Marisi
Ornstein
Will hangs a right up a long, unplowed driveway past neglected scarecrow fields and abandoned horse stables, to a faded blue farm house that Diana the Mermaid calls home.
The men take off their boots on the porch and enter Diana’s house. She walks right inside and immediately turns up the heat, “Colder inside than out.”
She flips on some lights, “Sit. I’ll be back.”
Carter stares at a plush couch with pillows on it and his face lights up.
Diana slips upstairs and Carter goes to the kitchen and returns with a roll of paper towels. He covers an area large enough to match his frame and gently settles himself on the cloud of paper towels with his hands on his thighs, eyes closed, lost in the private bliss of being in anybody’s home.
Will sits on a stern wooden chair and tries to warm himself. He notices a guitar leaning against the mantle, picks it up and tunes it. He plays a quick scale to test his tuning, makes an adjustment, and he leans the guitar back where it was.
Without opening his eyes, Carter reaches out his hand and leaves it hanging.
Will assumes he’s trying to convey that he wants the guitar, so he picks it up and hands it to Carter, who plays a humble rendition of ‘Pancho and Lefty’ without ever opening his eyes.
When he’s done with the song, he carefully hands the guitar back to Will, who rests it where it was.
Carter tears off a sheet of paper towel and wipes the tears from his eyes and blows his nose, “Shoulda been a songster.”
“Found it!”
A cheer comes from upstairs as Diana bounds down the stairs holding up a big bright purple scrunchy, “Found it! I found it!”
Will stares, “We drove all this way for that?”
“Yep. We can go back now.”
Carter’s eyes pop, “Whoa. I can’t go back. I’m Eastbound.”
Diana shoots him a look, “Are you crying?”
Carter shakes his head, “No. I’m allergic.”
“Allergic to what?”
“Pineapples.”
“Where’d you get a pineapple?”
Carter shakes his head, “I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m very confused.”
Will stands and abruptly changes the subject, “Carter. Drop us at the first Travel Center you see. You’ll head East from there. Diana, we’ll continue on from there, wherever you want to go. Good?”
They both nod.
“Diana. Do you or do you not need anything else from this house? It’s best to think about that while you’re here.”
“No. Got all I need.”
Will squints, “You’re sure?”
Diana’s shoulders rise to her ears, “Are you mad at me?”
Carter steps forward, “No, ma’am. I could never be mad at you.”
“That’s so sweet.”
Carter blushes so hard that his cheeks burn.
Diana notices the blushing, “Was that you singing?”
Carter grows dizzy, “Yes, ma’am.”
She walks to the guitar and hands it to him, “You take this out of here and use it every day. Promise me. I can’t take looking at it anymore. Please, promise you’ll use it. Cherish it.”
“I promise. I’ll play it every single day.”
Carter doesn’t quite know what to do with his happiness, but manages to take the guitar, “I love you, ma’am.”
Diana cocks her head, “What the fuck?”
“I didn’t say that out loud.”
He turns to Will, “Did I say that out loud?”
“Yes.”
Diana puts her hair in the scrunchy, “What the hell.”
Carter shakes his head, “I’m sorry. I say stupid things all the time. I can’t help it.”
She twirls a strand of hair, “Did you say you rodeo?”
“Used to. When I was man-sized. Can’t now, the horses and bulls are too tiny.”
Diana gets lost in a photo on the mantle, “All my husband cared about was rodeo. Only time he was happy was when he was being thrown through the air.”
She blinks several times, “Died in the dirt with a snapped neck and a big fuckin smile on his face. Even the undertaker couldn’t wipe that smile off his fuckin face.”
Diana glances at the guitar, “Gimme that.”
Carter gently hands her the guitar, and she violently smashes it to pieces against the stone fireplace.
“Fuck it all.”
She drifts in the suspended silence of the moment, looking around at what was once a home, the photos, the frilly pillows, the memories, “I wish this house would burn itself down.”
Diana pushes past Carter, collects the paper towels, turns the heat down, shuts off the lights and streams outside, leaving the men dumbfounded in their socks, lit by the stark moonlight through the windows.
The giant of a hauler punches himself in the skull so brutally that Will feels the impact in his balls, “I sure did fuck that up.”
Carter hits himself again, “And, there I was, hoping for a meal.” He punches himself even harder.
Will takes a piece of butterscotch candy from a bowl on the coffee table, unwraps the yellow wrapper and pops it into his mouth, “Take up a piece of candy and eat it. Go on, Carter.”
Carter does.
Will winks, “A meal’s a matter of perspective.”
Carter tries to smile, but sobs instead.
“There ain’t one thing about you that ought to be funny.”
“Thank you.” Carter gets himself together.
Will grabs another candy, “Come on, driver, let’s get you back on the road.”
Carter drops them at a Travel Center and continues Eastbound on his own.
Will quickly catches he and Diana a Tap in a brand new Transcontinental and pulls out of the lot with the driver already asleep in the bunk.
Diana is sitting crosslegged in the passenger seat watching the snowflakes melt on the windshield, “You got secrets. I can tell.”
Will focuses on the road and drives.
She leans in, “Tell me a secret about yourself.”
Will doesn’t hesitate, “I need to keep moving.”
“Good on you.” Diana is impressed, “Most folks wouldn’t know themselves in a mirror.”
Will exhales, relieved that he didn’t keep talking, cause, if he did keep talking, he would’ve told her he’s deathly afraid of stillness of any kind. That if he stops moving for any length of time, he falls apart completely. That he functions best in the heat of battle and that he could never settle into the life of a normal person, cause he is not a normal person.
He’s a highly complicated genuine authentic, born and raised in the Land of Enchantment. The road is his nature, his calling, his job, his desire and his responsibility, having been born a true Rambler, tasked and driven by the flaming torch of his ancestor’s labor before him with the purpose of learning from their ingenuity and taking the road to the next level, in his time, forging iron-clad tradition into a pliable future, customizable to the needs of the drivers and road workers he is devoted to serving.
Out of nowhere, Will is bombarded by a heavy blow to the gut, sinking him to the bottom of the sea, to where the air is like molasses and there’s no sense of up or down. The panic sets in, the cold sweating, the palpitations, his bowels churning, his head pounding and his vision blurring, making way for the sadness to come rolling in with an overwhelming force of loneliness that hammers the nail to finally drown him in a living hell that strangely feels kind of like home.
Will tries to breathe.
He checks that the photograph of the black haired girl is still safe in his left breast pocket and adjusts the frayed orange bandana around his neck.
Diana draws a heart in the condensation on the side window, “Wanna hear a prayer I made up?”
“Yes.”
“That I can do what I want and not bother anyone but other ghosts lost on the wind, sailing and making time, alone.”
She plays with her scrunchie, “It’s a prayer for Ramblers.”
Diana checks her nail polish, “I love that we got myths going back to the first ship sailing. The road’s like the sea, they’re the same.”
“I like that we got history.” She rests her eyes, “I’m proud to have something to be proud of.”
Will opens the window for some fresh air and Diana notices the photo poking out of his pocket. He pushes the photo down and buttons his pocket.
She looks to his hands on the wheel, “I got an imagination, that’s for sure, but I think I know who you are.”
Will stares straight ahead and drives.
Diana settles into her puffer, “We’ll leave it at that.”
Will changes lanes and leapfrogs to make time, while Diana draws a question mark on the window, “It’s good to know.”
“What is?”
“That you’re a true story.”
Will looks into his side-view mirror at time passing fast, “Everybody’s true to somebody.”
“I used to be.”
She writes TRUE in cursive on the window, “I think back and wonder if my life ever really even happened.”
They drive in silence.
Diana notices a family in a Honda Civic that’s packed with everything they own. She stares, longingly, “I’ll never be a car person. And that just breaks my fuckin heart.”
She draws a broken heart on the window, “I don’t care, I grow a new heart every day.”
Will glances at her, “How do you do that?”
“That’s a Mermaid’s secret.”
She twirls her hair, “If you really are true, you could make good use of me, that’s for sure.”
Will drives on, “How?”
“I’m a busybody, I know everything goes on out here, all kinds of secrets.”
“What kind of secrets?”
“Info on routes and cargo that ain’t legal.”
“How do you know it’s not legal?”
“I stole the book from a driver a long time ago and studied it, I know all the laws and rules.” She winks, “I like it best when the info ain’t legal.”
“Why?”
“Cause it’s fun and I like to have fun.”
Will stares straight ahead, “You know anything about these driverless trucks?”
“Stuck up scientists. They call themselves Monitors.”
“How many are in each cab?”
“Seven. Always Seven.”
“Don’t they have an actual driver with hands on the wheel?”
“They carry one, yeah.”
Will glances at Diana, “Keep an eye out for these trucks.”
Diana claps her hands, “I knew you was true.”
Diana twirls her hair into the scrunchy, flips the visor’s mirror down and deftly removes her make-up with wipes, “I’m the kinda woman you can’t judge by my book cover.”
Will glances at her, “No, huh?”
“Got a Masters in Economics from State. Did my undergrad at U of A. Put in eighteen years for Lambert before it shut down, the oldest family owned farm in Arizona. They got choked out and had to sell. Gonna replace it with a data farm, and there goes our resources. The final nail. It’s a living nightmare, watching all these farms go down, one after another. Generational farms. All that work, all that history, gone.”
She gets lost staring out the window, then snaps out of it, “Anyways, the world’s my oyster and I’m a solid golden apple waiting to be plucked from a cherry blooming blossom tree.”
Diana applies fresh make-up, eye liner and blush with a shaking hand, then, slides her scrunchy over her wrist and studies her face in the mirror like she’s looking at a stranger.
Will notices her hands shaking, “Are you set up in this Travel Center? You safe here?”
Diana gives him a sharp look, “I’m safe anywhere.”
Her right eye starts twitching, she flips the mirror back up, “Can you see my eye twitching?”
Will checks, “Nope.”
“I think I’m tired.” She lets her head fall back onto the headrest for a moment, “I never get tired no more.”
She cracks the window, “Where’s home for you, sailor?”
Will gestures beyond the windshield, “Depends.”
“Everybody needs a home. Even Ramblers like you.”
He ignores that, stares straight ahead and drives.
She adjusts in her seat, “Do you really run the roads?”
Will laughs, “Do I look like I run the roads?”
“No.” Diana shrugs, “Well, I don’t know. Yes. I mean, you look like you look, and if you really do run the roads, that’s what you’d look like.”
Will pulls off the highway into a Travel Center lot and parks near the entrance to the diner.
Diana puts her hand on the door latch, “Don’t forget me.”
“I’m literally incapable of forgetting anything.”
She sits up straight, “Give me a purpose and I’ll give you a river of illegalities that’ll make your head spin.”
“I’m not interested in illegalities. I’m interested in driverless trucks and new charging stations.”
She smiles, “I have that same exact interest.”
Diana zips up her puffer and gets her bag together, “Down the Road, Tap.”
“Down the Road, Diana.”
She pops the door latch and shimmies down the steps.
Will watches until she enters the Travel Center safely.
He then mounts the photograph of the black-haired girl on the dash and sails onwards into a double rainbow morning, the sun dancing over an endless new world of crystal snow.
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