There was a thick fog hanging over the interstate that morning, but it was no thicker than the fog in Randy’s brain as he drove westward. Automobiles and eighteen-wheelers appeared without warning in the rearview mirror then disappeared a few yards in front of him, like the thoughts that were passing through his head, thoughts about the night before, that whole Houston episode.
It didn’t escape his notice that the parking lot he wound up in was the parking lot of the club where August had gone to work when he ran away from Spider. He didn’t know for sure how far Ruby’s was from Ruckus, where the adventure began, but he did know that August’s little apartment wasn’t far from the club. He would have loved to see that, but had to get out of Houston as quick as possible; he had to leave behind the whole nightmare of the night before, traffic and fog be damned!
It was cooler this morning. The temperature seemed to be dropping by the minute. Randy was sure that if the radio worked, somebody on it would be saying the temperature was dropping by the minute. He had on a sweater but still felt a chill in his fingertips when he tapped his cigarette ash out of the sliver of open window. So he turned on the heater. Hot dry air poured out of the vents, filled the Dart quickly. Too hot.
Randy turned off the heater but the heat kept coming. He fiddled with the controls on the dashboard but while he did so he crossed into the next lane and barely missed getting clipped by an eighteen-wheeler sliding past like some kind of phantom ship.
Randy eventually solved his problem by opening the car windows and letting the cool wet air outside mix with the dry heat inside. It was about right—or good enough, anyway.
The night before was the first night Randy had slept for longer than twenty minutes at one time since he left Florida. What was that, a week ago? Two weeks? He had no concept of time. He had slept several hours in the back seat of the Dodge Dart, but wasn’t rested. His body just seemed to be alerted to what it was missing; it wanted more. Sleep or speed, take your pick.
Randy didn’t want to stay in Houston any longer than he had to. Something told him the characters who stole his cash the night before would be back. For what, he wasn’t sure, but he had heard somewhere in life that they always come back to the scene of the crime eventually.
And who where they anyway? Was it really Paul, Spider and Deb? And was I really August, Randy asked himself. His head throbbed with confusion.
Most important to know was that he’d been ripped off; he didn’t have even the cheapest, over-cut cocaine to show for the unpleasant experience. He considered stopping for more trucker speed – as unappetizing as that sounded – but couldn’t even see the exit ramps off of the interstate until he was passing them, so he knew it would be even more difficult choosing an exit where there might be a truck stop. So he just stayed the course, remained on the interstate, moving forward, hot air, cold wind, his eye on the goal, west to San Francisco, somewhere between fifteen-hundred and two-thousand miles away.
To keep himself awake and alert, Randy made up songs and sang them as loud as he could. This activity humored him for many miles, all the way out of the busyness of Houston into the quiet of the towns west of there, Katy, Brookshire, Sealy.
Many songs came and went, but one chorus stuck with him, made him laugh as he sang it again and again. Each verse was new, but the chorus was always the same. He knew he would never forget:
august chagrin, you was my friend,
‘Twere six feet tall or taller.
My red rear-end says, “Please come in
With your great big cannon baller!”
The fog lifted by the time Randy had made it to Sealy, but the heat in the car continued to rise and had become unbearable. He took his sweater off while driving, but that did nothing to ease the temperature.
For a moment, he thought perhaps he had a fever – perhaps he did – but the bigger issue was the smoke that was coming into the car through the vents. He was chain-smoking Mona’s Vantage cigarettes by this time, and so was familiar enough with the smell to know that the smoke filling the car was not his own doing alone. There was an oily, rubbery smell in the air.
Randy didn’t know anything about cars, what made them work, which smells went with which functions, which smells were cause for alarm. He drove on, oblivious to the tragedy that was about to occur.
Eagle Lake was south of Interstate 10, as were Alleyton and Ramsey, Texas; to the north were Bernardo and Mentz; not too far west was Columbus. Somewhere in there, everything changed.
The smoke coming from the vents turned from an innocuous white to a scurrilous gray. Randy’s forehead was dripping sweat; it was pouring down his face, wetting the collar of his t-shirt and turning cold there against his skin. His stomach churned. The engine of the Dart seemed to be doing the same; it convulsed, sputtered, and gave out.
Randy pumped the gas pedal, lifted his foot up then slammed it down a couple of times. There was no reaction in the car, no change in the speed; he was coasting to a halt. Cars zipped around him; an eighteen-wheeler let loose on his horn.
Randy pulled over to the shoulder, stepped out of the car, pretending some amount of knowledge or concern. He went to the front end, thinking he should lift up the hood to look inside or at least to let someone else know that he was having trouble. Maybe that would be a signal of some sort to an organization of highway helpers who would come along and put everything in order. He hoped they didn’t require a cash payment.
Randy touched the hood and the metal was so hot he jumped back squeezing his hands together, doing a little dance. Traffic was still whizzing past, but was beginning to slow, curious about what he was up to. When he looked back at the car, the gray-now-black smoke was draining out of the Dart from both side windows and orange flames were lapping up over the dash and touching the windshield.
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” Randy said, and he kept saying it as he ran to the driver side window and looked in. The front seat was taking to the flames; the back seat was billowing with smoke. The Alcatraz salt and pepper shakers on the dashboard where getting shiny in the heat. The box of Mona’s cremains in the passenger seat was starting to condense in the heat. Randy watched as the dirty white lid of the box bubbled briefly then succumbed to the flames.
“Oh, shit!”
He had a weird instinct to reach into the car, for the salt and pepper shakers, or the car keys, or his duffel bag in the back seat—of course! That’s what needed. But right at that moment as he was contemplating his next move, a pickup truck drove slowly past, the passenger side window open, a black collie hanging out of the window, saying, “Get away from the car! She’s gonna blow!”
Randy wasn’t thrown by the fact that the warning was delivered by a dog. He snapped to awareness and jumped away from the car, ran around to the passenger side, tripped and rolled down into a big ditch, sticking to the mud in the bottom. He threw up; it was all junk food and liquid – Southern Comfort, perhaps.
He looked over his shoulder at the car, now completely engulfed in flames. He touched his back pocket, felt the outline of his wallet, sighed a big relief.
Up the other side of the ditch, away from the interstate, he saw a diner that looked like a train car. It had a big hand-painted sign on the front of it:
train car diner
open 24 hours
serving breakfast all day
pancakes – biscuits – homemade sausage – omelettes
breakfast tacos – hot coffee and fresh do-nuts
hot chocolate and cappuchino
steaks cooked to order – homemade chicken tenders
Next to the diner, across a little side street, was a one-story motel. budge in, the lighted sign on the side of the building read, thanks to a couple of burned out bulbs.
And so, Randy did.