We almost never started our two and a half thousand mile trip because Mom wasn't looking when she pulled onto I-40 coming out of Wilmington and a double-trailer semi almost side-swiped us. With the semi's horn blaring Mom swerved right, the 1975 Chrysler Town and Country fishtailing. We were running out of road fast, and even though she braked hard the brakes on the car were shit. The final part of the semi roared past and I reached over and turned the wheel, because Mom was like a rabbit in headlights as the end of the filter lane came up.
"You want me to drive, Mom?" I asked.
She shook her head, blonde curls whipping across her face as she shook it too hard. She was pale. "I can drive my own son to San Diego."
"All the way?" I teased.
She shot me a glance, color returning to her face. "You can take over when we stop for gas. And I'm a good driver. Never had a single accident."
That was true, but I couldn't remember the last time she drove any distance. Didn't have to; living in the small house in Devon Park she walked most places she needed to go. All that walking maintained her figure in a way her driver friends envied.
I leaned over and glanced at the fuel gauge. We were almost empty. Typical Mom. Anyone else would have filled the tank before starting a cross-country trip. It wasn't as if she didn't know we were setting out, but that was Mom, never with any plan, almost as if planning for something might make it not happen. Shows what she knows. I believe she'd been planning this trip in her head ever since she made the mistake of marrying Hank. Mistake rectified now, Hank was fish-food somewhere out in the South China Sea. Not even my real dad, Mom had always encouraged me to call him Hank and not Dad or Pop. I hardly missed him. Hell, I'd hardly ever seen him, he was always off somewhere, more than he had to be. And he wasn't a lovable man. Not even a likable man.
My real dad was also been Navy, also lost at sea, but at least he had gone down fighting in some meaningless skirmish out east, gone at twenty-two, leaving a twenty year old girl with a three year old kid. Me. Sometimes I thought I remembered him, odd scraps of memory floating to the surface, but more often I knew I didn't.
"We'd better pull over sooner rather than later, looking at that gauge," I said.
Mom laughed. "Oh, that doesn't work worth a crock of shit, Joe. There's a quarter tank left yet."
I sat back in my seat, slipped off my boots and put my stockinged feet on the dash. Mom glanced over but said nothing, concentrating on the road now it was too late, the faded station wagon - yellow over brown over rust - holding a steady fifty-five. I think. The needle on the speedometer had a habit of hunting fifteen miles an hour either side of true, wavering up and down.
Five minutes later as a sign for a stop came up Mom was intending to drive past but the engine misfired, caught again, misfired one more time.
"A quarter tank?" I said.
"I haven't driven this thing in years, Joe, how am I supposed to know?" She eased us into the exit lane and we coughed our way to the pumps. I climbed out, fed gas into the endless tank, stopped at $30 which was stupid because we'd have to fill up again anyway but money was tight and I couldn't bring myself to top us all the way up.
Mom got out and rested her hand on my waist just above my jeans. "I'm gonna go pee, Joe. You want anything?" Typical Mom again. We were twenty minutes down the road and she hadn't thought to pee before we left home. Make that ex-home.
"I'm fine," I said, watching as she made her way to the restroom. She looked young enough to be my sister rather than my Mom. Short, pretty, stacked up top but narrow across the ass, I'd always considered her the sexiest woman in the world. Not beautiful, but pretty, which in my book was even better. My experience with beautiful girls only made me believe they thought a whole lot too much of themselves.
Still only thirty-five Mom received a lot of attention after Hank died -- a lot, I think, before he died -- but she had other plans. After Hank went missing she discovered he had taken some complicated advance on his pension so there was no money coming in, and the house in Wilmington had two mortgages outstanding. Mom's younger sister Sarah lived in San Diego, all the way across the country from Wilmington, and Aunt Sarah had said she would love Mom to come and stay with her. She could even fix her up with a job. Mom handed the house keys over to the bank -- actually, slipped them through the door while they were closed for lunch -- and we hit the road.
We were supposed to leave early, but I knew Mom wouldn't get her act together in time for the planned start, so it was mid-afternoon before we left town and almost immediately got creamed on the interstate. We were meant to pack the night before but had lounged around, making the most of our last night in the house, drinking a bottle of white, laughing at old memories. In the morning we packed the cardboard boxes holding Mom's few belongings into the back of the station wagon. I tossed my small tote bag in and, more gently, the hard case holding my Martin OM-1 which Mom had bought for my fifteenth birthday. It replaced the cheap Guild I'd had since eleven. I hadn't asked for it, but Mom said she couldn't stand to see me playing a piece of shit guitar so well. I had no clue how she'd gotten the money together to buy it but that guitar was my pride and joy.
I removed the hose and waited as Mom came out the restroom and went inside to pay. When she came out she slipped into the other side of the car and I smiled and got behind the wheel. I had some news of my own, but didn't want to give her any more pain just yet. The pension and mortgages weren't the only things Dad hadn't paid. I'd had a letter a month before saying my Navy scholarship was being pulled. I'd either have to pay my own way for my last two years of college or quit. I knew this wasn't any kind of choice at all, didn't yet know exactly how to break it to Mom.
I had $20 in my jeans pocket. After I'd come down on the bus the day before I helped Mom search the entire house. We upended sofas and chairs, I wriggled my hand down the back and side of every piece of furniture in the house. Mom opened every jar and pot she might have hidden some cash away in. We had sat late last night counting it, her entire worldly stash coming to $742.36 - $45.98 was in coins we'd managed to recover from down inside the furniture, so I guess Hank hadn't left her completely penniless. I worked out we'd use most of the money filling the car with gas on our journey across America. The old Town and Country wasn't what you might call environmentally friendly. It drank more than Dean Martin at a night in Vegas.
Mom called me when Hank died but I told her I didn't want to go to the service. She said fine, she wasn't going either. That didn't surprise me. Why and how she'd put up with him all this time I don't know. When my real Dad died Hank took her under his wing. I think Mom was grateful, and Hank wanted a ready-made family and some regular sex when he was on shore leave, but he was an outright pain in the ass.
Fifteen years Mom's senior, Hank was authoritarian, pig-headed and so far up his own ass it was the only thing kept his hair brown. He'd tried to raise me as a Navy kid and I hated the idea, left home as soon as I could. I wouldn't miss him -- in fact, I was glad he'd gone. I was pretty sure Mom wasn't going to miss him much either.
That first night we pulled of I-40 just past Winston-Salem and drove into woods away from sight. Mom went into the trees to pee again and then I did the same. She had made sandwiches for us before leaving and we'd eaten a few on the way, still had some left and I wolfed a couple down while Mom nibbled at a half.
The Chrysler was one of those cars that appear to be about two hundred feet long, half of it hood, but when we pushed Mom's few belongings packed into cardboard boxes to one side and I slipped my guitar in front and rolled out a double camping mattress there was only just about enough space for both of us to stretch out. Mom's five foot three fitted easily. My six-one not quite, legs bent at the knees, feet pushing against the tailgate.
Mom changed out of her clothes and got under a thin blanket while I walked out into the trees to give her some privacy. When I returned I turned my back and pulled my sneakers and socks and jeans off and rolled them up and placed them on the front seat, climbed in the back door and slid under the sheet. I hadn't slept this close to Mom in years, and the presence of her barely clothed body so close to mine was uncomfortable. Mom didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, talking about how excited she was to be going to Aunt Sarah's. Sarah was four years younger than Mom, and I hadn't seen her in five years. Last time we went to visit I was deep in the throes of raging puberty and spent most of my time jacking off to fantasies about my Aunt. Mom and Sarah were two of the most gorgeous creatures in the world. To my mind anyway. Not that I'd ever jacked off thinking about Mom. Well, not as much as I had thinking about Aunt Sarah. Like I said, raging puberty -- it wasn't my fault!
It was hot in the car, a humid August night and after a while Mom sat up, reached over and opened the window her side. Then she reached over and wound down the one on mine. I lay rigidly on my back, trying to ignore her swaying breasts encased in a white lace bra inches from my face. Mom had always been the same, didn't seem to have any personal inhibitions about her body.
It was better with the windows down, a breeze blowing through, but the cicadas were still loud.
Mom tossed and turned a while, every now and then nudging against me. Her arm, a thigh, her ass when she rolled onto her side, a breast when she rolled the other way. I lay still, trying to ignore my erection and pretend it was nothing at all to do with her. Somehow, finally, I managed to sleep.
I woke to gray light filling the unshaded windows, a painful erection, and Mom snuggled tight against me, her arm draped over my stomach, me scared if she moved she might brush against my cock straining inside my shorts. I rolled away so my back was to her, but she mumbled and cuddled even closer, her arm wrapping back around me and I suppressed a groan because her hand was so damn close. I wasn't sure sure, but I think if she touched my cock I'd come there and then. She felt good pressed against me, belly to my back, her thigh over mine, her hand just above my navel, breasts flattened on my back. I lay rigid, scared if I moved my cock would jerk free and slap against her hand.
I lay that way for an hour until she woke, bleary and happy and rolled away from me as though realizing what she'd been doing. I pretended to be asleep while she clambered out the back and pulled on her skirt and t-shirt from the day before. I'm sure the smell of my arousal must have filled the car, and my shorts were damp where I'd leaked pre-cum all over them.
I waited for her to go pee then pulled on my jeans. When she came back she kissed my cheek and hugged me, saying she'd slept better in the back of the car than she had for years. I went to pee too and we set off, me driving. Mom hadn't mentioned driving again since I took over, and I was happy to do the whole journey if she needed me to.
The Town and Country ate gas like it was still 1975, the tank giving us only 250 miles, so before long we stopped at a service station again and both of us used the restroom to wash. I stripped off and wiped myself down, wiped my cock and balls still heavy from my earlier arousal.
That night we repeated the same moves, pulling off the interstate somewhere past Nashville and driving down smaller and smaller roads until we found somewhere we wouldn't be disturbed and parked up. There was still light in the sky by the time we'd eaten the bread and cheese we'd bought in a market, and Mom asked me to play her something.
