The weatherman on the radio was calling for rain as the truck pulled to the shoulder of the road. The old man's eyes held a smile for the hitchhiker as he said, "You know that I still have almost two hundred miles to go, but I'm a little heavy, I got to by-pass some scales up the road. I'm sleepy and it would help if I had somebody to talk to, you are welcome to ride." Hitchhiking had been his only way to travel during the great depression; he knew about staying on the main roads, so he added. "We will be on back roads but where I put you out you will only have to go about fifty miles to get back on interstate twenty just east of Birmingham."
Billy Ray looked at his map, he had a rule about leaving the interstates, but the old man was right. Freeport, Alabama was about forty miles north of interstate twenty. One good ride or maybe three short rides would put him right back on a main interstate. He knew better, but the threat of the bad weather helped to override those small whisperings of past experience. He replied, "Well, if you can stand my company then I will ride to the end of the line with you."
The old man let the clutch out and the overloaded truck eased down the exit ramp and turned right. Gentle rolling hills with green wooded mountains in the distance. 'It would have made a nice landscape painting,' Billy thought and then shut his eyes for a nap.
Clouds hung heavy and low in the sky. Too dark and heavy to rise above, they seemed to snag themselves on the mountain tops and bleed mist down the valleys. The trees and brush were colored by the strange light and made to look like hammered pewter, while the grass shone wet and shiny like a rippled surface of water. For a moment before the truck drove into the mist it was both beautiful and dramatic, and then you couldn't see shit. Close to white-out conditions with visibility limited to maybe two or three car-lengths.
The old man slapped the hitchhiker on the arm and said, "Damn son, I glad you came. Help me watch the road and I'll buy us both lunch when we get to the truck stop. I hate fog like this no telling how long we will take to get through it." So for the next half an hour he had helped the old man to stay on the road until at last the fog lifted a bit.
Six hours later, looking through the rain spotted windshield, he saw the town of Freeport in its entire splendor. A wide spot on a small secondary road, off all the beaten paths, the town had slowly rotted away. Seeing them now he realized both the town and the road were much worse in reality than they looked on the map. The next few hours would decide if he had fucked up, but right now it was looking bad. He jumped from the truck and reached back up to the door for his backpack. The old man looked tired but home was just down the road now. "Thanks for the ride and for the lunch, it was good," Billy said as he shut the door, returning the driver's wave as the truck pulled away. He set his backpack down and checked out the small village of Freeport.
Tammy Johnson drove at the speed limit as she returned from Sweetwater both the rain and the distraction of her husband's drinking forced her to be aware of the dangers of driving. It would be really embarrassing if her brother-in-law Wade happened to be the cop to pull her over. He wouldn't arrest her or give her a ticket but the self-righteous shit would never let them forget it either. Her eyes swept the street for the deputy sheriff's car as she topped the hill coming into town, but it was not to be seen. However she did see the young man waiting for a ride in the rain as she drove by him.
As if he had read her mind Wayne, the man she called her husband, roused himself up and glanced out the window as they passed the man. A single quick glance at his wife, reading the interest in her eyes as they drove pass the young man, answered all the questions he wanted to ask. He popped the tab on another can of beer and waited for her to make her pitch.
He didn't say anything; he didn't have to. She knew what he thought but that didn't mean she gave a shit. Sensing the way he would react she held her peace, neither of them spoke until they were walking into their house. "He looked very young to me, how old do you think he was?" she asked.
"Its only been a week since the last time; are you so out of control that you can't do without it any longer than that?" There was an accusation in his voice along with a bit of a whine.
"I didn't say I wanted to fuck him." She tried to sound like she had been insulted but it was weak even to her own ears.
"That's funny, because that is exactly what I thought you were saying," Wayne said as he walked away from her down the hall toward their bedroom.
"Listen to me Wayne. Stop walking away when I am talking to you," she demanded following behind him and grabbing his arm, forcing him to turn and face her. Watching the anger in his eyes, she pushed him a bit harder. "You know we are like two people who own a beautiful swimming pool, but you can't swim, so I only get to go in the shallow end with you. I need a guy that can make the strokes to get me to the deep end."
Sometimes Wayne wondered if he hated her; he knew he feared her. She had threatened to divorce him and force him to sell the house and divide the money. If she took half of everything it would ruin him as well as make him look like a fool in the eyes of everyone in town. His thoughts were interrupted by her hand stroking up the inside of his leg, letting her fingers reach out and lightly caress his ball sack through his pants.
"Come on baby, let's have some fun tonight," she cooed into his ear as she wrapped her arms around him hugging him from behind.
It was all so false, so fucking phony, the way she was trying to play him, all because she wanted to fuck a stranger. Just for a moment he wanted to hit her, the rage soared up inside him, but he pushed it down. He didn't want to hurt her. He loved her. "Baby why don't you let me get you off, you always enjoy that don't you?" he asked her.
She laughed in a derisive manner and sneeringly replied, "You gonna offer me some relief! I like your tongue but sometimes I need a good hard dick." She picked up the phone and offered it to Wayne. "Now why don't you do like I ask and have Wade check him out?"
"You can be a real bitch sometimes," he took the phone as he spoke, "I don't think I deserve to be talked to like this, not by you. You're my wife. You should be on my side and trying to help me through this. We never talked about doing this shit every week; it was an every now and then kind of thing to start with. How much of this shit do you think I can stand? I don't think you care about how I feel!"
Tammy smiled to herself and tried to keep a serious expression on her face as Wayne went on and on about how pitifully he was treated and how he was not going to take it. But while he was bitching he was dialing the phone, doing what she had asked. She knew him so much better then he knew himself.
Like most towns in mountainous areas Freeport straddled a small river running between sloping wooded hills. The main road shared the valley with a solitary railroad track, the two crossed back and forth over the fast running river. The town started at the river and spread out and up as it rose up the slopes of the surrounding hills. Once it had been a very pleasant village in a remote spot, now it was a small town cut off from the life support system of Interstate highways. Rust coated the railroad tracks, indicating little rail traffic. Fully half the stores were empty while the others lingered like walking wounded.
Billy stood with the rain running down his collar and no cars in sight, now the gamble didn't look as good. The rain got harder and the temperature was dropping like a rock as the afternoon wore on. Rain and fog had hastened the onslaught of the night forcing the cars to turn on their lights and the street lights to come on early.
"Never get off the Interstate," he said laughing as he shook his head. This lesson has been learned so many times and yet here he was again. Once up in Pennsylvania he had walked for two days without catching a single ride until he had covered the forty miles to Interstate Eighty-One. Once out in Kansas the police had picked him up on the Interstate. They carried him twenty-five miles across a waste land into some one horse town, where they decided to 'cut him a break' and let him go. It was a big joke to them. He had to walk all the way back to Interstate Forty, there wasn't a shade tree the whole way and it was in the summer. Now, he had done it to himself again, smiling and shaking his head he considered if he might be too dumb to learn.
Standing there watching the day fade into a gloomy evening, he saw every hitchhiker's natural enemy coming right at him. This was truly the last ingredient in a receipt for a bad day. He felt like a swimmer far from shore sighting a fin in the water.
The cop didn't see the man until he was almost on him, even though he was going slowly, watchful for any sign of him. Two people had called the station, one of them his own brother, wanting him to check this stranger out. The windshield wipers were working at the fastest setting but the rain was coming down even faster making visibility very bad. Centering the car on the boy keeping him pinned in the high beams, he stopped ten feet away. Warm and dry inside his car the rather fat cop motioned with his hand for Billy to come to driver's window.
"You got some I.D. boy?" His tone of voice and demeanor left no doubt that he had been bullying people since his school playground days.
Billy had hitchhiked across the country more than once and had been hassled by cops several times. He knew what the facts were. Fact was this conversation could be taking place with him bent over the hood, his hands cuffed behind his back, but for the fact, the pig didn't want to get wet. Billy took his license from his wallet, handed it through the window, without a word the window slid back up. He said nothing, trying to keep a respectful expression on his face. Feeling the water run down his collar, feeling like a dog who is not allowed on the porch, watching the cop do his job.
After calling in his information the cop, whose name tag identified him as Officer Wade Johnson, turned his attention back to Billy. Forcing the hitchhiker to stand in the downpour had been fun but it had not drawn a response from the guy as he had hoped. Pushing the button he let the window down again. "Well there Mr. Ray, you are aware that it's against the law to hitchhike aren't you?"
