Short Stories -- Twenty-Two Tons Of Dog Food

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Twenty-Two Tons of Dog Food --Page 2 of 5

Anyway, it took another handful of rides and six or seven hours or so before I found myself tired, hungry and half stoned on the western outskirts of El Paso. Being that it was late at night-- sometime between 10:00 PM and midnight-- I didn't get to see very much of this Jewel in the Dust (cough, cough) other than the city lights. Sorry Texas, I was not impressed. Anyway, I stood on the side of Interstate 10, my 40 pound backpack leaning against the guard rail and my bright and shiny yet apparently useless thumb waving at the thousands upon thousands of Texas yahoos who were apparently in too much of a hurry to stop and pick up little ol' me. All in all it didn't bother me too much as I have this thing about being seen in a pickup truck with a loaded gun rack in the back window.

So like I said I was pretty high. What the hell, I mean, I wasn't driving and few things in this world are as boring as hitch-hiking to begin with, and hitch-hiking across the empty desert in the middle of the inky-black night is just about murder. So yep, I smoked a joint here and a joint there, plus I drank beer the whole day and once I got to El Paso I picked up another six pack of Budweiser and cracked one open, washing the dusty dirt down my throat as all those urban cowboys roared by me. I finished off one and then another and then snuck around the guard rail to relieve my screaming bladder. I was feeling great. I knew chances were very good I'd be awake for possibly another 24 hours or so, though that would be a bummer, and for some reason getting all buzzed just made it all that much more bearable. It didn't really get me trashed so much as it just put me in a much better mood to endure the hours upon hours of boredom one experiences from driving across some of the most God-forsaken land in North America, which you can't even look out the window and enjoy because it's so damned dark. Besides, I don't give a damn what anyone says. I like getting drunk.

So there I was, watching the one million-sixth pair of headlights ignore me as I stood defenseless by the side of the road. Why are all these people afraid of me, I wondered? Surely I couldn't have looked all that threatening out there, all 180 pounds of me on a 6'1 frame. But apparently I must've cut a mean profile 'cos nobody seemed to be too willing to give me a ride. Nobody, that is, until this gigantic tractor trailer hit me with his high beams and pulled over to the side of the highway just a couple yards up from me. Cool, a big truck, I thought. This ought to be hip.

I grabbed the overstuffed backpack and jogged the fifty feet up to the cab. When I got to the passenger door it was already open and all I could see when I looked up was the skinny face of an old man with a grimy Pennzoil hat and a good 3 or 4 days worth of stubble.

"Howdy!!" he said through his half-toothless smile in some Southern-type drawl.

"Hi," I said as I tried to figure out how to climb the 4 steps up to the cab with my backpack. Yoo hoo, buddy, wanna give me a hand?

"Jes' stick that in the compartment back yar'," he said, and I looked behind the ladder at a small hatch in the side of the truck.

"This here?" I asked.

"Yep. 'At'll do," he replied.

So I stuffed my stuff into the little compartment, grabbed the few beers I had left and crawled up into the cab. Immediately I noticed how nice and warm it was inside, not to mention smelly. I wasn't aware of it standing outside but it had actually gotten quite cold. It was, after all, the middle of the night in the last week of January. Texas desert or not, it still get's mighty cold out there.

"Where ya' heading to?" he asked in some kind of Ozark tongue.

"Tucson," I said, getting my butt comfortable in the seat. "Actually, it's Phoenix, but Tucson comes first." I was hoping this guy was going at least to Tucson. I was getting tired of these piddley little half-hour rides. I wanted somebody to take me where I was going (!) and not just drop me off 20 miles down the road. "How far are you going?" I asked with my fingers crossed.

"'Diego," he said. "San Diego, Californey. All the ding dang way to Californey, the land of pussy and queers, yep." He smacked his lips.

"Outasite!" I said, and it really was. I knew now I would be in Tucson by sun up. From there it was just a hundred mile hop, skip and a jump north to Phoenix. If everything went right, I could be at my brother's house in time for lunch.

"Man, I'll tell you, I started out in Pittsburgh last Thursday afternoon. Spent the weekend in Austin, but man, I'm tired of this. I just want to sleep in a bed." This was true.

"Go ahead and hop back in the sleeper if'n ya' wanna," he said as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Behind the cab was an area I could see was like a little room. It had a mattress and blankets and all in it.

"Ahh, no thanks," I said. "I'm awake now." Actually, it looked pretty gross back there. The inside of the cab was full of lights. The dashboard had a dozen red lights, a dozen yellow lights, a handful of green, switches, buttons, you name it. The truck itself was huge-- a Peterbilt-- and the little man, he couldn't have been but 5'4, was dwarfed behind the huge steering wheel. I could tell by the amount of distance he needed to work the truck up to speed, about two miles, that he was carrying a full load.

"So," I said, trying to be friendly, "What are you hauling?"

"Dogfood," he said, never taking his eyes off the road. "Forty-four thousand pounds of dogfood."

Wow, I laughed to myself. That's a shitload of dogfood. I used to think of these trucks as carrying the essentials of our society; medicine, refrigerators, big appliances, stuff like that. I never realized until then some of the more mundane things they carry, like shoes and dogfood. I guess somewhere out there right now there's a truckful of Barry Manilow albums barreling down the highway. Man. Try explaining that haul to your fellow truckers.

"Yep," he drawled again. "Twenty two tons of Gravy Train. That's that dry shit." He turned his head and looked at me when he said that, and just the way he said it with his little sing-songy twang and the way he looked at me made me laugh out loud.

"Wow," I said. When I was a kid, using the gooey, canned stuff, my brothers fed me a dogfood sandwich once. It still pisses me off just thinking about it. I looked out the window at the pitch black night. "So anyway, how are you tonight?"

"Huh?" he said, and he leaned an ear closer to me. We were now doing about seventy miles an hour and there was a lot of noise inside the cab.

"So how are you tonight?" I repeated loud and clear for him.

"Drunk!" he said, and he reached into a big paper bag next to his seat and pulled out a sixteen ounce can of Miller Beer. He handed it to me. "Want one?"

Oh Jesus! I thought to myself. Here I am, barreling down the highway at 70 mph in a truck that weighs about 30 tons and the guy driving it is all drunk. Oh well, I figured, if this guy can hold his beer as well as I can, and I'm certainly nothing special, I guess we'll be alright. I took the beer, crossed my fingers and bit my lip. He grabbed his own and popped it open.

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