Drunk Meets Desert

It had been about an hour since I decided to put my thumb down. I'd been walking with it sticking out since lunchtime and I noticed the sun was starting to set, so I gave it a rest. It wasn't a very traveled road, Glennwood, but I was told it led towards a college town I might be able to find some comfort in. A few cars passed me throughout the day, pretty women mostly and I don't blame them for not stopping. I'm not sure how far I had walked since sunrise; I stopped counting mile markers somewhere around fourteen, maybe seventeen. I passed the time by looking at the thickness of the white line painted on the side of the road. During some stretches it was thick, unmarked and almost reflective, these were the blandest parts of my journey down Glennwood. In others it was lifeless, faded and barely held onto its identity. I could tell many people had pulled over in these spots and I wondered why. Each time the line faded I'd walk to the edge of the chip-seal and look down into the ditches, tumble-bushes or piles of trash that happened to be there. I never really found much of interest and I was too lazy to walk out into the open land to see what might lie beyond eyesight. It got to a point where I didn't care what the line looked like. I was too tired to keep trying to find interest in the most mundane of things and all I wanted to do was sleep. Shit and sleep, but I couldn't. No matter how tired I was I couldn't sleep in the desert, I just couldn't. What if a tarantula crawled up into my pants while I was sleeping and fondled my stuff? Worse, what if I liked it and ended up becoming one of those off the wall desert people who paint irrelevant bible verses onto the side of unhitched trailers abandoned years ago? I couldn't fall asleep, and I couldn't shit and my hand was cramped from giving no one the thumbs up all day. Yeah man, yeah.

I took a seat on a rock that was still hot to the touch and threw back the last sip of a flat coke. It was mostly backwash, but at least the chunks of food elicited a reaction from me other than leg movement. I was happy to be sitting now, biting down on the little rubbery pieces of food that had been floating in my coke bottle all day. I still wasn't going to sleep, but at least I had a space of my own. I took off one of my shoes and used the sole to sweep away obscurities in my dirt. Now that I was going to be staying here I wanted my dirt to be clean, bland, brown and maybe a little red, but mostly just dirt and nothing more. In a long, slow swinging way I swept a circle around my hot rock. I'd finish one rotation, collect the spare dirt that had built up around the perimeter with my hands, toss it into the dark and start on the next rotation. After twenty or so rounds I had a circle and my rock in the middle, which felt like enough living space to get me through the night. I figured if I got bored I could walk about six feet out from the rock and feel like I was in a completely different room. I had a tendency to get bored pretty easily, so I made sure I could walk at least six feet in all directions of the rock without actually having to leave my space. I don't like change and being outside of my space would have made me extremely uncomfortable and my comfort is something I’m just not willing to compromise.

I didn't wait for the sun to rise before leaving my place. One too many bugs had made their way into my clean dirt and I was tired of fighting them off. I think I jumped into that place too soon, I shoulda hunted around a little more, but the price was just too good to pass up. Anyways, I walked on through the early Ante Meridiem blur, heh, and tried to make a little progress. I didn't have my morning cup of coffee and I was pretty upset about that, I was still hungry too. I had an overwhelming desire to be home. I didn’t have a house per say, but I needed to stay positive and I when times got tough I’d say to myself, “oh well, soon enough I'll be home.” Let's see... I guess it had been about 24 hours since I started walking down Glennwood. I wasn't running away from anything, but I wasn't exactly happy with where I had been staying prior to all this, in retrospect, I had never been happy with any place I had stayed; Too many distractions. I stuck my thumb up for good measure and figured the least I could do was try, I owed it to myself. A few cars passed in the opposite direction, a black Lincoln and a 72 Chevy pick up. Only reason I knew it was a 72 was because my uncle had one and he'd let me ride around in the back, but enough of that gay shit, back to the story... Before the sun passed over my head and I started to walk into the light, I made a commitment to find my home. I dunno, maybe it was 3 or 4 hours later when this faded blue or silver caviler came speeding by me, almost clipping my thumb right off. It was pulling a small trailer, one of those pop-up's, and its wheels wobbled real bad as it passed by me. I didn't see the crash, it happened a few dips in the road a head of me. I saw the dust rise and mix with the smoke, maybe the car had flipped, or maybe it was just the trailer. I didn't run to see, I mean, what would I have done? I followed the white line and eventually it faded where the trailer had come un-hitched and slid to its resting place. The Cavalier wasn’t around; I figured they must have been ok with leaving the pop-top trailer here, so I didn't feel bad when I decided to make it my home.

I know I had some qualms about desert people when I first started walking down Glennwood, but I guess they aren't so bad. I mean, I've never met one besides for myself and I think I'm a pretty normal guy. I make do with what I have. I live off the land. I'm just a simple man who likes rattlesnake steak and cactus infused pruno. Nothing weird about that.