I bought the car off my brother for a thousand bucks. It
runs...
I bought the car off my brother for a thousand bucks. It
runs hot, and loud, and you feel every bump in the road. I admit: I like all of
this because it makes you know you’re driving.
Last weekend, making my way an hour-and-a-half south towards my family for
Memorial Day, the car caught a fever. A red light came on signaling a spiking
temperature and I blasted the heat and hoped no flames would be involved before
I reached a spot to pull myself off the highway.
No flames and a pull-off appeared in no time. A Salvation
Army receptacle overflowed with old coats and pairs of boots tied together at
the laces; two mattresses leaned against the dumpster (is it even worth
remarking how unsavory discarded highway-side mattresses are? especially damp
with dew?). Pre-nine a.m., a Saturday, the sky was grey and the air was cool,
and a Western Express 16-wheeler was also parked in the pull-off, engine
running.
I watched birds as I let the car cool. After time enough to
let the fever break, I started it again and it roared its opposition to being
asked back into action and the red light came on and an unfamiliar whine said,
definitively: do not drive me. I glanced back at the truck and wondered if I
should solicit help. I opened the hood and peered in, could’ve gotten a tan off
the heat from the engine. The coolant tank was empty. I looked at the truck
again. Maybe he would have some? I decided to err on the side of not wandering
up to a truck parked on the side of the highway, erring on the side of not
turning myself into a cautionary tale.
I called my dad, twenty minutes away, and asked if he could
bring a jug of coolant to me. He and my stepmother arrived soon and the three
of us stood looking into the front of the car. It was then that the truck
driver walked over, asked what was amiss. He had thatchy shoulder length hair,
strawberry blonde giving way to white, a thick goatee, and sunglasses I
associate with 70s-era southern rock bands.
“Where you based?” asked my dad, dropping verbs to suggest
he, too, knew something of life on the road.
“I’m based wherever I’ve parked my rig,” the driver said,
with a wistfulness that nearly brought me to tears.
It was then that a French bulldog revealed itself in the
shotgun seat of his truck, sticking its head out the window.
“What’s the dog’s name?” I asked.
“Sugar,” he said. We all looked her way. “That truck is the
only world she knows. I’ve had her since she was six weeks old.” It’s nice to
have a friend, I thought but did not say. I know nothing of life on the road,
but the loneliness of miles is something easy to imagine.
We chatted some more and he diagnosed the issue and said if
he’d known he would’ve come over to offer help earlier. I was flooded all at
once with gratitude, not just for his help, but because in that moment I
understood for sure that he’d waited to approach, that he understood the
side-of-the-road scene, of a woman alone, a truck-driver, of potential sensed
threat, and he waited until more people arrived to come over.
“You be safe,” he said to me and I put my hand on his
shoulder instead hugging him
which is what I wanted to do so badly. “Thank you,” I said. “You, too.”
[Painting: Grant Haffner, Country Road]
