I waited for Harold in the mean November cold. I was sixteen years old. No one in sight, except for me, a bit-scared me. I sat in a big rig that stood dark and metallic, frozen ugly, where two alleys intersected. A cold Dr. Pepper stood upright between my thighs. Only a kid would drink ice cold pop from a machine on an ice cold night. For the cold I had on a Levi jacket and had draped a blanket around my shoulders. Harold kept that in the cab in case he got snowbound.
In every direction the clutter of Telephone poles made a forest of dead tees. Transformer boxes hung from them like black growths. An empty parking lot, behind a closed used‑car lot, in a used dark. Across the way a garbage bin collected cats at the back of Okie’s Bar. From above, where I couldn’t see it a street light yellowed the blackness, smeared and aged it like an old photograph. The spray of weak light made the expanse of asphalt glitter in a constellation of imbedded bottle caps.
I’d left my old Dodge out of sight, my new very used car, my first car just acquired. Already I had some anxiety about it starting when we got back.
My new jeans, cowboy shirt, and boots made me feel new too and tough. I could toss my head just the way Harold did‑‑my mane brushed down my back. I could arch my toes and feel my boots riding high on my calves. When I stretched, my jeans pulled up hard across my hips, tight like people wore them then. That gave me a rush straight along my dick, at that time almost always about half hard. Helped some that night by the tingle of the cold Dr. Pepper riding between my legs.
Whenever I raised my arm to take a swig from the bottle or a draw from my unfiltered Camel– same kind Harold smoked and that left loose tobacco tangy on my tongue– I got another small thrill since that made the shirt crack like shattering plastic in its factory starch. I felt it even down under jacket and blanket.
It was after midnight and nothing moved except the small creatures that needed to. Sometimes I heard a cat or a rat in the garbage. Cats were loudest, yowling, spitting and fighting. Sometimes in the distance a siren went off, firecracker like‑‑our Wichita Police chasing Indians or corralling berserk Niggers. I just kept watching for Harold.
I hadn’t seen the cops coming. The first thing they did was to blind me with flashlights.
“What you doing here?”
“Waiting for Harold.”
“Who’s Harold? Do we know any Harold?”
I peered out at the cops, into the beams of their flashlights. Behind the rig the flashing of cop car lights made the parking lot look like Christmas, except it wasn’t.
“We’re making a run to K. C. To pick up a load of cars at the auction.” I suddenly felt safe in my self importance. “Dealership buys the cars and we bring them . . .”
“Yeah yeah, we know. You got a license, boy?” He turned to the other cop. “Find out what Harold’s doing.”
My license was so new it shone in the dark.
“Harold drives, I’m his little brother. I’m just going along for the ride. It’s my first time.”
Turning in the cab I saw red-light halos behind their pie hats, peaked up front. then I heard their radio crackling like a jazz solo. The one with the biggest gut returned, opened the cab door and stepped up. My importance shrank fast.
“Harold’s been stopped with a drunk Injun in Nigger town. That same Injun wanted for assault.”
“But Harold’s coming, isn’t he?” How fresh and young can you get?
“Now, you ain’t seen nothing, have you kid?”
“No sir, nothing.”
“How come? Okie’s got robbed fifteen minutes ago. You’re blind, I guess.”
At last Harold came, by himself, not strutting, he didn’t need to. Harold was the straightest, proudest man in Wichita.
“Harold, don’t pick up Injuns, it ain’t a bright thing to do.”
“No, officer,” Harold said. “You know I’m not bright.”
Twenty‑five years old, a little tired, a lean God of jeans, cowboy shirt, and boots. He smoked a Camel. Talked fast in a pall of smoke and breath steam. Sideburns curled down his jaws like golden wool. He’d parked his white convertible Cadillac at the rear of the lot.
When the cops had gone, taking their funny hats, flashing Christmas lights and guns, Harold relaxed. He motioned me down from the cab and opened his car trunk. It looked to me like he’d brought a mother load of beer and whisky. We stashed two cases of beer and a fifth in the truck.
Harold went to work on the rig. Checking out the rig, getting us ready to go. Going, the big point of it all. Chains rattling, his wrench beating time on the metal, Harold raged up, down and around, singing.
“For my poor head is achin’ and my sad heart is breakin’, I’m a poor cowboy and knowed I done wrong.”
“You want me to do something?” I stood waiting down on the asphalt shoulders hunched in the cold, cold coming up me as if I had roots into it.
“Nope. Just stand there. A man with his hands in his pockets is degenerate. You know I have a weakness for them. You sure do look like an Indian in that blanket.”
At last. Going. The thrill of it for me like chugging three beers. Out of Wichita and onto the turnpike we went slicing through the night towards Kansas City, the big bad town of ours, that drew people like us from 200 miles around, helpless as magnets to a fridge door.
“Once in the saddle I used to go dashing, Once in the saddle I used to go gay. But I first took to drinking, and then to card playing.” Harold had a nice singing voice, but he only knew one song.
We were leaving the El Dorado lights. “Those are the last for 100 miles, Can’t beat that.
“Shit, see that? A cross lit up on an oil rig. Jesus turning mud into black gold, and Garcia Ramirez never found it.”
I asked, “What kept you so long?”
“Me and Bernadette sacked out, and I don’t have a watch.” He belched and grinned.
He mimicked her voice. “Put your clothes on when you run around my house, or pull the shades. I don’t want folks seeing a naked white man chasing around in here!”
Harold’s eyes, fixed on the night road like they were eating it up, sparkling in the dashboard lights, were getting wilder every mile we left behind us.
“Anyway, every so often I snuck in the bathroom and popped one of Bernie’s pills. Thought I was blowing high gear until I found out they was only aspirins she keeps in a jar.
“Coming over I passed this sad‑looking Injun trying to catch a ride. He had one hell of a burned out gal in tow, looked like she’d been hypnotized. Then the cops stopped us, that women went crazy, a little tiny thing.”
We were in the Flint Hills. I pushed my face to the window trying to see out. Harold was right, there were no more town lights, no farm lights, and except for the stars I wouldn’t have known where the prairie ended and the sky began. I could make out the prairie grass, ghostly pale and frost tangled. Once a lone coyote raced ahead of us and across the road.
Harold knocked his beer can against mine. “To that Coyote, and wherever the hell into the wild he’s gone.”
High Plains wind rocked the truck.
“Hold this.” I took the whisky. Harold was doing what he called beers and balls. He opened his door, stood on the running board, and pissed‑‑rolling seventy on the Kansas Turnpike. The wind slapped inside the cab, some of the piss too, curling me up in a ball.
“I’m the best damn trucker on the road!” Harold slapped his knee and kept drinking‑‑two Grain Belts to my one and whisky to wash them down. He dropped the empty cans on the floor, and I did too, so all night cans rolled around our feet, clinking. Harold said it sounded like elves getting smashed, toasting each other under the seat.
When my bladder couldn’t take more, I asked Harold to stop.
“Hell no! Once we get rolling we don’t stop for nothing, just to feed the horse. Piss off the running boards. Just don’t fall off, and don’t get it in here.”
No choice, I saw that, so I climbed out of the cab, terrified and more than half drunk, the night blasting me in the face. Nothing. I clung to the door post with a wrinkled dick in my hand, praying, stammering. Harold roared, passed a car. Scared me so much I let it pour‑‑half splashing me, half spraying the truck.
“You sure baptized yourself. You’re an official trucker now. Here, have another beer.”
I looked at Harold and grinned, just the way he did, and wished I had golden sideburns. Up to that time It was the happiest moment of my short life.
Harold had us tuned to XERF, Wolfman Jack. “Your friend on the Plains,” said Harold loud enough to be heard over singing “.”
Down from the Hills I felt Kansas City waiting for me up ahead. I watched for her to appear farm after farm until in a sudden glow she rose out of the early dawn with the sun behind her towers looking massive and new. She sprawled on the banks of the river, smoky in the first light.
“It looks real good the first time. Then you begin to wish it was a whole 200 miles further away and you could just keep drinking beer and rolling.” Harold poked out his tongue to catch a last drop from his can. Then ‘clank’ it joined the others on the cab floor.
At the car auction big‑bellied men slouched around the troughs of ice-down beer, suits, shirts open at the top to show their gold necklaces, flashing their diamond rings. If they said anything it was in their rough voices, spitting growls, powerful. “KC mob,” whispered Harold.”
Harold ran to fetch their beer, price lists, or look for their women. He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself, but I thought it was great, even with a hangover.
When the cars rolled out the buyers opened their hoods, kicked the tires, scrutinized their trunks. They’d sit in each car looking like a dentist examining your mouth. The buyers had come from all over the plains, and the auctioneer’s tongue boiled their blood.
“That new T‑Bird was in a flood, we’ll take her for sure.” Harold grunted.
Our buyer bought her for $350. Harold whispered in my ear that if I came down to the lot in a week I’d see her sitting there with a $5,000 sticker on her windshield.
By noon we were loaded with six birds of paradise sagging on the trailer. Thee top side, three below. All blocked and chained.
Then Harold did exactly what I hoped he do. He took me downtown to the K.C. Follies. Corner of 12th Street and Vine. Shabby area with devious men in the shadows. At twilight the building made for an ancient devil’s food cake, very ornate,truck exhaust-dark and about to crumble.
Up front an unshaven goat man took our money, gray hair on him like fur, tufted up on his head like small horns. He never looked up. Harold liked that. Said he was an old carney man who had seen everything, everywhere and everybody doing it, and didn’t care anymore.
“Stay close, buddy. And don’t look at what the other guys are doing. Any guy sits down beside you I’ll tell ’em to get lost.”
We sat on the second row and you couldn’t see much, too dark, the darkness stank of old sex. Although then, to me, all sex was new and I didn’t even know how foul a human could smell. For an audience there was a nervous conventioneer and his wife, probably from Iowa, two soldiers, and a handful of dingy old men trying to be secretly furtive. Except for the old men the audience sat close in that empty barn, as if for protection. Dozen or so people bunched up before red curtains, a dim redness for light.
Harold took us center, second row, saying only that from here you could count the stitches on their ceasareans.
Red heels clacked across the stage. She was a red vision in a long dress and gloves. I licked my lips and caught Harold looking sad. I figured he had gas, he hadn’t been right since we hit town. He had his arms crossed over his chest frowning. Never occurred to me that this was all for me.
I waited to see my first naked woman, wondering if I really would and then with a little anxiety if I’d get a hard on.
“Miss Dandy Lion, ladies and gentlemen. Give her a big welcome.” No one clapped except for me as the goat man’s voice wailed through the loudspeakers. Someone started the tape player.
“Oh Jesus, they’re playing Sonny Lester.” Harold sounded more out sorts.
Dandy took her time shambling back and forth, revealing with a flourish, inch by inch, her treasures‑‑enormous, flopping breasts and a plump crotch hiding behind one sequin‑spattered, twinkling little star. Everything about her was bloated, even her scarred stomach, which hadn’t been tight, Harold hissed, in fifteen years. He sounded bitter.
Except for that outburst, Harold kept an uncomfortable silence. It was me who fidgeted, jiggling my knee or popping my knuckles. After a few minutes the conventioneer followed his wife out, a name tag bobbling on his suit coat. One of the soldiers snored, sprawled on the first row, his shirttail out. His buddy had a good time, hooting at the women as they worked, “Oh Yeah, I like that! Come on show us your twat” I tried not to look at the old men.
One after another, they waddled across the stage, beef‑fed women with blue eyelids and red smears for lips. The one I really liked was Cupey Doll. She came out last, wiggling more than two hundred pounds of black flesh. Lights out, she danced naked, a torch in each hand, rolling them over her breasts, between her legs, her oiled skin burning in a pale fire, drums thundered. She had an enormous muff that captured all my attention. The men suddenly interested, clapped for once, stomping their feet.
Harold sat there like a rock. I wanted to get up and dance with her. “Hey, Harold, you’ll have to teach Bernadette!’
“Shut up you idiot.”
Outside again on Twelfth, blinking one last look behind at the Follies, I swore to Harold I was staying. He could go on without me. I’d never go home again.”
“Yeah and sell your ass? You like this? It’s pure shit!” He sounded angry.
“Well, it beats Wichita.”
He only grunted at me. Me stumbling after him, my new shirt wadded in wrinkles, my pants already loose sagging off my ass.
In the truck Harold groped under the seat for the whisky. “I’m waiting for this damn place to vanish, like it never existed.”
Just out of Kansas City we stopped for two hitchhikers. I called them Mexicans but Harold corrected me, “New York Puerto Ricans, man, they’ll knife you if you call them Pachucos,”
They were round‑faced young fellows who spoke Spanish to each other, broken English to us. Harold put them up top in the T‑Bird, their hands went wild in excitement as they chattered to each other.
“It’s gotta be the best ride they ever had, riding high through the Flint Hills like they owned it! People like them never get to see more than a mile or so of open country, and that’s all ruined by signs and buildings.”
Harold was already on his third beer. Drinking them fast. They went so fast I couldn’t count. I drank a couple and was immediately drowsy.
On the west side of Matfield Green, when I was sliding home through stars and clouds, miles up, with the continent below me like a map, I felt the truck shudder.
“Oh fuck!” I opened my eyes and saw us sliding off the road. We went knocking down about a hundred roadside reflectors, looking to me like a row of staring peacock eyes. I panicked.
“Harold! Harold! Look out!” We just kept sliding and angling and knocking down more peacock eyes.
But we didn’t jack‑knife, didn’t tilt over. I thought I was dead. We came to a stop half‑way down the embankment, leaning so precariously that the wind, it seemed, could have toppled us over‑‑Harold, me, the T‑Bird, the Chryslers, the black Lincoln Continental. The Puerto Ricans too and the beer cans.
We sat there dazed, knowing we just missed being dead. Our going had gone bad. “Were fucked, man,” was all Harold could say. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Before Harold had the courage to get down and look, an empty cattle truck passed, slowed, and then stopped up in front. We stared dumbly at its mud flaps, straw and fodder dripping from its sides. There was a Jesus Is Lord bumper sticker on it.
An Indian got out and shuffled back to us, stiff and bowlegged. He looked mean. Powerful arms covered in tattoos. His dark skin was cut by a thousand wrinkles from working in the sun.
“You all right? I seen you go off, thought you was probably asleep. I got a chain, I’ll pull you out.”
Harold groaned, opened his door, and fell out, two cases of empty beer cans showering down around him. The beer cans clattered together, spun round, rolled in all directions. Our riders had already jumped down and stood as far away as possible, their round faces in dismay, dark eyes wide with fear, staring accusingly at Harold.
We had stopped on top of a world of long‑sweeping hills in an ocean of short grass, and not a tree, not a house was in sight under the miles and miles of open sky. The wind roared down from the Rockies, a clear run five hundred miles long and nothing stopping it, slowing it, but a few oil wells, grain elevators, and barns. It swept over us, rattling the loaded truck.
The Indian stared at Harold too, at the beer cans, and then he shrugged his massive shoulders. His blue‑black hair was cut short. He had manure on his boots. A silver steer’s head shone on his belt buckle. Jeans hung low slung under a huge basketball belly.
He hooked his chain in our rig. Then as he said he would he slowly, cautiously pulled us out. Behind us I surveyed in awe a swath of damage half a mile long, skid marks, ruined markers, and then wheel ruts deeper than the Santa Fe Trail.
Before he left us, the Indian accepted out last Grain Belt. “You sure you can handle it? If you want, I’ll follow you in.” The hitchhikers pointed at him and jabbered. “Cowboy!” I heard one of them say.
Harold shook his head wildly at them and snorted, as angry as I’d ever seen him. Those Puerto Ricans wouldn’t be tough enough to try again, he said; they didn’t even know an Indian when they saw one.
The Puerto Ricans waved goodbye and clambered into the Indian’s cab. Off and away they went to discover America.
We would have the rig and highway to ourselves now, but instead of coming back to the cab, Harold stood down the road aways on the hillside‑‑wind in the prairie grass around his feet, wind in his hair and eyes. Waiting in the truck, I guessed he was taking a piss.
Harold just stood there staring out at that empty country. ‘The land was turning gray in the morning light. I thought I heard him singing.
He slid in beside me, started the engine, and threw us in gear. Harold drove without a glance for anything except the highway, the miles of cement slipping away under us.
He didn’t say a word so I sat thinking about that Indian‑‑he wasn’t in front of us, we hadn’t passed him, he seemed to have disappeared. I thought about the Puerto Ricans. I wished I knew where the Indian would take them, let them out for their next ride. Where they end up, what adventures awaited them. Ourselves we just rolled on toward home.
Oil flamed up on Cupey Doll’s tits. While Harold chain‑smoked Camels, grim as a hunted outlaw, I imagined us crashed and burning back on that hilltop. I was sixteen years old and thought I knew what was wrong. I had no idea.
© 2018, JONATHAN WESLEY BELL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.