Larrick

Flash fiction

Larrick’s brain flickered on like a fluorescent tube.

Sunrise is God’s greatest work, he thought. He believed it, too. It’s beautiful no matter what color or hue, whether wet or dry, or where it’s seen. So, waking up in his old Chevy Blazer somewhere in Nevada, a land God hadn’t spent much time on, Larrick was pleased to find that the Almighty hadn’t forsaken His ritual morning spectacle nor lost His sense of humor.

The sun was in Larrick’s eyes, which were more than just bloodshot. They actually had a pulse. His breath made his hair shudder. His head hurt. His mouth felt like a soggy carpet heavy with spilled whiskey and cigarette butts. His tongue seemed furry and he was afraid to fart, which he needed to do, fearing he might soil himself in his last meal of two days ago.

But the sunrise, by God, was gorgeous.

With nothing to do and nowhere to go, Larrick was in a hurry. Pulling on the one boot he had sense enough to remove the night before, he got out of the truck and took a piss on the left rear hub. A scorpion scurried a few inches away from the torrent. He considered taking a playful shot at it with his stream but decided against it because the creature was here first and it would be impolite. Besides, the sunrise hadn’t lifted his spirits quite enough yet to make him feel like playing with scorpions.

Taking care not to step in the puddle he had made but stepping in it anyway, he gingerly journeyed two steps to his left to the door of the cab, opened it, climbed in, and closed the door.

So far, so good.

The Blazer fired right up and Larrick only ground the ignition once afterward. Reaching into the glove box, he found a half-empty bag of M&Ms, dispensed with breakfast, and shoved her into first.

Willie Nelson popped into his brain uninvited, singing On the Road Again. It was Larrick’s daily road trip morning earworm. Though he loved Willie and the song, hungover it annoyed him.

“Goodbye, Willie,” Larrick said aloud.

Flicking on the radio to exorcize the Redheaded Stranger from his brain, he found static. Twisting the knob to the right brought suggestions of life on some distant planet. The signals were all weak: news about hog prices, some rock shit, some more rock shit, mariachi music, and a Sunday morning sermon, even though today was Thursday, or so he thought. Weary from the effort, he finally abandoned the search for a station and jammed a loose cassette into the tape slot hidden behind the fold-up radio dial. Willie suddenly sprang to life with his theme song again, this time as big as if he and the band were all in the passenger seat.

Larrick laughed out loud at the coincidence and decided to let it play. He fired up a Marlboro and leaned forward as the Blazer sped through 75 mph going east on US-50, a mostly two-lane road mostly going nowhere and proudly adorned with signs proclaiming it “The Loneliest Road in America.”

Western Nevada bears a striking resemblance to eastern Nevada, but slightly more so. They both look like much of the God-forsaken portions of Utah and Wyoming as well as ugly chunks of Arizona and the prettier parts of West Texas. You could be blindfolded, spun around a bunch of times, and dropped anywhere in it and not know which direction you should go but that it wouldn’t matter,anyway.

Once or twice in that first hour of driving Larrick thought he had seen a hill, just a slight incline to the horizon, but was never certain if he had seen it ahead of him or in the rearview mirror. It spooked him at first, making him think he was slipping down in the driver’s seat and maybe having a stroke. He was not. Wherever it had been, it finally passed and Nevada lay down flat where it belonged, with no horizon whatsoever.

That mystery solved, Larrick took stock of his circumstances:

He was hungry and dirty. He smelled like stale smoke and cold sweat. There was a dull, minor annoyance in his sinuses which he treated with a warm sixteen-ounce Budweiser he found behind the small of his back under the wire seat cushion. That also cured his backache.

Larrick thought for a while that he had a loose tooth but couldn’t quite nail down its exact location in his mouth. After some curious fiddling with his tongue, he feared for a moment that all of his teeth were loose but finally concluded that the entire matter was a condition of the tongue itself and not his teeth at all.

The broken white line blurred past the Blazer, mostly on the left.

Keith Carson Larrick, thirty-eight: former big rig driver, concert promoter, bartender, tire patcher, stucco spreader, potato chip deliverer, car washer, dog walker, big-time developer and currently unemployed, happy-go-lucky gypsy of the American West. He had done all of these and many other things in his adult life and was deeply satisfied with the knowledge that he would never do any of them again. There were too many things he hadn’t done yet, and he was excited by the prospect of ignoring most of them. Right now he was a vagabond, or so he chose to believe. With nobody to answer to and nobody to interrupt his thoughts, boredom was his frequent companion and anticipation, his closest friend.

Larrick never tired of the next turn in the road. And, while he didn’t often have long conversations with people he had plenty of time to think, and that made him a philosopher of sorts. His philosophy was the type that didn’t often take root in words. He was a thinker but not an analyzer and had a marvelous faculty for boiling the most complicated issues down to bare and useless bones. Therein lay the essence of Larrick’s philosophy on the meaning of life:

It doesn’t mean anything at all. And, he wasn’t the least bit disappointed in that.

The old blue Blazer and Larrick’s profound sense of Western-style independence were two of the three things that kept folks from referring to him as a bum or a drifter. While it was true that he had no home, no job, no close friends, no family, and no discernible sense of purpose, he did have something that separated him from transient or homeless status: the good sense to never stay in one place long enough for others to form an opinion of him. And that was the third thing. Larrick knew that given time other people’s bad opinions of him would eventually be accepted as his own. He felt very strongly that it was not his purpose on earth to be judgmental of anybody, including himself. Which is just a nice way of saying he didn’t give a shit.

The cassette tape reversed itself. The gas gauge lay motionless below empty as it had for the past six months or more but the Blazer sped on.

Though his head hurt and his bowels groaned, these were normal symptoms of Larrick’s condition in the morning, and they would improve. He had always considered himself lucky in this respect because he knew that when most people wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’ll feel all day.

After he had been on the road for about an hour-and-a-half Larrick started thinking that the M&Ms and Budweiser hadn’t been enough. He was hungry and it also occurred to him that the Blazer must be, too. While he couldn’t remember how far he had driven since his last gas stop or where that had been nor when, he knew for certain, probably, that the next station was a long way off. He would gas up first chance he got and until then he wouldn’t bother himself about it again. No point in worrying about something that may never happen or thinking about a problem you can’t immediately solve.

He couldn’t stop thinking about food, though, and wishing he had taken the time to buy an ice chest and some snacks for the road. Money wasn’t a problem. Larrick had a roll of bills in his jeans pocket and a bank atm card in his wallet right next to his American Express Platinum Card. He also had a two-inch-thick stack of one hundred dollar bills in his toolbox, which was on the floor behind him the last time he looked.

Philosophy: Larrick thought it ironic that it is the nature of Americans to want things they don’t have and at the same time to scoff at people who have things they don’t need, and all the while to envy people like himself who have very little and make it plenty. Need is a wonderful thing to not have. Larrick’s needs were simple and always immediate. Right now he needed gas, something to eat, a place to take a dump, and nothing else.

Americans have tall respect for philosophy that is practical and concise.

Larrick knew that his condition was improving because his wandering, arbitrary thoughts were beginning to flow together with transitions. Logic was beginning to take form. A plan for the day was now possible: find a toilet, food, and fuel, in that order. Having his day mapped out made him swell with the pride of accomplishment and he wondered if there was another sixteen-ouncer rolling around somewhere. There was one in the door pouch and Larrick was now downright chipper.

The Blazer hummed smoothly along on empty. The road looked mostly straight, and Nevada stayed beneath him.

Willie sang on without a care in the world.