I wasn't five miles past Fernley when I heard the thump thump thump of a flat tire. I guided the Subaru to the shoulder and headed back to check the damage. It hadn't sounded good. Sure enough, the back tire on the passenger side was shredded. I'd ignored all the extra insurance offers Alamo had tried to give me, but I didn't want to dwell on the negative. I was outside of Reno, and that was all that mattered. I opened up the hatch at the back of the station wagon, put the boxes containing my kitchen supplies and my video game collection to the side, and looked into the compartment that, with and luck, contained a spare. It did, thankfully--a nice new Goodyear, ready to go--but it sat there by itself, sans jack or tire iron. I gave the gravel on the side of the road a kick, but it was half-hearted. As bad as my luck had been as of late, I wasn't that surprised. I decided to take a glass half full attitude. Up ahead was a lengthy stretch of desert, with salt flats, a prison, and lots of "no hitchhiking" signs. At least I was within walking distance of a town.
I loaded my things back into the rental and considered my options. I still had one friend left in Reno, but Jeff rarely woke before noon, and even if by some chance he answered his phone, then what? I was trying to make a clean break, and waiting for help from back in Reno didn't really seem to fit that narrative. I could call a cab, but the money I'd borrowed for moving wasn't going to last long at that rate. As it is, I knew a jack wouldn't be cheap. I'd grabbed one for Sharon at Auto Zone shortly before the "incident," and it ran me nearly fifty bucks. Maybe there was something cheaper at the the automotive department of Wal-Mart, but if that was the case I could always taxi back. I decided walking was the best bet. After grabbing my iPod and bottle of warm soda from the passenger seat, I crossed to the other side of I-80 and began the long walk back.
I'd been walking fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, when I was shaken out of the haze inspired by Jimi's guitar by the sound of a horn. I hadn't even bothered to stick my thumb out while I walked--it was mild and I always felt self-conscious hitchhiking--but there was still a large truck rumbling to a stop ahead of me. I walked a bit faster, wishing for a pretty girl in the driver's seat, but this wasn't Tuscon and the truck wasn't a Ford. A large man with an NRA hat and overly large sunglasses peered out at me as I approached. I was ten feet away when I was hit simultaneously with the sounds of Hank Williams and the smell of marijuana smoke. He wave some of the smoke out from in front of his face with a meaty hand and gestured me closer.
"That your car back yonder? With the flat?" He said it "yonda," and I wondered if he was actually from the south or if it was just an affectation. He certainly looked like Nevada, with skin tanned nearly to boot leather and callouses on his callouses.
"Sure is. You got a jack, maybe?" I'd been around him less than a minute and already my grammar was slipping.
"Not with me, sadly. I've got one back at my trailer, though. Hop in." So I did.
A couple minutes later we were back in Fernley proper. The man--Donald, he'd told me between songs--pulled into Jake's Gas, still going nearly forty miles an hour as we looked for a parking spot. I could feel my Mt. Dew bubbling up towards my esophagus, but I didn't bother saying anything. He was doing me a favor, after all. He took a spot right up against the side of the building, and I had to grab onto my seat to keep my face from slamming into the dash as we came to a stop. "Hang on. Gotta drain the lizard." He slid out of the truck and the shocks sighed with relief. I just waited. He'd been gone five minutes or so when I got bored and began poking around in his truck. There was a gun--a big one, at that--in the dashboard, but that didn't bother me. There was also (amid his registration and other things you'd expect to find) a partial pack of cigarettes and a dented, dirty can of Bag Balm. I was about to poke around under the seat when Donald came shuffling out the front of the store, three bulging plastic bags in his arms. I quickly closed the dash and went back to staring at the other people in the parking lot. Donald climbed back into the truck, and dropped two of the three bags at my feet. The third contained various foodstuffs, and he rummaged around until he found a liter of Mt. Dew and handed it to me. "Thanks," I said, but he wasn't finished. He'd also bought me a cold cut sandwich and some chips. He'd gotten hot dogs, three of them. They were the big ones, and he'd piled them high with onions, jalapenos, and artificial cheese sauce. He'd turned the key, so that Hank could return to his lamentations, but rather than drive to his trailer Donald began to eat. This disturbed my stomach more than his driving--he took each hot dog up at an angle and sucked them into his throat, using his teeth to tear the bun but then letting gravity and a wet gasping sound pull bread and condiment alike into his reddening face--but again, I was in his debt. An attractive woman of about forty was washing her windshield , her skirt exposing more and more leg as she stretched to get to the top of her SUV's windows. A couple of kids ate ice cream on the sidewalk, their "Home of the Vaqueros" shirts letting me know they were locals. I even watched an elderly man purchase the Reno Gazette-Journal, his gnarled hands struggling with each nickel, just to keep from having to look at Donald. I hadn't had breakfast that morning, and I was looking forward to eating the sandwich he'd bought me, but it was going to have to wait after hearing the way the cheese and mustard made percolating noises as they cleared the way for the processed franks.
When we began driving again, it was down Newland Drive, past the eyesore that was Amazon. Even situated as it was, sitting next door to a Wal-Mart, the warehouse was painful to look at. At least it was a source of quite a few jobs, though miserable ones from all accounts. Donald went a bit further, then careened into an RV park. His long silver trailer with a permanent wooden porch ensconcing it looked out of place next to all the shiny motor homes surrounding it. I guessed Donald had been here for more than a few years, while most everyone else was a retiree, a seasonal worker, or both. "Let me go stick Blackie in the bedroom and then you can come inside while I look for that jack," Donald said, and started walking without waiting for a response. I'd have rather waited in his truck the whole time, with him being so big and his trailer so small, but I didn't want to be rude. He opened up the door and Blackie poked his head out, a snarling head full of teeth. I'm a firm believer that dogs have the capacity for good or evil no matter what their breed, but the Rottweiler that lunged for daylight didn't seem kind in the slightest. It looked like it would take Donald a minute to get the dog under control, so I ate my sandwich. It wasn't bad for gas station food. He'd just tossed his hot dog wrappers behind the seat, so I assumed it would be fine to do the same. I stuck my hand behind me and my knuckles smacked against something hard and cold. I looked behind the seat. It was a jack. I almost yelled out "It was in here all along," but something stopped me. Donald had been nothing but kind, but I had an uneasy feeling. I rustled through the trash behind the seat. I was about to discount my wariness as a symptom of too many bad slasher movies on basic cable, but then my fingers hooked something soft amid all the food debris. A wallet. I picked it up and looked inside. Jeff Benton glared at me from his Oregon driver's license. There could have been a rational explanation, of course. Jeff might have been a co-worker, or someone Donald drank with. But it felt wrong. I looked down at my feet. Donald's other shopping bags contained a new pair of gloves, duct tape, some rope. "Well isn't this interesting," I asked nobody in particular. I got out of the pick-up and started walking towards the Wal-Mart.
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