The Mars Room(84)

The grid helped me know where I was going. I could avoid getting lost, while staying off the roads, and instead travel the lanes of the orchards.

I walked all night, slower and faster.

Before dawn I came upon a house with old junked cars parked around it. The kitchen leaked a cold mercury light. A smell of guavas wafted from the yard. There was a laundry line with clothes on it. Clothes, I should take those clothes, but with that light in the kitchen it was dangerous. I heard a sound from inside and took off walking. I passed several more run-down shacks on that road, all dark, no clothes advertising themselves to be taken. After a long stretch of no houses, there was another, and it had clothes drying on plastic chairs next to the porch. I risked it, sneaked to the chairs and took pants and a shirt.



* * *



At daybreak, I was on the edge of a small town. It had a park with a trash can where I stashed my state clothes. I had on the others, a man’s stiff, rough jeans and T-shirt. I practiced walking, not running, acting legal, not illegal, like a person who had a right to walk along a road.

There were no more orchards here, no more gridded roads. The road curved past trees and outcroppings of rocks and open grassland. I found a secluded clump of bushes and slept under them. I slept on and off, until it was dusk. I was weak but forced myself to walk as night fell. I’d had no water since the drainage ditch, and no food.

I heard an animal cry out. My heart had been pounding since I left the prison yard, pounding out my alertness to fear, to cops, to any sign they were gaining on me. Now, I was afraid of the dark, too. Of this animal, which shrieked again. Its cry was almost human, but in the almost human manner of an animal in the wild.



* * *



I had walked for a long time when I saw lights. It was a crossroads with a gas station, and a road that wound upward toward the mountains. It was the middle of the night. The gas station was open.

A pickup truck pulled in. The driver got out to pump. A man alone. I sensed this was right. That he was the person to ask. I walked over.

“What’s up,” he said. Chubby guy in an acid-wash Marlboro jacket.

“I need a ride.”

“A ride. Maybe. Maybe. You married?”

“I’m not married.”

“You got a dude hiding around here, you guys gonna jump me or what?”

I said I was alone.

“Where you headed?”

“Up.” I nodded toward the mountains.

“How far?”

“To the top.”

“Sugar Pine Lodge, you work up there or something?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. Let me just refill this. You can have a ride.” He said it in a singsong voice, as if random women at remote gas stations were always begging favors, and he was once again consenting.

He grabbed a soda container from the seat of his truck. It was gallon-sized and said Thirst Destroyer.



* * *



He turned the heat up to eighty-eight degrees and sipped from his huge stupid drink and chattered about how he was going to get into vending machines. The gash had opened back up and I was bleeding on the seat of his truck. I was dizzy with thirst. But if I made that clear to him, how badly I needed him to share his drink, he might know.

I watched him drink from the straw, thick as a gas can nozzle, and tried not to faint.

“All you got to do is make the investment and restock them, collect the money.” From there he would take his profits and buy a franchise. “Takes forty-five K to buy a Dunkin’ Donuts. A Taco Bell is more. What you do is start with the vending machines, then you get a Dunkin’ Donuts, pull the equity from that, and then you buy a Taco Bell.”

We swooped left and right up and around hairpin turns. He drank from his soda. Belched.

“I got a lot of plans. I want to get into real estate. You know what they say?”

He was waiting for me to answer.

“No.”

“If you can flip an ounce, you can flip a house. That’s pretty cool, right? Just ’cause no one’s hiring, doesn’t mean you can’t find a hustle. You got to know what opportunity looks like. Have you seen those posters, We Buy Ugly Houses Dot Com? Those guys are raking in bank, turning a bad situation to their advantage, right? Here’s another one: a man who thinks outside the box, stays outside the box. That’s deep.

“And: tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. I don’t fraternize with losers. I’m on the program. Hey, I got to take a leak.”

He slowed to a stop on the shoulder, put the car in park. He did not step out. The motor was running. He stared at me.

“You like to party?”

“No.”

“You might party with me, though.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You asked me for a ride and all.”

“Because I needed one.”

“Well then, we can make it win-win.”

“You take me up to the mountains, and we’ll see what happens.”

“All right then. That’s cool. Okay.” He got out, walked to the road’s edge, and unzipped his fly. He had finished about half his gallon-sized Thirst Destroyer.

I slid into the driver’s seat while he pissed into the underbrush. I put his truck in gear and drove.