#i was backing up slowly and he came cruising past me at 10-15 mph and swiped my bumper

[practically-an-x-man]

Not sure what it says about my parental situation that my friend dinged my car in the campus parking lot today and TEXTING my mother (not even telling her in person) to tell her gave me more of an adrenaline response than the actual accident

[de-constructionsite]

Sage

He was on the interstate cruising south to a suburb 15 miles from the city for a job interview.

It was the end of July and everything was sticky. A dress shirt was folded neatly in the passenger seat. He was trying to a void a sweaty streak of smelling too strongly of cigarettes.

All the windows were down. He wore sunglasses, held the wheel with one hand and a cigarette out the window with the other. The door panel was spotted with circular burn marks.

As he reached the crest of a hill a Shell Station and water tower appeared to his west and a sprawling one-story brick building lined the other side of the highway. As he coasted down the road, no more than 10 minutes from the office, the check engine light burst to life, flashing on and off. Smoke came billowing from beneath the hood and the engine regulated itself instantly and the vehicle decelerated. Anytime he tapped the gas to push the vehicle up over 20 mph the check engine light began blinking and the vehicle slowed itself. He directed the vehicle into the Shell station parking lot. By then his dashboard was an explosive bouquet of lights and warnings.

Forty five minutes later a tow truck arrived. He had called the potential job and they had been gracious- Call us back when you have the chance, I have the aftenoon free,” they said. He told them he would check back in once he made it to the garage.

The big white truck approached cautiously, crackling over the pavement and pebbles. The man who had missed his job interview sat on the trunk of his car with elbows on knees and his chin buried in his hands.

The truck driver drove the hulking metal whale in a U around the parking lot and then backed towards the disabled vehicle, still simmering from its episode on the interstate. The tow truck’s crane hung morose and foreboding. THe metal hook was massive and unmoving, a curious planet held in suspension by a chain. When the truck stopped the hook swayed back and forth a couple times. The man who missed his job interview could almost reach out and touch it.

The front door squealed open and slammed shut. A man with dark brown skin and long, full, static black hair emerged around the vehicle. Streaks of gray like lightning in the night sky.

“Blue Honda Accord,” said the tow truck driver.

“That’s me,” said the unemployed man.

The driver returned to the truck’s cab and pressed a button. The crane began to slowly descend towards the disabled Accord’s bumper. The unemployed man hopped off the trunk.

“Shit luck,” the tow truck driver said, flashing a snow white smile.

“Uh huh,” the unemployed man nodded, wiping sweat with his forearm from his brow. He imagined this to be a well rehearsed, tired line but the driver seemed calm, pleased, genuine. He wore a blue t-shirt tucked into blue jeans. Sunglasses. He glanced through the unemployed man’s back window. The unemployed man had filled the inside with random knick-knacks from recent forays around the state- sand dollars, massive, genetically enhanced pine cones, deer antlers, cow skulls, a deck of cards bearing the state’s many bridges, a few coins, a blue hat faded in the blistering summer sun, and one other piece of nature.

”Don’t see much of that up here,” said the driver.

“What’s that?” asked the unemployed man who had been expecting to be departing from a successful job interview at this point in time.

“Sage.”

The unemployed man had gathered a few bundles of sage leaf, as well as the antlers and cow skulls, from his last time in the desert, 240 miles east six months ago.

“White people don’t really mess around with that stuff,” the tow truck drive said while dislodging the hefty iron hook and guiding it beneath the bumper of the accord.

“I see it at the head shops,” the unemployed man said. “I guess hippies use it mostly. THere aren’t a lot of those in the city.”

By now the truck driver ws lowering a pair of ramps to the pavement and then dragging metal chains from the truck and securing those beneath the bumper.

“I picked them down south, smack dab in the middle of the state. Near the badlands.”

The truck driver stood p and looked past the chain connected to the metal hook. He moved to the side of the truck and said, “Put it in neutral,” to which the unemployed man obliged and then the tow truck driver pressed another button and the chains began lurching up into a coil, dragging the broken blue sedan with it. The truck drive watched with great diligence as the car inched up the ramps and into a pair of wheel wells. He pressed the button once more and all motion ceased.

“You smoke?” asked the driver.

“Ya,” the unemployed man said.

“Wanna have one before the drive?” “Sure.”

The two men stood in front of the big truck and smoked, watching the cars cruise up and down the four lane road in the oppressive heat of the early afternoon. The air above the concrete simmered in agony. Flies swarmed the gas station trash cans while cars slid in and out of the pump stations. It can be hard to justify and/or enjoy a smoke in such a stupidly hot moment regardless of the various stressors weighing on a human’s mind, especially with an already parched mouth and empty water bottle, but the body demands things- tobacco, for both these men, had not been so much a choice for a couple years for the unemployed man, decades for the tow truck driver.

“I grew up in Warm Springs,” said the driver. “Sage everywhere.” “Beautiful rocks, beautiful scenery,” said the unemployed man.

“Yea,” the driver took a drag through pursed lips

“You got family?” inquired the unemployed man.

“A brother on the coast, Newport. A mother still in Warm Springs.”

“Oh,” said the unemployed man.

“My dad died a few years ago. He was a good man.”

“Hard to find these days,” said the unemployed man.

The truck driver turned and looked at the unemployed man. Both wore sunglasses and studied the others face unabashedly, but with each others eyes shielded it was impossible to perceive any emotion. The both felt nervous, naked, and confused. The truck driver took a drag once more and looked out to the highway.

There were no clouds in the sky. The sun shone pale and white. Both men had been made to feel miserable by the cigarette but stubbornly smoked on.

“Driving a tow truck seems like good work,” the unemployed man, considering a completely unrealistic life where he took up the trade and turned it into a profitable, lengthy career. “Helping people out, doing people favors.”

The driver scoffed. “People pay man,” he said. “It ain’t cheap either. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had. It’s not always fun, say like when it’s raining or cold, but hey I get to be outside.” He shrugged, smiled. “Just drive the truck, press a button, make some chitchat, and know my way around an engine.” “Ya,” said the unemployed man. He took in smoke and dropped his butt prematurely to the pavement, stomping it out. The driver did the same and declared that they hit the road.

They cab stunk of cigarettes and sweat. Empty plastic cups and receipts littered the floor. The windows were lowered with a manual hand crank which both men tended to before buckling seat belts or starting the vehicle.

The unemployed man took a look at the driver’s name tag embroidered on the dark blue shirt as the truck rumbled to life. “Chaz” it read in red cursive writing. The unemployed man thought he should give the driver a bundle of sage to him back at the station for this kind, expensive favor he was performing in a strictly dutiful, professional manner. The unemployed man thought the cab of the truck would benefit from a little sage cleanse.

Soon the truck had made it’s way east of the interstate into some unnamed suburb with curving roads shaded and lined with a canopy of trees that bloomed dark green The road led into the town’s main street. There were two diners, a post office, gas station court house, a quaint alien world. The driver lived closer to the city and commuted into the little village five days a week.

“I have to get up to Seattle today,” said the other man. “We’re having a birthday party for a good friend of mine from college.”

“Hope you’re car ain’t too banged up,” said the driver. He chuckled softly, the unemployed man perceived kindness. “What happened anyway?” the driver asked.

“All the lights came on at once. Smoke was kind of coming out from the hood, I couldn’t notice it until I stopped. But it stopped going over 25, 30, I was slammed on the gas but the car just kept cruising. I was going to get an oil change when I got back from Seattle...” the unemployed man droned on.

“Ah shit,” the driver muttered. Down along the road, at the intersection, the stoplight blinked red. A cement mixer and smaller construction vehicle sat on the east side of the road, protected by Do Not Enter signs. The tow truck slowed and drove past the impassible street. “That’s the shop,” the driver said, pointing at a warehouse of a building with big glass garage doors facing north. “Forgot we have to go around.”

The driver sped up, heading two blocks down to a four-way stop that got them turned around best. As the lumbering vehicle crept along the unemployed man looked up cabs on his phone to get him to the interview. He felt certain his car was toast. He expected to be leaving it with the garage for now, unfixed until he started making money.

“The train’s reliable for getting up to Seattle,” the driver suggested. “They have to run a dozen times a day, at least.”

The unemployed man nodded with an empty mind. “I’ve never taken the train,” he said. “Anywhere.”

“Oh what a place to take your first train ride,” the driver marveled. “If you ride up there this evening, with the sun setting over the ocean and glowing along the Cascades as they run north...sit on the right side of the train buddy. It’s affordable too. You’d spend more in gas money I think.”

“Sounds peaceful,” said the unemployed man. “I need that.”

The men sat in silence as they came to a stop before the light. Ahead a blind curve came from the east, out of the hills and trees and forest.  The driver put his blinker on and made his way into the turning lane before a red light.

“Burn some of that sage,“ said the driver.

“Smudge my chakras,” the unemployed man smiled.

“Yup,” said the driver.

The light turned green and driver rolled across the intersection. He looked at his customer, his mouth agape inhaling insects. He dropped his sunglasses, analyzing him and coming to understand how beleaguered and worn this poor soul might actually be, when the color in his cheeks was drained before he even actually understood what was happening as the oncoming truck crashed into the tow truck. For a second the unemployed man experienced both confusion and denial as the shards of glass were embedded in his skull and he bit a chunk of his tongue off. Their limbs flayed limply, their bones cracked weakly and for another 6 seconds the vehicles spun and bounced about unnaturally before the scene slowly settled. There was silence but for the simmering engines, the smoke that slid from beneath vehicle’s undersides and hoods. The unemployed man’s vehicle had dislodged from the tow truck’s wheel wells and hung with a great weight from the iron hook, the bumper preparing to rip itself from the car., the car swaying back and forth, rattling the many chains attached to it’s chassis. The driver of the vehicle that had come barrelling around the corner in his purple sedan threw the driver side door open and half their body fell to the concrete below into a puddle of broken glass. No one in the two truck stirred.