Highway Fifteen

              I had fifteen minutes to get everything Mom wanted from the store.  The low brick building, flat like all other buildings in Barstow, wasn’t too far from our rented house, actually, but in this wind I wasn’t making headway.  Being tall and gangly was my strongest asset, whether it was easy placement on the volleyball team or getting picked first for the point guy, but today my dimensions were an issue.

            Tie a sheet around me, maybe, and make a kite.  I could bound over the tipped, mooing trash bins and find myself suddenly a mile away.  Knowing me, I would probably land smack center in the off-ramp of Highway 15, where Rich would be caught in gas station traffic, listening to scrappy cowboy cassettes in the sheet metal bundle the dealer north of the Strip told him was a car.

            Carrots and rice, water and soda, maybe some day-old bread to go with the chicken.  Definitely chicken.  The store closes at six on Fridays.  Jewish owners, I knew, which gave me twelve minutes or so.

            “Hey, kid, you need a lift?” I hadn’t heard the beach white Dodge pull up beside me.  The old dude’s voice cut through the gale without getting forced back down his throat.  He stuck his head out the window, so I could see more of his face, kind of tanned and only a few wrinkles.  He wasn’t old, but probably forty, old enough.

            “Sure.”  If he didn’t hear me, he anticipated my answer by relieving the gas and lunging over to unlock the passenger side.  The car lurched backwards.  I figured it stood a better chance than I did.

            This car had a mechanical clock set in the bleached dashboard.  Ten minutes, really?          The guy hit the wheel with a thick palm.  His car had stalled against one pissed Mother Nature.  He didn’t appear too concerned, he just nodded at the clock and then me.  “That one’s three minutes fast.”

            I shrugged.  “Okay.”  The chances of making it became slimmer.

            The Dodge roared to life and hopped down the street.  “Where to, son?” the guy said, fiddling with the radio knobs.

            “Bernstein’s Market,” I replied.  The seatbelt pulled at my chest.  “They’re closing.  It’s Friday.”

            “Hmm,” the man muttered.  Crackled sound waves carried classic rock in the turbid air.  He slapped the radio across its face.  Some crackles fell off.  At least I couldn’t hear the high-whistle of the wind against the glass anymore.  The old guy hummed along, grunting more than following a rhythm.

            Less than eight minutes.  A dinner, and why?  She was actually going to cook for him.  I didn’t know what she saw in Rich.  He’d told her for years about plans to step away from the velvet tables and over-oxygenated rooms and settle down some place nice, quiet, where you could fix the plumbing without asking for permission, maybe even open a damn window once in a while.

            She didn’t like it when I used “damn”.  It wasn’t a bad word.  It wasn’t something you would say to a five year old, but you wouldn’t say a lot of things to five year old.  You wouldn’t say that a man was going to stay the night, but don’t tell, it’s our little secret.  You would not tell a five year old to abandon the house for a few hours.

             “Hey kid, where did you say you’re going?” the guy bellowed.

            “The store on East Road,” I replied.  Chicken, soda, we needed water, rice, forget the rice, I could never find it anyway, and five minutes.  Screw the carrots.

            “We’ll get there pretty soon,” the guy said. 

The Dodge scooted forward.  Rich would have a tailwind pushing him on Montara, the only time he had luck on his side.

We arrived. Red dust eroded off the blasted brick.  The double glass doors didn’t have the bars over them yet.

“Thank you,” I told the guy, unfolding my knotted legs.  The door rattled as I closed it.

He gave a thumbs up.  “You need me to stick around?”

I shook my head and entered the store, losing the roaring overtones as the door shut behind me, tinkling its cheap tin bell.

The girl at the counter looked up from her book.  She was pretty.  Most likely she was the daughter.  “We’re closing soon,” she called after me.

I got the chicken, the water jugs, and hexagonal beaded pasta wrapped in blurred letters and marked with a red clearance tag.  I slapped it all on the checkout.  My hands felt my pockets.

            “Twelve-oh-four,” she said.  “Brown packaging okay?”

            I stared at the shiny pink chicken breasts pressing against the plastic, four in a line.  The girl glanced up at the clock tacked against the wall with railroad nails.  Her fingers snatched the chicken and started punching it in.

            “No thanks,” I said.  “Actually, no purchase.”  She stared processing the waters.  I grabbed the paper handles glued to their tops.  “I don’t want these.  Take it off.  While you’re at it, see if there is any more of this pasta.”

            “Couscous,” she stated.  “Can I help you with anything else?”

            He’d be at the house.  She’d tell him I was out getting the dinner.  He’d say, that’s okay, and they would wait, not saying anything, or maybe he’d boast about the couple hundred he won this week and would lose the next.  Even inside the house the wind would make itself known, so they would take refuge in a quieter area of the house, a room with must and no easy windows.

“We’re closing in a minute, sir.”

            I pushed the groceries towards her.  “Have a good weekend.”

            The bell barely tinkled as I stepped into nature’s roar, much louder than the highway was. 

            I turned back to the building, but the girl pulled the shades over the windows.  She wouldn’t come out the front – her father would, pulling the grate down, and then they would start walking.