by J Brown (copyrighted 2000)

We got lost and ended up in Iowa. You’d think we wouldn’t car after driving two thousand miles in four days but it was unnerving, thinking you’re going one way and ending up in another state. It speaks of the spin of our small rock and the largest yells for life are freak silences in the black.

Creatures are black in the night and it makes them more dangerous. Even as their frozen carcasses lie in improbably positions along interstates and backroads, they were black and dangerous, having sniffed and searched on highways looking for smaller, less dangerous creatures. It sometimes make me wonder what we’re sniffing for and will come and stun the life out of us, leaving our bent and twisted bodies along other sorts of highways.

We slept well in a bed that was warm and her side was snug against a brown wooden wall, lacquered, and dull and dazzling from the green lamp above our bodies. I dreamt of concerts that would never happen and when I awoke I thought maybe in real life I had tried too hard to bring people together.

She took a long shower as usual and I found our back right tire flat and sagging. It looked as if it had just decided to quite the army and sit in a field waiting to be turned up by bombs. I wasn’t sure what to do but my dad was chuckling somewhere I was sure. Shouldn’t every son know what to do when you find a tire flat in the warm Minnesota morning?

We had made it to Minnesota because of a consensual decision on an earlier backroad had found us both uninterested in spending the night in the Hawkeye State. It made me wonder again, less dreamily than before, where the little spike that created an Underground Railroad for enslaved air to sneak away under my sleeping eyes came from.

I unearthed the jack and it took me flipping through my dusty owner’s manual to figure out how to loosen it from the dark and dangerous metal of the trunk. Small rocks comprising gravel imbedded in my knee as I first knelt to discern where a small piece of metal can lift and hold another heavier piece in the air. There it was, as two grooves under the back right door. Funny how these things correlate.

I barely cranked once when my spring knees had sent sufficient messages to my brain to get off the ground. I placed the foam that had held the jack under the knee for cushioning and began cranking again. My left hand burned in callous form as the jack handle spun in my hands. Soon the tire was off the ground and from the rear my car look like a dog that wanted to place its identification on a tree. I laughed heavily and was sweating. I wiped my forehead with my damp forearm and it felt cool under my arm as a result of not having used deodorant yet.

Salvation came in the form of a car repair store directly across the street from the motel where we were staying. The previous night it had merely been a white, man-made blob that did not contain food or a bed to sleep. It turned out I was wrong because as I followed Phil the mechanic and his Marlboro smoke to the back of his grease shop, a cot that was pristine army green lay quietly between the tire machine and a yellow Corolla up on a hydraulic lift. The car was old and would never be under warranty again.

Phil talked through his smoke, talking to the partial needle he pulled from my tire as if performing a caesarian. “So you’re the little bitch,” he said, though there was nothing but amusement in his voice. Born and raised in small town Minnesota brought a man to his knees just like it did in Los Angeles but differently. He didn’t know the bigger world; he only knew of it and that was enough for him. He talked about traffic and boob jobs though I wasn’t really listening. I was watching him pull the tire off the wheel as the last of the air escaped in a burst of sound. Sort of like Darth Vader breathing, I thought, but Phil’s cigarette was speaking.

“Yep, she’ll be as good as new. Where ya headed anyway?”

I told him Toronto and the smoke began a new trail as his head tilted.

“Canada? Damn, now that’s an adventure.”

I wanted to tell him that Toronto was probably just another stop too, and that it was probably a lot like Minneapolis too, but he hadn’t made it there yet.

“Why are you going there?”

I wasn’t sure what to tell him. My first instinct was to tell him I was defecting but I didn’t think he was listening. Then I decided on the truth.

“I don’t know,” I told him, “I’m a traveler.”

Phil looked up from my tire but his hands were on autopilot. “Now what the hell does that mean?” he wondered. “Well,” I began, trying to explanation one of the oldest professions in the world, “I go places and meet people and make Life happen.”

“Do you have a home?”

“Sometimes,” I laughed. Then, telling him as I told many people about my life and its direction, “I’m a lonely sperm swimming to an egg.”

As I had earlier suspected, Phil wasn’t really listening. He was nursing my tire and I guess I was grateful for that.

“What’s that you said about sperm?” he asked when it was time to dislodge the cigarette from his mouth.

I didn’t answer him; I was looking at the cot.

“Who’s cot is that?”

“Mine,” Phil said, “though someone else uses it more than me.” He was adding air into the tire. “My other mechanic, the one whose Corolla this is. He works hard when he’s here but his wife seems to think he should sleep here too.”

“Why is that?”

“Why knows, I’m not married to her, thank God.”

The conversation dwindled or ended rather but the cot remained illuminated by the window above it. The yellow Corolla looked like a smushed banana and the cot a mint leaf.

“Tire’s done,” Phil said. He bounced the tire to me and it rejoiced at its newly enslaved air.

I paid him money that was meant for gas or food but without my healthy tire, nothing was possible. As I was holding the tire awkwardly like the first time I held a baby who’s defecated on itself, I asked him how far to Minneapolis it was.

“About three and a half hours if you take the interstate,” he replied, scratching an eyebrow, “and about the same if you take the backroads.”

I was about to jaywalk across the sleepy street when he called out to me again. “Hey, why are you going there?”

“Because it’s on the way to somewhere else,” I replied.

Ten minutes later I was convincing my girlfriend that even though I had tightened the tire myself, it was safe for the last thousand miles of our travels together. She was unsure but happily accepted the cigarette I had bummed from Phil. I was across the street from one of life’s saviors, but he was only human too.