departure

departure

we gassed up on the south end of town

and got a six of hamms. seventeen bucks altogether,

leaving twenty three for a thousand miles’ gas

and two days of beer and dog food.

bud lay in the back, quiet and apparently uninterested in whatever energy we might have been giving off.

most dogs know when they’re going somewhere,

but maybe to bud all of our motions were predictable and, to date, none had come to much. always gas. beer. wetsuits.

bobo pumped while i went in to pay.

i walked out of the mini-mart to a sight commensurate

to my needs from existence: a quiver of boards strapped to the roof of an old vw bus, about to hit the blue current of california’s asphalt seas, to vanish into the sunny dreamdrift of america’s other country with a mate i could not have made up.

it was a time which forgot all past times.

i put the bag of bottles on the seat and joined bobo in the fumes, where he had no worries. “we’re gonna make it,” he said. “somebody’ll hook us up in san luis. ask and you shall receive.”

  “the bobo code to living.”

  “somebody has to.” he smiled, white ball cap tipped to the dusk.