, man.”

“Oh, fuck!” The driver gets pissed off at this. I don’t blame him. “You threw up? In this car? No shit! Fuck! Don’t tell me I have to clean this car now. Don’t tell me, so help me, fuck!” His head shakes violently, forehead hits and bounces off of the steering wheel a time or two, I don’t count. I’m, I don’t know, crazy looking out at everything.

“Dude, chill man, like, no. Your car’s fine man. Fine. It’s fine, dude. Chill.” I might hear him coughing some more as he leans over the side. I don’t care.

We’re all over the road and this convertible we’re in kicks ass. We found it in a parking lot days ago, property of some rich fuck—still is, probably—totally jumped in since the dumb rich fuck put the windows up and left the top down. And I’m so totally amazing at stealing shit these days that I just, you know—snip! snip!—off we went, roared the thing on down the causeway at total breakneck speeds, cut off a tractor trailer, fuck ‘em, soon we’re surrounded on all sides by desolation out here in this barren waste and we’re heading for the border fast as we can. Canada, we’re hoping to make by nightfall, no way in hell I know it, they know it, but it doesn’t matter. Fast as we can, counts as much as not at all, like watching the dead toad form a cesspool. This is that cesspool. We’re running from it straight into something equally delightful.

“Yo, like, where are we going?” The dude calls us again, beckons to us from the back seat, he’s so lost, I wish I was as oblivious, I suppose I might be in some way.

“I fucking told you already, like a hundred times at least!” The driver guy, I don’t even know his name, he’s sitting there screaming back, first leaning on the center console with this elbow, and then turned completely around in his seat with his upper body thrust through between the driver’s and passenger’s chairs. “You fucking imbecile! Why are you even here?! I don’t even know who you are! Do you have a name?! Do you?! I don’t think you do, you whiney little piece of shit!” The car’s drifting over to the left, and we’re most certainly over the yellow line to the point that it’s flashing its little dots by me on my side of the car, since this guy over here still has his foot rammed all the way to the floor on the gas. “If you’re such a goddamn whiz at this shit than why aren’t you up here, driving, you son of a bitch?!”

A billboard flies by us like it was hit by the shockwave of an atomic bomb. It says: BUY COLGATE TOTAL FOR GOOD TEETH. A picture of a little kid with a wacky smile plastered on his face almost as if he had a surprise enema right before the picture was taken—it dons the billboard’s face.

“Well shit, dude, y’don’t hafta yell, man, I hear you, I hear you,” the dude in the back is pretty laid there as well, relaxed. “Got no idea.”

The driver just sort of stares at him like, and then turns around and puts his hands back on the wheel.

“Hey uh, I think we should probably like, you know, get back on our side of the road?” I’m looking past the bridge of his nose when I say this. “You don’t have to, man. It’s completely okay with me if you stay here, but dude, if anybody comes they’ll, they’ll ahaha, really be in for a surprise, know what I mean? Ahaha.”

“So, you been down this way before?” The driver’s looking at me and I respond.

“Nah man, never, like, never in my whole life, ever, not once have I been down these parts, ever. At all, really, never. Nope.” I’m sagging my head and I think I smell tuna fish, but it’s probably just the sweat rolling off of me in torrents. “Nope, never been down here before, especially this road, never seen it before in my life, but I think I remember there being a gas station up here.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve never seen the gas station before, ever, but man, I’ve driven this road like, so many times it’d boggle your head.” The driver lets out a loud whoop and slams his hand on the steering wheel, it rattles.

“Totally awesome, man.” The guy in the back calls frontwards.

And there it is, right on our left, we pull back into the proper lane and into the gas station, stop to refuel, the works, you know, and I get out to stretch my legs, and the guy we’ve been carrying in the back seat just sort of lolls about with his head sagging back and forth, mouth frothed in vomit, probably has shit in his pants, but I wouldn’t know. The gas station reeks of petrol, and I’m fine with that; smells good, gives me a headache, cool. I want sunglasses like this driver’s got so I stride into the convenience store looking for a pair of shades.

And there’s this dude there behind the counter, this Japanese guy, right, and he’s all out in full business suit attire like the kind I used to see on wall street back in the days, and he’s got that grin on his face like he’s selling something valuable, and I guess he is, these sunglasses for instance, pretty valuable, two-fifty, and he tells me this, “I want to buy your soul,” but his voice is many octaves below the normal range of the human voice, and I find that so amusing that I’m on the floor having convulsions of laughter or horror, not sure which, but it’s terribly amusing.

So I say to him, shades in hand, “Hey fella, I’m gonna just take these right here and if you want I’ll trade my soul for ‘em you know, I’m just that cool of a guy.” So I start to walk out, and before I leave, I tell him, you know, “Hey pal,” right, like this, “Hey pal, you can come if you want, like I don’t want you t’think I’m not really selling my soul to you. I am, really, just that I still need it for the time being, so man, you can have it when I’m done with it. Just, like, tag along until then, okay?”

And this guy, I blink, and he’s next to me, that weird Japanese grin on his face, and he tells me that it’s fine and that he’ll need me to sign some stuff anyhow but it can wait until we reach the hotel in Tangiers, wherever the hell that is. Sure ain’t in Canada, I’m thinking, but then again it might be.

Away we zoom, whish! off into the road, that driver with the shades, staring off, mountains somewhere somehow, can’t see ‘em, don’t care, the guy in the backseat still in drooling all over himself, and the Japanese fellow just perched there sitting on the trunk, crossed legs resting on the rattling bumper that shakes with every bump in this shitty road. I’m thinking of how awesome it’s all gonna turn out, like, with what’s going on, since I have no idea—and when I have no idea it’s always something awesome. I just know this. It’s all I know. It’s how I live.

“Hey man, like, who are you anyway?” The driver’s shouting back from his seat, and he’s pretty loud, even though the wind is loud too. He doesn’t get a response, so he looks at me. “Hey man, like, who is he anyway?”

The waste land continues for miles and pages, and I still have no response. I might utter something like how he’s going to follow me around until I dish out my soul to him when I’m done with it, but by then it’ll probably be so black and oozing and rotting and unhealthy and disgusting he might not want it, but the driver just says, “Man, you already got a soul like that, ya born with it, man, I was, just look, horrible soul shit in me, and you, and the little drooling bitch in the back seat, everybody here like that, nobody different, that’s why we’re all running for the border, right?”

And I say that I don’t know.

“Well, it’s probably why. I don’t know either, to be honest.”

The guy in the back raises his head just a little bit and calls to us, 10-10-220, collect call, right, and he says, “Hey dudes, that’s some pretty uh, some pretty deep stuff, like heavy stuff, man, talking up there. Yeah. I, like, totally agree.”

“Cool.” I say this, and I’m staring out where a window should be, but the top’s down so the windows are too. The Japanese man is doing a funky jig on the trunk of the car, making the whole contraption sway and bounce, we’re all getting into the groove, it’s a blast.

The thought occurs to me that we’re driving along in this tiny snow globe, but by the time I’m really thinking about it, my head is hanging off the side, drooling, and I’m so wasted I just go to sleep, vomit dribbling down my chin.