lemon line drifter

Emilie Knudsen

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The empty paper cup with the Coca Cola label, dried like a bone under the sun, lazily tapped against the windshield. The straw leaned so far out of the punctured plastic lid that it was in danger of falling completely out of the cup altogether. But it did not. The tip of the straw was gnawed at the end, teeth marks scouring three full inches, a nervous habit that even repeated swats on the arm from an impatient, now long-dead mother had failed to reverse. He chewed on his straws. He could tie a cherry stem with his tongue. He could always tell under which cup the red ball was hidden. He could legally drive a truck longer than twenty-six feet.

             The window was wide open – though the constant air did little to relieve his sweaty pits and flushed face – and his arm was draped out of it, tapping against the side of the moving truck as he kept time to the music blaring with static persistence from his radio. Its music filled his head and carried away the thoughts of the road in his taillights. It was only the heat waves drifting up from the asphalt that stretched before him. The northward direction. Each passing turn-off and sign. The green mile markers ticking by like hands on a clock or seconds on a bomb. Tick. Fifty miles gone. Tick. The sun was at its zenith and another eighty. Tick. Twenty more. Tick. Ten.

             Sometimes he felt as though a matador waved red in front of his eyes and he could taste blood thickening on his tongue. He shook the anger out of his head, but he was afraid it would be replaced with melancholy. So, he cranked the window and filled the cabin of the truck with the loudest music he could find. The road was flat and bare, the occasional pothole yanking his notice back to the texture

of the highway. It was two lanes and he was the only one driving it. Occasionally, he twitched the steering wheel to the left so that the wheels would drift and straddle the startlingly lemon-yellow division line. The rebellion of the moment made him smile weakly.

               He had stopped earlier that morning at the edge of town. His favorite diner offered the best eggs and bacon. They almost tasted homemade. The coffee was always hot and the maple syrup flowed abundantly and the smile of the elderly owner as she talked to each customer was contagious. “How ya doin, Teddy?” she asked.

It was the same question, the same spreading grin and glint of joy in her eye. However, his usual reciprocation was not in his vocabulary that morning and he merely nodded, muttering, “Just fine, Merle. I am doing just fine.” He forwent his place at the counter and sat at a booth in the corner of the diner. Jenna, the youngest waitress at the joint, had come to take his order. She was a gum- popping, hands-on-hips, brunette-braided woman who wore cherry red lipstick and was destined to have a pregnancy scare in seven months because of a broken condom or a night of drunken sex, move in with her boyfriend who would sink more money into alcohol followed by drugs than paying the rent, dance in stiletto heels with a pole between her legs at a bar down the street to make the extra cash, find the second richest man in town who would take her home one night in an alcoholic haze because his wife was visiting her sister a few states away, and Jenna, who was not inebriated, would have the wits to fondle the wallet right out of his pocket and the keys to his second car, the crime going unreported to avoid scandal and divorce. That was her way out. What a fucking badass way out.

             “Coffee. For now. Thanks, Jenna.”
             Teddy sat there in the faded scarlet booth and fiddled with his fingers. He had parked the

moving truck behind the diner so that no one would see and question it. It was large – the only one available on such short notice, Teddy remarked ironically to himself – but not very full. Clothes were piled up in corners. Tools slid across the floor, a misplaced hammer here, a loose socket wrench there.

He managed to snag the couch, the dining room table, a la-z-boy armchair, a spindly wooden rocker that had been his great aunts before she died, a free-standing microwave that they had received from her brother (it arrived in their hands already dented and semi-functional), a grill that permanently smelled like charred pork, a casserole dish, several loose sets of silverware, among other things. She had not wanted the bed, he reasoned, but neither did he.

            “What’re you doing?” Jenna was back, one hand clasping a steaming mug and the other carrying a small creamer and a spoon. She was not looking at him, but at the table. Following her gaze, he glanced between his hands, which were laid flat, palms pressing downward with much greater force than he had realized. His wedding band innocuously sitting on the table stared back at him, the empty golden circle like an unwavering eye. He looked at the matching band of now naked skin on his left hand. He hated it – that pale, almost shrunken swathe of flesh that burned like a three-hundred-sixty- degree cattle brand.

           Jenna bumped the coffee cup and accessories onto the table. She moved away quickly and by the time she came back, Teddy was still staring at the empty circle before him. She had her own mug and sat herself across from him, rolling her mint gum into her cheek and swilling the coffee before taking a sip. “It’s over?” she asked, indicating the ring.

           “Yes. It’s over. She’s over.” His voice sounded strange as he said it. Alien words in an alien tongue.

            “I’m sorry.” A long stretch of nothing. “Where are you going now? I think there’s a cheap place to rent down the way.” Teddy merely shook his head. “Oh, are you moving in with Sal then?”

             “I have a moving truck parked out back,” Teddy responded. “Headed to Fresno. My brother lives there.” What he said was not true. How could it be true? He mustn’t tell her the truth.

              Jenna’s face remained blank. Her hand paused and then passed over his own as though she wished to grab it. Her finger grazed his knuckles. He saw the curl of her hair and the curve of her hips

and he realized the immense and terrifying freedom that lay before him. He almost asked if she wished to get in the truck with him and leave the town behind them in the dust. They could creep out like bandits in the night and wake up to the lights of a new city every morning. They could make love in the back of his truck on the couch and could terrorize the sleepy little motels they’d stay at as they made their way north. They could conquer the whole fucking world together, this cherry red waitress named Jenna and himself. But the words tripped over his tongue and she was gone, grabbing her coffee, the rim stained with the red ghost of her lips, as she headed to the diner’s kitchen.

             He left a fifty-dollar bill and a wedding ring on the table.

             His tongue was gummed up in his mouth and his half-empty water bottle, rattling around in the cup holder, contained something more akin to humid air than actual liquid. He began to look for a place to pull over. This consisted of piercing the horizon with an eagle eye, straining for a turn off or a sign or a visible bump in the straight line of the road. His eyes were bloodshot and he felt as though he were slowly deflating.

             There was glass shattering. And a sense of flight. A crunch. Headlights grown large then darkness. There was pain, like shears plunging into latex. Or flesh.

             He stared up at the sun and the sun stared back. He did not know how long he stared, or for what purpose. But stare he did. Until he realized – the voice of his mother whiplashing into his memory Stop it, Teddy! You want to ruin your eyes for your whole life? – that he might go blind. So, he glanced down and away and when he did, he found the world darkened and uncertain, as though looking through a pair of sunglasses in an already dim room. Yet, there. There! It was his own hand that he held up, his own flesh and bone and sinew. It had pinpricks of gravel scattered across the palm, but it was his own hand that could bend in all the proper ways. He was on his back so he rolled over. It might have taken him a moment or all day to roll over, he was unsure of this fact. But he eventually found himself with his face pressed against the yellow line running down the center of the unbearably hot road. He did not notice the heat, but he knew that to anyone who had all of their faculties about them, it would be unbearably hot. This he knew to be true.

              Eventually, he stood over the wreckage of his moving truck. He must have been going fast. The whole thing was flipped over. And there it was. A bright lemon beetle smashed like a bug on a windshield, all fenders and tires and crushed, happy yellow. He saw no one, alive or dead, within the car. Probably wandered off, he figured. He called out a hello. It sounded empty and scratchy. He cleared his throat and called again. Hellooooooooooo. This time, it sounded too loud, too far-reaching. And the simple salutation, hanging in the air, unanswered, unacknowledged, made his skin crawl. All he could hear was the undiluted static of his broken radio. It crept through the crash site as though the volume was slowly increasing, filling up the torn gaps of the fused vehicles and soothing the wreckage of Teddy’s mind.

             The back of the truck was twisted shut. He could not open it no matter how hard he yanked on the handle. When he ran a hand over the paneling of the loading door and felt a variety of imperfections, as though pinhole points were pushing into his hand, he smothered a laugh, imagining the interior of the door to be covered in a modern art piece of silverware jettisoned by violent velocity to impale themselves into the siding of the truck. In fact, he was ineffectual in his smotherings and ended up sitting in abject comedy upon the asphalt, laughing several minutes away. He felt as though he were going insane, with the remnants of his tattered life trapped in an unopenable truck on an empty highway in the middle of nowhere under the noonday sun, but no one was there to witness his mental devolution, so it mightn’t matter anyway.

              He finally left the scene, not knowing what else to do.

              If he could reach a gas station, he could get to a phone. His own had shattered upon impact. He walked along the road, a straight line northward, and he soon came upon a sign. Gas Station – 4 Miles. In the blink of an eye, he could see the station shimmering behind the heat on the horizon.

             The gas station, which was a small, noncommercial affair called Pearl’s Gasoline and depicted an anthropomorphic tire with angelic wings. It sold cigarettes, lottery tickets, a limited number of soda drinks, mint and cinnamon flavored gum, and day-old hot dogs, which was, in honesty, really all anyone could ever hope for from a gas station that was a population of one and a town unto itself. A sign on the door read Closed for Lunch – Be Back Shortly! It was written in baby blue sharpie and tacked on the inside of the door with Scotch tape. He pressed his hand experimentally on the door. Bells jingled tinnily as Teddy walked in.

             The place was the definition of grungy, the walls a nondescript fluctuating grey, dust piled in the corners, and an uncertain atmosphere of decay. Mounted to the wall was an old wooden paddle that seemed to belong to some sort of ancient kayak, as though the gas station was transplanted from a lakefront community and did not belong in the desert at all. A plastic jar labelled TIPS sat next to a rack of discounted candy. It was filled with pens, baby blue sharpies, tacks, a number of toadstools, paperclips, a couple of baby teeth, a lock of hair with uncertain origins, and about two dollars and thirty-five cents worth of change.

             The only item that might be defined as pleasant was a turquoise vase of yellow roses by the register. However, there was unhelpfully no phone at the counter, only an abandoned nametag that read Ron C. Hanging on the back wall behind the desk were two sets of keys and Teddy snagged the one labelled Men’s Restroom. Three keys hung on the ring.

              As he left the station to circle around back, he caught sight of a payphone booth by the telephone pole near the farthest gas tank. He slid some change out of his pocket and into the slot. The change rattled through to the dispensary, but he still received a tone in the earpiece. He dialed 9-1-1. It rang and rang and rang. He tried again. Nothing still. But with his next attempt, he tried a different number. His own number at his own house. It rang a long, clamorous ring, then several beats of silence, then another ring.

            He imagined it echoing through his lifeless house, the grating shrill of the phone calling repeatedly without an answer, as he had called for the owner of the crushed yellow beetle bug, the volume turned irritatingly up on his own voice as it uncharacteristically filled the surrounding desert like he were in a closet with strangely decent acoustics rather than under the vast dome of heaven. He remembered that house, small and slightly untidy. It was the first home he had ever owned. He had picked up Letta like she was a princess, her arms gripping tight around his neck, crying out then laughing as he hoisted her into his arms.

             He had marched her into the house, passed the living room and the kitchen and into the bedroom. He threw her down on their bed and clambered on top of her, kissing her with everything he had. Their first Christmas together, he hung mistletoe over every door, including the front door, so that as soon as either of them came home, they would immediately be assaulted by the other’s mouth in felicitous greeting. But the last time he had entered through that door, it was already swung open. The lock was not broken, but terror had shaken his body, imagining the worst. He had jogged stealthily to the kitchen, hefting a knife, and then meandered with as much silence as he could muster down the hall to his room.

            He accidentally kicked a half-empty liquor bottle but it merely thumped against the floor, spilling its contents into the cup of a discarded bra. No one had heard him, he realized as he finally comprehended the emulations coming from his own bedroom. He walked in, the room aglow with the bedside lamp and the heat of passion. Letta was straddling a man in their bed, completely nude. Her words were slurred and giggly as she leaned over to kiss the man’s cheek and lips and forehead. The man, who Teddy finally recognized as his only groomsman, Sal, was pinned beneath her gyrating hips, grinning wolfishly.

           A rage he had never known before pumped through every vein of his being and red flashed before his eyes. The knife was already in his hand.

           When he left, there was still a wolfish yet rather dazed grin on Sal’s face. But Letta had crumpled onto the bed. Their blood was mixed with sweat and other fluid. It had been almost easy for Teddy to walk out of the room. He drove to Sal’s apartment, where a truck was waiting for Sal’s upcoming move into his fiancée’s house. It was dawn by the time he got it packed with the things he wished to take with him. Then it was the diner, an abandoned wedding ring, and his way out – out so that he could never come back. But he hadn’t left town immediately. He should have just left immediately. He should have run to his car and hightailed it to Canada, the further away and less likely option than Mexico. But he had to stop and gather his things. He couldn’t leave them like that. He couldn’t leave everything, because then who would he be? An aimless vagabond with only the shirt on his back. How long would it take for someone to find the bodies? It had been a mistake to breakfast at the diner. Jenna might tell the cops something. Or Merle. Or any other guest. He shouldn’t have killed them. Letta looked so very tiny and defeated, crumpled on the bed like a broken bird in a familiar nest. What would Jenna tell the cops? They would paint him a monster. Maybe he was a monster. Then Teddy realized it didn’t really matter.

           The phone rang a fourth time. Her voice said Hello, you’ve reached Teddy and Le-. He hung up and left the phone booth. He wondered if the owner of the yellow beetle had found their way to a payphone somewhere.

           He sat down on the curb then, splaying out his legs as he looked over the vast ocean of parking lot, fixing his attention onto tufts of grass pushing through and splitting apart cracks in the cement. They wilted in the sun before his eyes. He wondered, then, where he was exactly. Was there a point on a map that marked his location? Was there a label at all? Or was it just a stretch of pavement that you had to actually drive upon in order to discover this dinky little gas station at the crossroads of desert? As he pondered, the recorded voice played over in his mind. Hello, you’ve reached Teddy and Le-. Teddy and Loretta. Loretta. Loretta.

           It had been so easy ending her life. He saw the knife sliding into her skin. Through her ribcage, as though it were putty. And if his aim had been true, into her heart. Of course, it hadn’t been easy. A great amount of force was required for him to break her like that. To spill her life out across the soiled sheets and onto the wooden floor. But it seemed like a dream in his mind, effortless. Her skin had parted gracefully at the edge of the kitchen knife. That tanned, lotioned skin that he had kissed so much, trailing his lips over each of her freckles like points on a map that marked his location on her body, orienting him and showing him the smooth rise of her breasts and the swell of her hips. She had giggled so, his eyelashes tickling her. And eventually she would cry from the effort of laughing when he wouldn’t cease and desist. She only cried of laughter. She had never cried from sorrow.

           But an image came to Teddy’s mind as he thought this, her eyes welling up with tears. True tears. And then gushing over, weighing down her eyelashes and scattering across her cheeks, as light scatters through the bend of a prism. It had been a few months after they had become engaged. That night she had gone to a bachelorette party for her sister and he and Sal were to spend the evening together. But once the door had closed on her and she left with the car, they took out the bottles. Once heavily intoxicated, they meandered down the street to the bar. It was a Friday night and the bar was rather packed. Teddy’s mind swum in alcohol and eventually Sal was nowhere to be seen. A woman, starry-eyed and drunk had taken Teddy’s hand and he had stumbled out onto the dance floor and then into a booth and his hands somehow found their way up her skirt. That’s where Letta had found him. Her mouth pressed in a firm line and she grabbed him by the collar and marched him out of the bar.

            The car door had slammed shut on him and soon their house door was slamming shut behind him. She marched into the kitchen and flung open the window. Taking bottles of alcohol in her hands, she threw them out of the window and they shattered on their cement porch below. Teddy watched her from the doorway.

            The next morning, he awoke with the tremors. He walked to the kitchen. Not a drop in the house. She was sitting at the table and looked as if she had slept there, head resting in her arms. Or she had been up all night. Her eyes were puffy, and upon seeing him, tears started forming once more. “No more alcohol. It needs to stop. You know this.” He said nothing, but sat down across from her. “I’m scared, Teddy. Look at you!” She grabbed his hand in hers, steadying them as best she could.

             “No more. I promise.” This calmed her a little. So, he continued, “I want to be a good man for you. I really do.” And he meant it.

              She nodded, a ghost of a smile in the corners of her mouth. She wiped her tears away as if they made her angry. “Good.” She got up and walked to the door before spinning around and facing him. “And if I ever catch you with another woman like that, I will flay you alive.” And she meant it too. He watched her retreating back, long brown hair swaying against her hips.

             An engine roared in the distance and Teddy broke from his reverie and the sway of her hair. He glanced around and saw a Greyhound bus cresting the horizon. He watched it approach as the sun beat against the pavement and heat waves he could not feel toyed with his perception. The bus careened to a halt near the door of the gas station and the doors opened. Immediately an old woman was out of the door, looking particularly motion sick and clutching her heart for support. A bevy of passengers followed, most of them old, with drawn faces and vacant expressions. They must be an elderly group going on a tour, Teddy reasoned. But here and there, younger people were dotted against the sea of white and grey hair, even a young boy with a flop of shocking red hair who was alone and seemed uncertain. He looked like he was six. They all filed into the door of the gas station and Teddy could see their shadows roving about the place. He wondered if the owner had returned from lunch and he had not noticed.

          The flow of passengers from the bus slowed to a trickle when a pang of recognition shot through Teddy. A man and woman had exited the bus. And she had long brown hair that floated

about her hips. She tripped on the last step and the man somewhat twitched as if her were about to offer assistance. But he refrained. And the woman disembarked from the bus without his aid and they stood, facing the throng of people bottlenecking at the station door, and it seemed as though they were looking anywhere but each other.

          Teddy had slowly risen to his feet, in awe at the pair who he could only see from behind but who were Sal and Loretta, who must absolutely be them. He stumbled forward to cross the great expanse of the parking lot, but before he made it even a few steps, there was a mass exodus from the gas station and those who had been waiting to get inside were caught up in the crowd, which did not aim to get on the bus, but circled around to the back of the building. The bus driver swung the doors shut and the Greyhound careened out of the parking lot. And all was quiet and empty again and Teddy was alone.

          He had not realized that Ron had returned from his lunch break and, though there was no sign of a car that Ron might have used to go to lunch, a figure was most certainly behind the counter. Teddy walked back into the station. The bell jingled and he circumnavigated the aisles before heading to the counter, glancing briefly at the merchandise. They had one kind of chip available – nacho cheese bugles – Teddy’s favorite. And he saw they only stocked root beer, his usual choice of carbonated drink. There was an aisle of tourist mugs and paraphernalia with different landmarks and sites printed on them and the name of the purchaser stamped across. The only name not sold out, for there were a myriad of empty spaces, was the name Theodore, and he was more than slightly unnerved by this.

          Changing course, Teddy marched quickly towards the counter and the man behind it looked up and met his gaze.

         Ron, who was neither young nor old and had a smooth ageless face, said in a baritone voice, “Name, please.”

         This took Teddy aback slightly, but he provided his name.

         The man behind the counter, who had affixed the nametag back onto his shirt, scribbled this information down with a blue pen as he asked, “What brings you to Pearl’s Gasoline?”

       “Well, I was trying to make a call,” Teddy said uncertainly. “But your payphone seems to be somewhat broken.”

        “Who are you trying to contact?”
         “The authorities. See, I was in an accident down the road a bit.”
           The man nodded gravely. “A yellow beetle and a moving truck?” Teddy affirmed this. “Yes, I

have heard. The proper authorities have been notified.”
          “...Oh. Well that’s good, I suppose,” said Teddy, rather unnerved by the mysterious Ron.

Though a man who was named Ron was never anticipated to be mysterious due to the mundanity of the name, Teddy decided that this unexpected moniker added to the allure of mystery.

           Ron looked up from the form he was scribbling upon and smiled at Teddy. The smile was oddly calming and Teddy found himself placing a handful of change in the tip jar. Ron looked between the jar and Teddy before saying, “I think it’s about time you used that key.” The man nodded at the three keys labelled Men’s Restroom that Teddy realized he was still clutching in his fist. “The facilities are out back.”

          The sun was beating down, but Teddy could not feel it as he stood in front of the Men’s door and selected one of the three keys. He picked the gold one, the color of the wedding ring he had abandoned on the table at the diner so long ago, as it seemed. To his surprise, the key unbolted the latch and Teddy was pleasantly baffled that a poorly kept toilet, most likely piss-ridden with a dead cockroach or two littered under the tank, and a cracked sink whose faucet pumped purely startlingly cold water was not what greeted him when the bathroom door swung open.