The Road Man

He stuck his blistered thumb out to his side. His eyes squinted against the boiling desert sun. His skin felt itchy under his shirt. The sweat slowly dripped down his brow and tried its best to blind him. A quick swipe with the back of his hand quickly stopped that. The blacktop stretched thin in front of him. Miles of the stuff lay out bare. It seemed to bubble and broil underneath his feet. It looked disgusting! Surely if he didn’t keep walking, the soles of his shoes would melt, and he’d be stuck there forever. Forever waiting for a ride to God knows where. A sigh slipped past his lips as he turned around. Fuck it, he thought. It ain’t going to happen yet.

               How long had he been out here, he thought. Days? A day? Maybe two? It didn’t matter. He was used to time flying by quickly. Sometimes day quickly faded into night, other times either or seemed like an eternity. Such was the life he took, the life of the transient, the wanderer. The one forever cursed to live without a home or state. It was okay, though. There were some benefits to this life. He never had to answer anybody, no boss to belittle him or no wife to nag him. If he didn’t like where he was, he could just get up and go. No worry about a two-week notice or a goodbye to a neighbor. Sure, he’d go hungry for a few days, and sometimes there weren’t any decent places to sleep, but those were just little things. He was free! Free at last! No more responsibility to anyone or anything! The only possessions he needed were what he had on his shirt and in his pack. Those were what made him satisfied.

               It wasn’t all that glamourous, though. There were the days where he could go without food for a long period of time. He remembered leaving Indiana at a solid hundred and seventy-five pounds. Now, he was sure that he had gone down forty pounds since then. There were also the elements against him; hold, cold, rain, snow, drought, and other things. It didn’t matter. Whatever Mother Nature decided to shit out on him, he had to take with a smile and a steady stride. There was also violence. He had had his head pumped in more times than he could count, mostly by those pigs with the blue suits on. Those fuckers only took the job just to make their dick seem bigger than it really was, or they had daddy issues and nobody to take it out on. The other guys and girls like him usually left him alone. Unless he interrupted their ‘special time’ (and that all depended on the hobo), the other transients kept to themselves. Sometimes they would even offer him a ‘special time,’ but he almost always refused. Sure he was one of them, but he never really got into what they liked. It usually came down to either sex or drugs of every kind, and every time he turned them down. That never really interested him. These days, though, he wasn’t really sure what interested him at all.

               Sure, there were the places he’s been. Either through freight hopping or just plain old hitchhiking, he was sure that he’d seen most of America and parts of Canada. From the mountains and hillsides to the deserts and tundra, he’d just about seen it all. Every nook and cranny from all the major cities he had explored met some strange and amazing people. He had tried even more amazing food with what little money he could scrape up doing odd jobs and other things. But did it satisfy him? He pondered that long and hard as the sun beat down on his light brown hair. Did all this traveling really satisfy him? The answer came slowly; no. No, it didn’t. All of those things, though amazing to others, didn’t do a goddamned thing for him. He wanted it to. God, he wanted it to, but it just never seemed to help. He felt his teeth grind, thinking about it. But something in him kept going.

               He drifted back into the day he left, the day he left her. He had just gotten home from work at the mill the next county over. That day had been particularly exhausting; one of the boys accidentally let the burner run through most of the night, and the damn thing overheated. The mechanical team had also recently hired a rookie, and it took twice as long to fix. By the time they had fixed it, they had been backed up and needed to rush. What was supposed to be a regular twelve-hour shift turned into an almost eighteen-hour ordeal! He remembered he had nearly gotten into a fistfight with the foreman. That fat bastard who he hadn’t seen all day had the gall to blame him for what had happened instead of the kid who forgot (he found out later that that kid was the guy’s nephew). The hour-long drive home seemed to take an eternity; he was so frustrated. The normally relaxing drive back to that little nook he called home didn’t seem to work today. He figured now that that was a sign for what occurred next.

               He walked into the house without a second thought. He figured he’d do as he always did before; grab a beer, sit down and watch TV. She’d make him a hot meal and look at him deeply with her lovely blue eyes. This time though, she didn’t come around. The house seemed eerily quiet, more so than any other day. As he rounded the corner to the kitchen, he saw it. On top of the kitchen counter, under a small coffee cup, he saw it. The paper underneath was buffered by a picture of them, arms wrapped around each other like enormous snakes. She wore the most beautiful smile, and he gave a toothless grin during the sunset behind him. The paper beneath the picture only said one word. Farewell.

               That was all that time ago. A few days after she left, he tried to continue on. Strong and tall, just like he always did. But with every day that passed, he felt a little something inside him die. Why did she do it? What had happened to her? Did he do something? How could I have fixed it? These questions all permeated his mind until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he thought his head would burst. He didn’t give a two-week notice. He didn’t notify the landlord. Hell, he didn’t even notify any of his work friends where he was going. With what money he had left and all of his belongings in a bag, he set off. Nowhere particular, just anywhere that was far away from that small Indiana town. It’s been like that ever since.

               As his mind drifted back to himself, he heard the familiar sound of a car rumbling. He turned around behind him to see a black Ford F-150 barreling towards him. Quickly he stuck his thumb out, testing his luck. To his relief, the truck slowed down to greet him. He went to the window to investigate inside; it was a large man, late fifties, big grey beard, and a Confederate cap on his head. In his lip was a paunch of chewing tobacco which he spits hastily into a bottle.

               “Where ya goin’ stranger?” said the man.

               “East. Really far East.” He replied.

               The man grinned.

               “How far?”

               “As far as you’ll take me.”

               The man chuckled and signaled him to get in. He hopped into the truck with delight. As the two sped off down the black bubbling road, he let his head rest against the window. For the first time in a long time, he let his eyes drift closed, and he fell away into a peaceful sleep. This was the first peace he had had in a long time.