It felt strange having a passenger after over a month of being alone. I glanced over at her as we turned right onto Route Sixty-six and drove past Betty's Diner and headed west—where to? I wasn't certain.
“So, are you ready for an adventure?”
“I think so. It feels weird. I've never done anything like this. My mom usually calls me every day and when I don't answer after a day or two, she'll worry, then she'll call my grandparents and they'll worry. My mom is such a worrier. I hate making her worry.”
“You said your friend Hannah will cover for you.” Her scrunched eyebrows told me she was upset and thinking.
“She will, but I didn't let my mom know I was going there. I should call, but I hate lying.”
“So what are you going to do?
“Don't know. This is really hard. I never rock the boat but keep things to myself.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, holding it in, then slowly exhaled. “What should I do?”
“I'm not going to tell you what to do. I never tell people what they should do. You said you needed to get away. You needed this...so deal with it.” I knew I was sounding gruff.
“Are you angry at me? You sound upset. Are you sorry you're taking me?”
“No, I'm not angry and I don't know if I'm sorry I'm taking you with me. This is weird for me too, but you have to take charge of your life.”
“I'm trying. That's why I'm in this truck with you, but I told you, I've always done what other people think I should do.” She turned away and looked out the side window and sighed—something she did a lot.
I didn't say a word and let the heavy silence fill the space. I started to turn on the radio to change the atmosphere but kept my eyes straight ahead and drove behind a slow truck filled with hay bales. I noticed a plaque on the side of the road with gold-plated writing that said Historic Scenic Highway and below that the words, “The Mother Road” and remembered when I read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, that the Oakies named it that on their way to California.
We were both quiet. After a few silent minutes, Carla reached into the pocket of her flannel shirt, took out her cell phone, hit a key and listened before speaking then left a message.“ Mom, don't worry. I'm at Hannah's for a few days.”
She took a deep breath and stared at the phone then quickly closed it and shook her head. I saw how disturbed she was as she put the phone back in her flannel shirt pocket. “I left a message.”
“You also lied.”
“I know.” She looked at me. “Fuck! Why am I such a wimp?”
“You're not a wimp. Sometimes you have to tell a lie to be honest to yourself.”
“ I hate lying to my mom. I mean it's not the first time. It's like when my granny was shocked that I had a beer. I don't want to be the goody goody they think I am. They don't know the real me.”
“I do.”
“I know.” She looked at me and smiled. “I want to be the real me with you. You'll see.”
“What will I see?”
“You'll find out I'm insatiable.” She reached over and put her hand on my thigh, moving it close to my cock and smiled, biting her lower lip.
I put my hand on her thigh, moving it slowly closer to her crotch but not touching, teasing her and smiled, “I'm insatiable too.”
I was glad the mood had changed. Still, I knew it would take a while before she really broke free and became more comfortable. Neither of us spoke, but the sexual tension made me aware of the adventure we were both on.
I remembered my own struggle to become free of my family's expectations. My dad's a surgeon at Einstein Hospital in Philadelphia where I grew up—Doctor Ezra Wiseman. My mother was a high school principal. When I dropped out of college in my junior year and moved to Vermont to join a communal farm in the nineties, they tried to be supportive like good progressive liberals, but I became too radical for them. They were aware of the corruption and inequality, but also comfortable and secure. I remember reading somewhere, “Security is the enemy of the people.”
I hated the hypocrisy of their lives and we argued a lot. They knew the system was built on war and exploitation of other countries in order to keep our country secure and prosperous. They were opposed to the wars and went on protests and signed petitions, but still, they enjoyed their big house, including a house on Long Beach Island, two cars and lived a pretty extravagant upper-middle-class life.
When I was in college I knew I couldn't be a doctor like my dad hoped. I was aware that our dependence on oil and the globalization by multinational corporations would only get worse and that our consumer-oriented society was not only dependent on the exploitation of slave labor in third world countries, it was also unsustainable. They weren't happy when I dropped out.
The commune was good for a while. We were all drop-outs, but we were floundering. I lived with a woman named Vicky, but she was a trust fund hippie rebelling against her upper-middle-class family, like me, except I didn't have a trust fund and had to work. She wanted to get married and didn't want me to be a carpenter, but that was all I could do to make some money. I'm not sure what she wanted me to be, but I left the farm and Vicki after we had a big blowup. I saw the commune fall apart because of drugs and selfishness. I knew so many people my age who were lost, frustrated and angry.
I moved to Maine and worked as a carpenter for a boat builder and married an artist named Lee. Neither of us wanted to have children, but when she had a bad reaction to birth control pills, I decided to have a vasectomy. I also realized marriage was not for me. I started writing stories and more and more knew that's what I wanted to do, but it bothered Lee that I wasn't there for her like she wanted. When I wasn't working at the boatyard, I wrote. We fought a lot. Finally, I said, “I'm out of here,” and we got a divorce.
Two years ago I went to the Occupy Wall Street to protest the way banks have this country by the balls until that got busted by the police. After that, I was pretty lost. So I decided to hit the road and take Route Sixty-six to California, never expecting to meet Carla, and here we were drifting west, one day at a time. My plan was to eventually go to Bolinas in northern California where my friends Steve and Catherine lived. I hadn't seen them in over ten years. They had a daughter, Zoe who was eight or nine when they left.
While we were driving through one small town after another I noticed that Route Sixty-six was the Main Street of all of the towns. We drove past many famous places I had read about. We drove through El Reno, Bridgeport and Talmadgeburg which was a boarded-up ghost town. I told Carla a little history of the highway, how it was mostly a dirt and gravel road until the thirties then eventually got paved. In the fifties, tourists traveled it and lots of businesses benefited from that. Nat King Cole had a hit record of the song, Get Your Kicks on Route Sixty Six. But then the highway wasn't being maintained and some parts got closed. When the interstate was built in the Sixties, Route Sixty-six got by-passed and lots of the business and towns had hard times, some of them becoming ghost towns. But then in the nineties, it had a revival because of people wanting to go back in time and enjoy the legends about the highway. So a lot of business started up...mostly gaudy tourist traps.
Carla told me what she knew about the dust bowl days because her great grandmother told her stories from when she was a child and how hard it was to see and breathe and that lots of people died from lung disease. I told her about a Ken Burns documentary I had seen that said it was a ten-year drought with huge wind-storms and that the same thing could happen today because of climate change.
She knew what I was talking about because of the drought they were having and how hard it has been for her grandfather the last four years and her Uncle Charley's accounting firm was struggling.
After driving for a few hours, we stopped in a small town named Okemah because I knew that’s where Woody Guthrie grew up. He was the hero to a lot of folk musicians I listened to Bob Dylan and Rambling Jack Elliott. I told Carla about him and was surprised when she started singing Woody's song, This Land is Your Land. She said they learned about him in school and they sang that song, but she really didn't like his music.
I guess I wasn't surprised. He didn't have the best voice and his songs were about people struggling and the need for unions. She told me she listened to Christian Rock. When she said that I chuckled to myself but didn't respond.
We stopped at a small restaurant outside of Okemah that had pictures of Woody Guthrie's old house and lots of pictures of people from the depression wearing overalls and long dresses standing next to old cars.
Over lunch, I told her I was thinking we should head to a town I knew above San Francisco named Bolinas. I told her about my friends Steve and Catherine and their daughter, Zoe.
“Really, San Francisco? That's pretty far away. I never heard of Bolinas.”
“It's a really cool place and no one would ever find you there. It's off the beaten track and special."
“Why? What's so special about it?”
“It's hard to find the town because there aren't any signs. Every time the state puts up signs, the people take them down.”
Carla seemed puzzled and fascinated then asked why they did that.
“They don't want it to become a suburb of San Francisco. That's why they take the signs down. A lot of the roads are still unpaved and unless you know how to find the town, you can't go there. They try to keep it a secret.”
Carla listened and I wondered what she thought. She leaned back and finished drinking her root beer then made a loud noise sipping at the ice through the straw while she gazed at me.
“What do you think about going there?” I asked and shoved my coffee mug aside and waited for her answer. I saw her thinking, nodding and liked the way she narrowed her eyes as she thought.
“I want to go there. It sounds really interesting and you're right. Sounds like no one will find me there and it's far away.”
“Cool. It might take us a week to get there. I'll call my friend Steve and tell him we're on our way.”
I hadn't spoken to him in years. I took out my cell phone and called and wasn't surprised to hear him say, “Cool. We can put you up for a while.”
I noticed how Carla watched me as I talked. When I hung up, I said, “Good. You'll like him and his wife, Catherine. We go way back. It's amazing how I haven't talked to him in a few years and then he picked up the phone it seemed like yesterday. I'm glad we're going there.”
We drove to the Oklahoma border and just as it was getting dark, decided it was time to stop for the night. I had been driving for six hours and except for filling up with gas, using the fairly clean bathrooms, getting coffee and some snacks, we chatted and then would be quiet. Carla dozed off and I glanced at her sleeping with her head against the door. I still found it difficult to believe this sweet, sexy woman was with me. I knew she was complicated and struggling with who she was and who she wanted to be. She's not alone, I thought. A few times, I reached over to touch her and she opened her eyes and smiled at me then fell back to sleep. Such a sweet smile. Maybe this will work out. We'll see.
There were a lot of motels and restaurants along the highway. When I stop at a motel I always like to know there's a diner nearby, or the motel has a restaurant attached. Just ahead I saw the Dixie Motel and down the road Johnny's Hotcake House.
When I stopped, Carla woke up and looked around. “Where are we?”
“Time to stop for the night. This looks like an okay place, a little shabby but there's a restaurant down the road.”
We got out and walked up to the small office with a sign on the green door that said, “Welcome” and below that “No Pets.”
No one was at the desk when we went into the tiny motel office. I rang the bell and a tall, skinny man with thick horn-rimmed glasses came out of a back room to sign us in. He looked at both of us without a smile of greeting, took out a form from under the counter and stuttered, “Hhhhh how long?”
“Just the night,” I said, surprised that he stuttered and wondered if he was the owner or the owner's son.