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Non-Fiction

The Great Salt Lake, the Mecca of the west. The sun is melting my flesh. All the strays are smartly staying in the shade. Only stupid humans are outside on a day like this.

            Ben, a friend of mine is standing beside me holding a sign with simple meaning and instruction, “West.” Ben is a man of the earth, honestly poor and spiritually rich. His few possessions, gifts from God and his smile are a blessing to all he meets.

            After being dropped of at the west bound on-ramp facing California we wait, and wait, and wait.

            The practice of hitch-hiking is really a practice in patience. Spending hours or even days in one location creates many problems between travelers. Today we had only been waiting three hours when the tension became apparent. “Let’s try the truck stop” Ben suggests. I note the negativity in his voice that I have never heard before.

            “Yeah, I’m ready for a change”

            Under the hot sun we race to the blessed shade of the truck stop overhang. The gas station is like any other Mega truck stop. Everything comes in  “MEGA SIZE!!”  It makes me wonder about the well being of truckers and travelers alike, being enticed into the double Taquito deal with a Big Gulp. Memories of long car rides come to mind, sitting next to a greenish sibling with a mess on the floor that almost made it out the window, not fond memories.

            At the station we each take turns going to the bathroom while the other watches the bags. I carry 35 pounds of clothes, books, and a sleeping bag on my back. Ben like any good monk carries a Bible and a blanket in a backpack that was forced onto him as a gift when his previous bungee chord failed to hold his sleeping bag together.

            In the bathroom I wash my face, I look like the homeless people that sponge bathe themselves in the library bathrooms at home. I can see that I am not far off. I brush my teeth and go out to relieve Ben.

            Asking for a car ride at a gas stop is a lot like trying to pull a “Hey, Mister” in high school. Not having a proper I.D. with 21 written on it, we would have to stand in the parking lot of the liquor store and try to guess which “legal adult” would be the least shocked and or hopefully not call the police. This is  the situation that occurs when asking strangers at a gas station for a ride; we hope not to get hassled.

            I ask one nice looking woman (as well as you can judge from watching them for 10 seconds). Without responding she looks me in the eye only looking me over in my dirty cutoffs and excessive amount of bags. Her expression is as if I had no pants on or if I was violating that small dog of hers. She goes inside. I am hurt. Each time I am turned down, it stings a little unreasonably. For such a simple request it always hurts to be turned down even though it seems to make sense. We do smell fairly corpse-like.

            Ben returns. He looks happy and refreshed. How simple a joy it is to just clean yourself a little bit when before you were so dirty. He takes over thumbing and I take a turn reading a book I have brought, Between a Rock and A Hard Place. This is the story of Aaron Ralston, a Colorado resident who cuts his own arm off after a hiking accident in Utah. Being stuck in Utah ourselves I consider briefly if cutting my own arm off would get us a ride out of here. I am not in the best mood after standing in the sun and pollution for so long.

            I see Ben talking to a man in a station wagon. The conversation seems to be going well. They are both smiling an laughing. I approach them and the man turns to me and says, “I need gas; then we will go. You can load your bags into the back.” My spirits immediately rise. I look at Ben and his smile is obvious.

            “Praise the Lord!” says Ben.

            “Amen to that”

            Driving through nowhere specific, Utah, I see nothing looks familiar other than the cookie cutter houses similar to those back in Denver. We arrive at a house. The outside shutters are sagging and the paint has long since lost its vibrant appearance. That moment the house immediately starts barking. As we go inside with our driver, Arturo shows us around the main portion of his home. The source of the barking is a Blue Pit Bull named Sandy. Arturo explains that the dog was adopted after he found it wandering the neighborhood without tags. The original plan was to wait for the owners, but no one ever came to claim Sandy. Past the entryway we enter the living room where we meet Craig, a teenage boy and housemate maybe 16 or 17. Craig is friendly and greets us.

                        Arturo tell us his plans to get a job for himself as well as Craig at their local McDonalds. He says they have an “Insider.” I wonder if he is referring to the clown himself or if he is really a thief, and McDonalds is his next paycheck. Either way Arturo exclaims his readiness, and we all head for his station wagon and the long ride to Nevada.

            I end up riding shotgun. This is unfortunate only in the game of hitch-hiking where the person in front gets the job of entertaining the driver.  A lot of the time people that pick you up hitch-hiking are extreme talkers and need someone to listen while they drive. The person sitting in the front seat has the joy of not sleeping, but trying to stay interested in whatever the driver is talking about. Fortunately for me this is not the case with Arturo.

            He begins talking almost immediately. At first he talks about his life in Salt Lake, moving here from El Salvador and other light hearted things. On this note I begin to feel tired, the landscape is flat and endless making me drowsy.

            He goes on, “I am going to see my brother in Wendover across the Utah border…” I begin to wonder if he will be talking the whole way to Wendover. “Gotta make my runs to the local ladies house.” My ears immediately perk up.

            “You are going to a whore house? What is that like?”

            He goes on to tell me the stresses of having to drive all the way to Nevada for a good lay. I myself have never experienced a whore house, or even seen one now that I am thinking about it.

            “It’s the only place in the states I would swear by!”

            I begin to think that Arturo is something of a pimp, an expert John or maybe both. He goes on and the conversation wanes and moves into his career in the Marines. I think it must be an amazing sense of pride or duty that would influence someone born outside the U.S. to fight for the Marines. And, of course, Arturo is very willing to tell me his most gruesome stories. All the while Ben sleeps soundly across the back seat.

            While in the Marines Arturo traveled to Africa. He reminisces about a time a comrade and he were driving a truck to a school.

Along the way to the school they were stopped at a road-block. A man with an automatic weapon starts to ask the driver a lot of questions concerning the cargo. The man asks the driver to step out of he car. At this point the man at the checkpoint stabs the driver with a knife. Arturo gets out of the vehicle and gets the man in control and ties him to the truck. With a set of pliers Arturo pulls out the molars of the man while holding him down kicking and screaming.

            I begin to just nod stupidly saying “Oh gosh” and “I couldn’t imagine.”  Why would he do something like this to another human being? Automatically my mind assumes the worst. He is sadist and wants to take Ben and I to the desert and burn us alive after pulling out all our teeth and hair.

He says, “I still got those teeth right here in my medicine bag.” The bag is swinging from the mirror like dice.

“Open it up. Give them a look”

I open the bag. It is beaded and looks like he bought it at a cheesy tourist shop. Sure enough inside are two massive molars. They are huge and discolored. The teeth look like they ate nothing but hostess cakes and raw beef their entire working existence. Again I do not know what to say and let him do the talking.

“I carry this around so I never forget, I call it my Wisdom”

What to say to the guy that has mutilated people? I start to feel extremely aware of his movements. His arms wave when he talks. There is one visible knife that I know of sitting between us in the console. The knife is a small Swiss Army, but none the less I take note of it.  I do not hear any of what he is talking about. I don’t see any cars immediately around. If Ben and I were killed and had our teeth pulled from our skulls how long until anyone noticed?

I hear him mention something about burying children. I am ready to get out of the car.  But Arturo is still seemingly friendly as ever. But wouldn’t that be how a serial killer would act? Is he luring me or am I over-reacting? I try and think of a way of getting Ben awake and ready for a quick ditch out of the car.

The town is in sight! The first exit for Wendover is visible and without thinking, I ask him to take it.

“Oh yeah, this is perfect. Right here will be ok”

“Thanks for the ride” says Ben half asleep.

“Gonna head on down to the house if you boys wanna join me?”

“No, thanks, Bye”

            Ben slowly wakes up and begins to talk to me.

“That guy was definitely drunk” he says

“Just be glad you were asleep.”

We then walked across town, Ben not knowing the danger and me thankful for both of our lives as well as the people we meet. I cannot help on the way to look for Arturo’s station wagon outside of The Wendover Red Light Lounge.

“What did you all talk about when I was asleep?”