Highway Star

“Shut up!” “Seriously dude, shut the hell up!” We had been bickering for hours. Cruising at near a hundred for nearing 2 hours. 2 or 3 in the AM, somewhere on the 10 in Arizona maybe outside of Wickenberg.

 The 1970 Ford Galaxy. Picked up from the high school auto shop for a hundred bucks. No side windows, relatively clean and ran good, I think.

We were coming fast on a huge sweeping curve to the right. Car leaning way outboard to my side, inboard side, tires stretched like giant cartoon ovals. We held tight to the line of the shoulder. “Go to hell!” “You’re an idiot!” “You…. What we saw next, instantaneously shut us both up. In that same instant, we pressed our feet hard to the floor, backs to the seats and screamed in unison like in some goofy 80’s movie. I kept my foot on the gas, let off some of the pressure on the steering wheel so as to let the car swing out of our arc and go into the other lane. For a few seconds, in only the light from the bleak headlights, we looked down as I narrowly missed the head of a dead guy laying in the road! We kept screaming as the curve faded and our adrenaline caught up with us and kept us screaming. My mind took a perfect photo of him. I could still see his body lying on the road. Checked shirt, duckbill hat. The top of his head almost reached the centerline while the center of his thigh lay across the white shoulder line. Lying on his back. He looked as if he were 7 feet tall! We both went silent at the same time then started screaming again at the same time. We didn’t fight any more. Scared, shocked. We don’t stop. We feel the same will happen to us if we stop. We drive for hours more. Did we really see that? Should we stop? What the hell was that, did you see that? What happened to him, did you see any houses around, why there? We settled down and didn’t speak much in the next 2 hours.

 I’m tired, it’s late, we need gas…..BAM! Tire explodes. You have got to be kidding me! Fortunately about a mile up we see an off ramp with lights. This tire is done. Shredded to bits, steel strands blown out of everywhere. We put a rope through the rim and pull it hard to the left and right sides as we walk with it trying to get it to roll seeing it is near impossible to carry if with out being cut to ribbons. It is a long walk, I’m sure it is over a mile. We are tired, hot, hungry, and relatively broke. Somehow we buy and old tire for fifteen or so bucks from some nut working graveyard at a gas station in a place that I don’t think really exists. We roll it back, install it and split. Hillbilly pit stop.

 We drive a little while longer and get to Blyth maybe a few hours before sunset. I’m being pulled over as we drive through town. I almost expect it. I pull over, we are nervous. Not because we saw a dead guy or did anything wrong, it’s that I just never really liked cops. “Good morning boys. Any idea why I pulled you over?” “No.” “You registration seems to be out of date. Get out of the car.” We get out. He acts a little odd as he looks us up and down. “Are you guys AWOL from the military?” We are wearing army pants, white T-shirts and short hair. We are punk rock in our minds but back then, most people didn’t know what that was, especially in Blythe.  Say, why do you have the fireman’s sticker in the window?” Leitch blurts out, “My dad’s a fireman.” “Oh. Can I have your drivers license and registration?” He walks back to the car.

 A few days ago, while getting ready for our trip, Leitch’s mom handed him the little fire department helmet sticker you see on cars occasionally. “Here, you might need this.” With out asking, he takes the sticker and places it in the rear window. He seemed to understand. I didn’t care.

He comes back and asks what we are doing and what was the deal with the registration. I blurt everything out all at once.

“ I bought it from school, I didn’t have enough money, visiting my mom, his mom said, I dunno, we got a flat, DUDE, WE SAW A DEAD GUY WAY BACK THERE ON THE ROAD!” It’s nearing daylight, none of this seems real anymore. The cop or CHP stops asking about us and quite casually asks us about what we saw, why we took so long to stop and report it, etc. Then just lets us go ticketless, scot-free, no more questions! We get gas. Head back to the highway, sun coming up in my mirror…

…A few years later, I pass this place again. Over the years I think about the dead dude. He gets longer, 8 feet tall. His outfit becomes cornier, more farmer. I think he may have been a scarecrow or effigy some kooky kid made. Or some whacked out desert adult.

It’s daytime and I get this feeling that I am in the dead guys area. The car starts to tilt as I enter that same long sweeping turn. Whoa! I remember this! All of a sudden, this small, short and narrow car thingy shoots up onto the road next to me, paralleling me. It is made out of particleboard and has these 3 diagonal slits cut into the sides for windows. It’s kind of tall but really narrow. He is hauling a*s! I was in a different car, maybe my 73 Scout. Leaning as I go around the corner maybe around 70 miles per hour, wheels only slight cartoon ovals. He keeps up with me for about 50 yards. I look over, through the slits and only ever so slightly catch the crazy eyed, smiling nut behind the wheel of this thing as he starts to peel off back into his tree lined dirt farm. “Holy crap!” That was kind of cool I thought. I wonder if that was the same guy responsible for the dead dude or fake dude or whatever it was. I drive on. The dead guy doesn’t seem like it really happened anymore. I wonder how this guy survives out here. Is he an artist? Bored hillbilly, progressive dirt farmer? I’m a little less disturbed about dead guy now. I wonder what kind of engine was in that thing.

…Many more years go by. I’m in my Mercedes. I intentionally venture to the long, drawing curve. This is where it gets really weird……….

I pull into a rarely used dirt path mid way through the large curve in the road, perforating the ring of scraggly trees and bushes that form this oasis of sorts. More like a compound. Not too military, organized but strangely welcoming. I park a little off to the side with a hugh clear space in front of my car in case I have to get the hell out of there at some point.

I am drawn to the closest of the 3 or 6 buildings in front of me. With absolutely no hesitation, I walk up and into the partly open door barely noting the Come on in! We’re Open! sign. My forward and peripheral vision takes on multitudes of information. Looked near exactly like some oddities place I had been to when I was young when we had moved to California. Mysteriously leaving Milwaukee at 4 AM in an old red van on a freezing cold January morning, 3 days later in the desert somewhere looking at snakes, teeth, babies, monkeys and other things in strangely large jars. Then I, unknowingly holding my breath, stare straight ahead at the proprietor. Tall, skinny, leathery, smiley, no right arm, well, no right shoulder either. An amazing amount of body missing on a living man! He is wearing a tube top. I am secretly hoping he has pants on but wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t. He does. It is very hot. I’m not sweating. It is so dry I can’t swallow and my eyes scratch as they slowly blink. As I open my eyes after a particularly long, dry blink, I refocus on the owner. He now is not wearing a tube top, not particularly tall and has both of his arms! I am so parched and dry I almost can’t think. I’m wondering if this is all real, if my eyes were playing tricks on me or more likely that is how I wanted to see the man. Some super crazy Rob Zombie character from one of his movies. But this was real life. Those crazy desert dweller baby-eating zombies really exist! I snap out of my delusion simply by hearing his remarkably honest greeting of “howdy!” he store is now lined with Coke signs, desert knick knacks, cold beer and snack cakes. “Hi, I, uh, I’ve driven by here before, uh, there was a go cart, a, a dead guy one time…” He laughs, leaning back and holding his little belly like Bugs Bunny when he plays that lazy cowpoke. Even though it’s been years, I think he knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s as if it was him or someone he knows and those were things done many times throughout the ages. He hands me a cold bottle of water and as I look up, he fades away and double doors behind him open allowing a massive gust of icy cold air to nearly push me backwards. I feel the dried salt on my hairline crack as the wind move my hair. Almost instinctually I plow forward deep into the large room. I’m moving forward quite rapidly as if gliding. My hand graces the top of a short pedestal where a knife magically sets in my hand and feels as if it were custom made to fit my hand. I look up and forward only to see the one armed nut, tube top and all, standing up front on some long stairs with all kinds of things to his left and right that I don’t pay too much attention too yet notice every detail. Long flowing fabric colored by all kinds of stage lighting, candles, a trapeze from the low ceiling. Wagon wheel and other cowboy style furniture and a few women and some guy on the steps near and around him yet just out of reach. With one sweeping motion, I glide toward him and push the knife from down low, up underneath his ribs deep inside. I can feel the tip of the knife tickle the bottom of his heart. His face never changing. The women and man look on in horror yet make no attempt to do anything! The lights flicker. As the reality of what I have just done starts to swell exponentially in my brain, an incredible sense of relief rushes through my veins as I realize that this man I am grappling onto is just an anatomically correct medical dummy. The knife is up in the heart. The dummy smells like vanilla and rubber. I’m sitting. In the back. At a Parisian style table and chair with the owner. He has both arms, smiling, pleasant and wearing the tube top. His pants are off. This can’t be happening but it is. I start to laugh because it’s just so unbelievable. The man starts to laugh only because I am laughing you know, contagion style. This is happening.