Angel from Montgomery

I had just hit Montgomery the night before. The cobwebs were starting to grow in my head and the speed only got me out of Tifton and across the state line.  I was crashing and I knew that if I didn’t get up and get moving, I’d likely die behind a fucking Waffle House.  No, I wasn’t going to let that happen.  So, I hit the public library.  I wasn’t exactly looking for education or a quiet place to read.  I just needed a computer to find directions to the nearest blood bank.  The closest was eleven miles.  I knew I could walk that far.  I just didn’t know if I’d make it there in time to straighten my head out and hit Kentucky in the next day or so.  I wasn’t sure who knew I was gone or if anyone knew where I was and I wasn’t going to chance extradition.  I’d come too far to go back to Georgia against my will.  So, I walked.

I hadn’t walked far when a clean looking dark-colored sedan stopped a few car lengths ahead of me.  A well-kept, handsome man jumped out of the car in Richard Simmons shorts with his legs tanned past the pant line.  I had a feeling I knew what was about to happen but I needed the ride.  He pushed some stuff over in his trunk to make room for my guitar.  I kept my backpack with me.  He asked me about myself on the way to the blood bank.  I was far too tired to keep up charades.  I didn’t mention that I may or may not be a fugitive but I told him the rest: my name, where I was going, what I was doing.  I really had no reason not to trust him.  After all, he was a nice guy and he seemed to be in his own version of an underdog battle from what I could tell.  He told me his name was Mark.  That to me, is a struggle unto itself.  What kind of name is Mark, anyway?

The blood bank was a bust on account of I had, “a way out of state ID.”  I have no fucking clue what that means.  It’s not like I laid a Dutch Passport on the counter.  It was a state ID card issued in the next state over.  Mark didn’t understand what the problem was either.  He told me I could hang out with him until I came up with a new plan.  He had an errand to run at the hardware store.  On the way there, he bought me a pack of smokes.  The butts I had stashed were smelling up his car and he offered to get me some fresh ones.  After he put some gas in his car, he offered me a bump.  At that moment, Mark was my goddamn hero.  He didn’t have a bowl but it was likely a good idea to take a break from smoking anyway.  I took a few knuckles to find my center again and lit up a smoke.  Sweet release and I still needed a drink.  After Mark got his share, he started to touch himself through his tiny shorts.  He explained that speed made him horny.  I told him it made me soft until I could hardly piss but I loved what it did to my mind.  As he continued to play pocket pool, I remembered the toothless lady in Waycross.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to get in any more awkward sexual encounters just yet.  I figured I’d give it a few days and a shower, at least.  So, I told him I wasn’t into guys but it was his car and I didn’t care if he jerked off in it.  It wasn’t any of my business.

I don’t remember what Mark had to get at the hardware store but I remember the checkout lady.  She was smiling at Mark and I as if she could see the multi-colored leggings I was wearing under my jeans.  Somehow she knew as well as I did what was about to happen.  Mark was the only one who wasn’t in on the plan.  The poor clueless bastard.

When we got back to the car Mark told me he thought it was a shame that I was straight.  I told him I wasn’t that straight.  He knew a rest stop bathroom nearby.  Of course he knew a rest stop bathroom nearby.  He tried to blow me for a while but it wasn’t working out.  I told him he already ruined me earlier when he got me high.  I apologized as if it were something I could control with the massive amounts of chemicals entering and leaving my body by the second.  He accepted my apology and said he wanted to take me back to his house.  I could’ve used a shower and a bed.

The next morning when I woke up, I noticed Mark had set a letter by the bed.  It was enveloped in professional stationary with a well crafted seal that he made out of melted crayons.  There was a glass of mimosa by the letter.  It had been a long time since anyone had treated me with that sort of thought and class.  Mark’s letter said that he had a terminal illness.  He said that he didn’t want to die in slow pain and that the day before when he found me, he was looking for the perfect bridge to jump off of.  The brief couple of days we had spent together had apparently given him hope.

I put on my jeans and walked outside to where he was sitting on the porch.  I hugged him while he cried.  I likely would’ve cried too if I were cognitively capable of doing so at the time.  It was certainly a pivotal moment in his life and a touching one in mine to say the least.  A few hours went by with Mark and I cleaning up the mess we’d made of the house and each other.  He gave me parting gifts and wished me luck before he dropped me at the Applebee’s in Montgomery.  I went inside and had a drink and as of three years later, I haven’t seen Mark since.  In my memory, though, he’ll always live on as a testament to the potential for human goodness and the unexpected circumstances under which one might find a friend.