The Five-Ten

The Five-Ten

Steve McCluer

“C’mon, man. You know you wanna go. The whole team will be there except you.”

“No, you know I can’t,” said Pete. “I promised I’d work this warehouse job until school starts. Besides, I don’t have much money and I need this job.”

“Well, the party lasts for a week. If you change your mind and you can make it to Tulsa, we’ll make sure you get a place to stay and ride back home.”

Pete hung up the phone feeling miserable. This would be the first time he had missed the national competition, so he felt both sad and lonely.

Pete was assigned to clean and take inventory the next day in the tool room, a dust-filled, windowless room where the more valuable tools were secured to keep workers from stealing them. After several hours in this cell, he couldn’t erase from his mind the picture of his friends all partying in Tulsa while he squinted at dust and grit in the half-lit room. His hands were dirty and dust irritated his eyes. His back hurt from bending over. “To hell with it,” he decided. “I’m going!”

Pete left his cell and walked into the office.  “I can’t come in to work for the next several days,” he told his boss. “I just got a call from my family in Florida. My mother’s in the hospital. They don’t know if she’ll make it. I have to be there.” His boss swore, but told him he had permission to be gone for five days, without pay, of course.

The following morning Pete caught a city bus to Union Station in Los Angeles. There he shoved all but ten dollars of his savings into the ticket window. “I have to get to Tulsa, Oklahoma. How close will this get me?”

The agent rolled his eyes, then answered, “That’ll get you as far as Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

About half way. “Alright, I’ll take it. How long does it take?”

“That’s about eleven hours.” Pete’s enthusiasm dropped half way.

The first four hours were uneventful. Nobody shared the seat next to him, so he was able to get something resembling a nap until the driver announced that they would have a thirty-minute layover in Needles at the Nevada border. The bus pulled into a sheltered driveway and the driver killed the diesel engine. When Pete stepped off the air-conditioned bus, a wave of 115-degree heat blasted him, leaving him instantly dehydrated. The waiting room was a cool ninety degrees. He couldn’t wait to get out of what must be the gates of hell and get back on the bus.

Ten minutes out of town, the bus broke down. Half an hour later another bus picked up the passengers and returned them to the terminal. “Here’s the situation, folks. The next bus to Albuquerque leaves in one hour, but all the seats are sold. Another bus won’t leave until 5:10 tomorrow morning. You can wait and get a seat on the morning bus, or you can ride the next bus, but you’ll have to stand in the aisle.”

“Spend the night sitting in this oven?” thought Pete. “I’d rather stand on a moving bus.”

After only two hours of trying to balance himself, with five more hours to go, he determined that he might have made a hasty decision. Several seated passengers looked sorrowfully at him, but nobody was willing to trade places for even a short time. His knees were wobbly, his throat was dry, and his attitude was glum when he finally stepped into the cooler air of Albuquerque. Daylight was just breaking. Now he had to figure out how to finish the second half of his journey.

Traffic was light when he positioned himself on the shoulder of Interstate Forty. His wait was short. A car with no passengers pulled over and swung open the door. The driver was a young man, probably early twenties, thin and mousy looking. Pete told him he was going to Tulsa.

“Well, I’m going to Oklahoma City, but that’s most of the way.” That sounded plenty good to Pete. The car was air conditioned, comfortable, and they sometimes found music on the radio. They had plenty of time to chat. The driver’s name was Tommy, and he seemed very friendly. Pete was content and enjoying the company until they passed under a sign welcoming them to Texas.

“Texas!” Pete exclaimed. “I don’t want to go to Texas! I’m going to Oklahoma.”

The driver chuckled. “Well, yeah, but you can’t get there without going through the panhandle of Texas.” Pete’s knowledge of geography wasn’t good enough to argue, but after that he felt unsettled. Besides, there seemed to be something just a little too friendly about this driver.

“Hey, how’d you like some Texas barbecue?” Tommy asked. “I have relatives who live just up the road. I can call ahead and tell them we’re coming. I’m sure they will be glad to meet you.”

“Uh-oh,” thought Pete. He hadn’t eaten anything in twelve hours, so barbecue sounded really good, but being outnumbered by strangers caused him pause. The alternative was to decline and probably find himself standing at the side of the road in the baron wilds of West Texas. “Sounds good,” he mumbled.

As they passed through Amarillo, Pete wondered if ten dollars could get him a bus to Tulsa. Half an hour later, Tommy exited the interstate in the middle of seemingly nowhere, took a country road another twenty minutes, and then a dirt road for yet another fifteen minutes, until they pulled into a weather-beaten ranch. Pete’s anxiety went up when Tommy parked inside a barn. Pete observed the shapes of many tools hanging in the shadows, whose purposes seemed slightly sinister in the dusky light.  The barn door closed and light dimmed some more before Pete could even open his door. Four men in overalls approached the car. One, a Heavy-set man with orange teeth and in need of both a shave and a bath leered into the open car window.

“Welcome to Texas,” he grinned. The others chuckled, and Tommy put his hand on Pete’s thigh.

Pete’s last thought was, “I should have taken the five-ten.”