All we knew about Tim when Kevin and I got in his car was that he had to be in Salt Lake City in sixteen hours or he’d go to jail. You can’t not get into a car with a hook like that.
But in all seriousness, the guy’s body language shouted nonthreatening. He seemed friendly but disinterested, and if we hadn’t taken his ride he would have just picked up someone else. The seat was full of dog hair as I climbed in –always a good sign– and I didn’t see anything that reeked serial killer (clown masks, nail marks, self-published manifestos etc. etc.)
“My German Shepherd,” he explained after asking for our names. “She’s in dog jail right now. It was either her or me.”
“What?” I asked confused.
“He means the dog kennel,” said Kevin from the back.
“So why’re you going to court in Utah?” I asked as we sped off back onto the freeway.
“Because the gestapo police pulled me over in Salt Lake City.” His accent was thick and northern– probably Wisconsin or Minnesotan. “I wasn’t doing nothing wrong, but they were shining their spotlight on me and scaring my dog half to death. Then they pulled me over and when they couldn’t find nothing wrong on my record he says he could small marijuanna in my car. ‘I detected the smell of marijuanna in your vehicle.’ They’re trained sniffers, they are.”
“And did you have weed in your car?” I asked.
“Of course I did, seven pounds of it, but he couldn’t smell it– it was wrapped in mylar!”
“Seven pounds!” I said, his tone of amusement making both me and Kevin laugh. “How the hell are you gonna prove that was all yours to use?”
“Well exactly! I have a joint condition –mind the pun– and a license to grow in California (here, I’ll find it for you, it shows my picture and makes me look like I have little weed wings growing out of my head.) And it’s legal to use for medical reasons in Minnesota! But Fuhrer Police-Guy says, ‘You got so-and-so ounces, and if you smoke one 3-ounce joint a day that’s enough for the next 275 days.’
And I said, ‘Oh, really? I must have miscounted, I meant to have enough for all 365!’ Well, he didn’t find that very funny.”
He was fumbling in his wallet as he spoke, and he pulled out a card to hand to me. Sure enough there was a picture of his face with little marijuana leaves coming out of each side of his head like wings.
“This is amazing! You look like a little weed angel!” I said.
He laughed but then frowned. “The worst part was my dog. They took her into costudy and told me I had five days to recover her or she’d be euthanized.”
Tim, it turned out, was a part-time trucker part-time weed farmer in California and Minnesota. He was eternally amused and curious, a wealth of stories and information. His reasons for picking us up soon became apparent: “I love picking up hitchhikers. They’re usually very intelligent, highly-educated bums.”
“Genteely unemployed,” I agreed.
“Sorry sir,” he said, spotting a man with a backpack on the side of the road. “We won’t be able to hear your stories today– we’re full-up. But it also helps to stay awake, having somebody to talk to.
He’d brought his weed accross the border because the one time he’d flown had been disastrous– “All the Mormons had their books out they were so scared, praying and singing hymns. I got so scared I just took two THC tablets and for the rest of the time just watched the lightning like it was on the TV.”
He was full of interesting stories he’d collected from his readings and from the road, had a lot to say about life as a trucker.
“They’ve cleaned it up a lot, but you still see plenty of lot lizards” (read: college girls that hang around truck stops looking to earn some cash by fucking trackers) “and backpagers (a sex work site).” He told us about sex trafficking, how he’d once intercepted a trucker who was trying to sell a girl for $150.
“It was on the radio. I asked ‘Is she obedient?’ and he says ‘Oh yeah, I got her all tied up.’ I say ‘Cool, I’ll take her for a hundred.’ He says deal and just as I’m starting to tell him I’d like in on this little business of his a guy comes on the radio, saying ‘I can’t believe you two guys trying to buy and sell a poor girl!’ and the other guy cuts out. I’ll never know if that second guy was just dumb or he was in on it too. And I never found out what happened to the girl, though I tried.”
He said he once picked up someone he’d later realized was a serial killer, someone accused of killing and decapitating six women in Puerto Rico.
“Oh he just hated women, and he fit the description. But when I called the police after I’d realized they didn’t think much of it.”
Most of the stories were good though: stories of traveling musicians who couldn’t really play, of the pranks the Amish played on one-another, of a Mexican woman who he found as she was walking through the desert, clearly come across the boarder. How he’d bribed a corrupt cop in Florida, and learned that you got charged if you cursed in front of a cop in Kentucky and Tennessee.
“I told him if he couldn’t read my license he should try peeling the foreskin off his eyes. He just said that statement cost me $200.”
I twiddled the radio dial –Tim enjoyed everything from pop to country to mariachi to the dadrock I preferred– as we passed over Nebraska, the speed limit reaching 80mph as the land flattened, unusually green. Tim told us that there’d been an unusual amount of rain over the desert this year, and even the hills of Utah were green as Ireland right now. We passed over fields that looked like lakes but for the fact that telephone polls were sticking out of the water.
The whole time he just drank Mountain Dew, never seeming to tire even after Kevin had fallen fast asleep. We only stopped twice: once for a bathroom break and the second time so Tim could point out to us the stars over Wyoming, where we saw two shooting stars in the minute that we stood.
Over Nebraska there hung a blood red moon, the whiteness colored by the setting sun and the dusk. My sleep was restless and full of stress-dreams: visions of my teeth falling out, of the guilt over lost friendships and the loose ends I hadn’t tied.
But when I woke up the hills were green over Utah, and Tim was wide-awake.
“I need to be at the courthouse for the preliminary hearing. Utah has this four-court-session deal in order to attract tourism. I’m not even kidding, that’s their explicit reason. I would have taken my dog except cops in Wyoming detain any dog they suspect is part-wolf.”
When we arrived in Salt Lake City, parking outside a McDonalds where Tim went inside for a hashbrown. When he got back in the car he asked if either of us could write, and I volunteered myself. He dictated his court statement while I translated it into fancy-language, probably the first useful use of my expensive education.
“The cop came up behind me, flashing his spotlight, hurting my eyes and scaring precious half to death! And then he charged me with switching lanes!”
The highway patrol truck approached my vehicle from the rear, shining his spotlight into my lefthand window so that I was unable to see, causing me to ride slightly across the fog line. He then stated this was probable cause for him to search my vehicle…</em etc. etc.
The security guard stared at us curiously as Tim let us out right outside the court house, our eyes bleary and legs stiff, basically just throwing our stuff on the curb so that he didn't block traffic. We said our goodbyes and wished him luck.
And suddenly we were standing on the curb of a new world, our old city two sunsets behind us, our day one hour ahead.
"Whatever happens to us after this," I said to Kevin. "At least we have this start."
And we headed for the park, to sit alongside the other bums.
this is real this is fiction 