Travels............4

I waited eyes blurred under the gas station awning. The heavy, slightly off balance glass door swinging open just to the left of me, blowing a crisp air-conditioned air all over me, the door creaks, the sound is sickening, the smell of the fake air frightening...the baseness of it all leaves me numb. The fake sunshine yellow tungsten flame of indoors spills out and washes up my sweat soaked back and mixes with the ethereal blue of the long fluorescent light bulbs above my head…my halo…the lights and colors mix and cast special shadows all around…barely perpectible…but I see them out the corner of my eyes. Grey green shadows…phatoms haunting the periffall sides of my vision. Out in the open air of the natural humid bug chirping, dog barking, thick terrifying scent of parking lot, the car sat waiting as driver and friends fumble along in the dim light for incriminating articles. I keep watch on the streets. I keep watch of the patroling police cruiser. Up and down the streets next to the conveince store…like a shark…patrolling…hunting…bar lights like a dark evil fin…giving away its movements. There is no way in hell that we are going back on the road until that thing leaves…until he is tired of trying to spook us. We all know his and his types game by now. Now we just have not to disturb the traffic of commerce coming and going in a steady stream in and out of this convience store…two lines revolving like it is a bizarre Escher Illustration. We just have not to disturb the exchange of money and not disturb the clerk. We are sure to upset the cart eventually…now it is just a waiting game. Let that cop make us a hole and right though it we will go…running hard right though until morning or at least to the next stop…no one knows where we are. No one cares. No one anywhere knows what we are up to…no one cares. Ripped out pages from phone books blowing out the open car window when the stiff nearly storming air kicks up. The sky above crackles and thunders…but no lighting…no light at all to brighten up the wicked starless sky. No navigation possible here...only hopeful and dreaming. Over my shoulder is the heavy black canvas bag filled so full it barely buckles. The bag is filled with a copy of “Cat’s Cradle” by Vonnegut, with a cracked spine…I have duct taped it up so that the cover barely shows…a have a copy of “A Season in Hell” by Rimbaud, with water marked cover and pages…pages trying to fall out…clothes…a old super 8 camera…two cartages of film…and a half full bottle of Dr. Pepper. I repostion the bag on my shoulder as the tar soaked tobacco smoke from my Camel Menthol burned my eyes. The rub my eyes and put my glasses back down and look and see the police car run up close to the waiting car and look inside at my friends. He pulls to a stop a block up out of their sight. He picks up his radio and starts to voicelessly speak to some other official far away.
“We need to go.” I say running up to the car door. I pull open the handle and ease inside. Jeff puts the car into the neutral and we slide down the parking lot and back out onto the road. Without turning on the light, we begin the compustion process that is exclusive to the internal compustion engine and in a brief knife like cut of pure American automotive power we tear down the road…we blow right by the police car a block up and wave…and then we turn on the lights.