Driving Naked Westward After Midnight - Susan Melinda Moree

I spied the neon sign advertising ‘Barbecue pork, all u can eat, take exit 122, turn right, can’t miss it! Truckers welcome!’ flashing above me. As hungry as I was, I didn’t pull over.

     I tried the radio again. Nothing but the same 15 songs played over and over again from one radio station to another, from one town to another. AM was nothing but static and evangelicals and UFO sightings, a prophet proselytizing attacks to come from God on baseball stadiums because America had too many Haitian players who practiced voodoo. I turned the radio off.

     I slid over too fast, gravel flying, onto the shoulder. I took the T-tops off and swerved back onto the interstate, my hair flying and dancing on my scalp. My car, an older Nissan 300ZX with a tail fin, shook if I got above 60. It was enough to drive a person to distraction, to own a sports car and to have to actually keep it at the speed limit. And when I got there, to that portion of the timeless, limitless interstate, where the speed limit was 70, I was forced to drive even below what the limit allowed.

     But when I got to a certain spot, to a place in the road that I knew was mine, I no longer cared. I saw the tree. A scrub pine half dead, growing too close to a billboard advertising a baseball player with a milk stain on his upper lip and holding a glass of milk in his hand. Nobody but me would’ve given any thought to that tree. But it had become my talisman, my totem, my good luck charm. I kissed my fingers, then slapped the windshield to send a kiss to heaven as I pushed the needle up to 70, 75. The steering wheel vibrated so bad I could hardly hold it.

     I did this every night, night after night, each time driving a little farther, but each time turning back. My mother kept wondering what I was up to. I drove a 100, sometimes 200 miles in a night, just driving and watching the stars rotate across the night sky. She believed no good could come out of being out of the house after dark. “That’s when people are supposed to be in bed sleeping,” she chastised me every morning over breakfast, pouring out coffee for us both. I said nothing, just kept dipping my spoon into my bowl of cereal.

     I had moved away after college. Moved to a big city up North, but nothing much had worked out for me up there. I had gotten a job, found someone to love. But the job had found someone else, someone who was not me. It took the wind out of my soul and surprising things came out of my mouth at the office. It was not me who filed and typed and answered phone calls. And I didn’t much like my imposter. Finally, I just picked up my things and left. I didn’t even give notice or tell my boss goodbye. The lover found someone else, too. Someone who was better trained at being a girlfriend, someone who got '“really excited” about a poetry reading that had been written up about in The New York Times, someone who could nod her head knowingly when foreign film directors were mentioned at dinner parties. Someone who could afford two or three hundred dollar haircuts and clothes designed to look like they came from a thrift store and a job that paid next to nothing. This imposter fit in better with his friends, because, like them, she used phrases like “It’s very Nabokovian!” while holding a Glenlivet in her hand at a party. Once he found her, I wandered alone at night, haunting 24-hour coffee shops, sweating through the humidity, reading anything but Nabokov, sitting on the stoop of my building during the daytime. Finally, out of money, I just went home.

     Living in my mother’s house again, I floated from one fast food job to another. I learned all the menu items of the different chains, and which one had the fry cook who loved porn so much he spiced every conversation with a reference to it, and which one had a manager who walked around with a can of Lysol in his hand, and which one had a cashier who just stared, hour after hour, at nothing at all. I watched teenage kids deal drugs in the back of the parking lot, and a man wrapped in a tattered American flag climb into a dumpster. I watched whole families wearing extra large polyester order food so chocked with preservatives, it would never go bad if left out. I usually only stayed at these jobs a month, maybe two. There were so many fast food joints, however, I could always find another one who’d hire me.

     Occasionally, I picked up other work, like stocking shelves at freestanding retail stores at night. It paid slightly better. I wasn’t sure which was more confining: wearing a polyester uniform in company colors and asking in a relentlessly obsequious voice, “May I take your order?” for 7 hours a day, or being locked inside a vast and empty store in the wee hours with a small group of the equally aimless and the truly economically deprived looking for the shelf to hang the stock of baby spoons and plastic teething rings that had just come in from off the truck.

     When I had come home from up North, my mother still owned my dad’s pickup. It had sat out in the barn behind the house after he died. Nobody had touched it, but now I found it still ran, and the tires were still good. She had me move the truck up to the front yard and put a for sale sign on it. “No use hanging onto it,'“ she said to me, both of us squinting in the sun. “You need a car yourself so you can get yourself to work.” When somebody stopped to buy it, she handed me the money. I used the money to put a down payment on my used, can’t climb higher than 60 miles an hour 300ZX. I don’t think it was quite the car my mother had had in mind. It was bright red and had black leather seats and black tinted windows. The man I bought it from asked me if I was buying the car for my boyfriend. I just grinned at him when I said no. It was a real muscle car. It looked big and bad and robust.

     One evening I picked up my duffel bag. The one I always kept ready in the back of my closet. I had never bothered to make a car payment. I knew the repo man would show up at my mother’s in a matter of days.

In the duffel bag I had long ago packed a survival kit. I had stuffed 10 days worth of clean underwear, 10 days of new socks not even out of the package, a pair of jeans, a toothbrush, and a set of battered comic books I’d been collecting since the fourth grade. Underneath all that was an unopened love letter. I tossed the bag into the trunk of the Nissan, and took the T-tops off.

     I got behind the wheel.

     I sped out of the driveway, tires squealing. I didn’t even bother to say good-bye.

     The night sky opened up before me. I could see the stars like steel pins, holding up the black velvet. I raced down country roads, tree limbs mingling with telephone lines above me. I listened to the silence of the countryside, which the edge of my headlights illuminated into dark masses of trees and unwieldly bush. I listened to the quiet hum of my engine. These were the sounds of limitless joy.

     My 300ZX may not have had much speed to her, but she still slipped inside a curve, perfectly holding the road so closely I could gather force and fly out of the hairpin of pavement like a pinball shot from its hole. My lit up dash told me I was doing 60. The legal limit was 35 on those back roads.

     I headed for the interstate.

     As soon as I made the turn onto the entrance ramp, I pushed the gas pedal. My hair pirouetted all around my head and the steering wheel trembled as the needle climbed to 65, but my red machine glided into the right lane of the north bound freeway, just as effortless as snow falling. I laughed out loud.

     Now a ribbon of gray unwound and stretched out before my car. The wind rushed against my face. I pushed the Nissan to go 70, 75, 80. Cars well in front of me changed lanes to get out of my way. I flew over an overpass, a red missile. A black lake reflected light on either side of the elevated road. I liked the sound of the tires as they transferred from asphalt to concrete and back to asphalt again. My headlights carved a tunnel of light through the darkness. The white lights of the cars in the south bound lanes, across the grass median, shined against me. The steering wheel rattled as it shook uncontrollably in my hands. I had to fight the wheel to hang onto it as I pushed the car up to 85. I wanted to see how far I could take it. This time, I wasn’t turning back.

     There was nowhere to go.

     I caught sight of my scrub pine, lonely in the dark night. The steering wheel shook so bad, and shook me along with it, that I probably would’ve missed my scrawny dying friend if it hadn’t been for the brightly lit billboard standing above it. The local baseball celebrity with his stained upper lip and his milk glass in his hand shined in the dark night. I spotted the tree but dared not let go of the wheel long enough to kiss the windshield and send my little prayer up to heaven. I always wished for the same thing. But my wish never came.

     I drove like this for several miles, feeling the cool night air coming in through the open roof top of the car, but when I saw a billboard advertising Dooley’s Dance Hall and Prime Rib Shack next exit, I knocked the turn signal on and slid into the exit ramp. I eased the car to a stop and sat there, sweating due to humidity and adrenaline, at the stop sign. I could see Dooley’s off to my right. The gravel parking lot was empty. Dooley had probably gone bust and deserted his little postage stamp long ago. A quiet gas station sat across the road from the abandoned building; it looked like the only thing out here in this Godforsaken place. I looked at the gravel parking lot surrounding Dooley’s. I could hear the crickets chirping out in the waist high grass that surrounded everything. I looked at the sliver of moon dangling from its portion of the night sky. I don’t know what I was looking for, really. Some sign, I guess.

    Looking over at the gas station, I could see a piece of paper taped to the bathroom door. I couldn’t see the scrawl from where I sat, but I knew it said Out of Order. I didn’t need gas and there was really nothing else out here. No reason whatsoever for me to sit here. I looked again at Dooley’s deserted wood frame building. I waited for a few minutes, but nothing happened. The crickets kept up their song, the wind blew a little. Looking through my rear view mirror, I could see the headlights of cars passing below on the dark road. I crossed the two lanes in front of me, crunching gravel with my tires and slid back down the exit ramp. No sign had come. It was time to move on.

     I kept driving all night. I held the needle at 65 so the wheel only shook enough to keep me awake. I wished a million times during that long ride that the tape deck worked, but it was busted when I bought the car. Sometimes I pressed the radio buttons even though the radio was off, just to have something to do. But there was nothing. When dawn broke I took an exit for a small town. One I’d never heard of before. I’d lost track of what state I was in. I figured it didn’t really much matter. I rolled into the convenience store just off the exit ramp and came to rest at the gas pump. I didn’t have much money, but I’d stolen a gas card out of my mother’s purse. It was one she didn’t use often. I was banking on it taking her a while to notice it was missing, and I figured to keep using it as long as I could. I filled up the tank, walked inside, and meandered up and down the brightly lit aisles. I picked out potato chips and dip, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, I scooped up one of every kind of candy bar, plus cheese crackers, a package of cookies, and a box of donuts. I walked to the back wall of glass doors and opened them all up. I started to get a little crazy. I pulled out a two-liter bottle of an orange drink, and every kind of cola, caffeine free, diet, and even the regular with a win a free trip to Disney promise inside the bottle cap promotion. I got a gallon of milk, a gallon of orange juice, and a gallon of chocolate milk. I had to stack up my loot on top of the ice cream freezer because I couldn’t hold it all. The cashier, a guy with acne scars, yelled at me from the counter.

     “Hey! You intend to pay for all that?” He bared his teeth as he spoke. “Cause if you don’t, you need to put all that back. Only pull out what you intend to pay for, ma’am.”

     I twisted around to look at him. “Oh don’t worry. I’m paying for all this. And more. You want to help me carry this stuff up to the front?”

     “I can’t do that, ma’am. I’m not allowed to leave the counter area,” he responded, craning his neck trying to see just how much I had really assembled.

     I began lugging the gallon containers and the two-liter bottles to the counter, two at a time. I bent over and picked up with my teeth a bag of popcorn from an aisle and spit it onto the counter in front of him. He looked a little astonished.

     “You gotta’ lot of food there. You must be planning a very long trip,” he looked me up and down.

     I smiled a big toothy grin at him. He just blinked, a little dumbfounded, but when I returned with another gallon container and another two-liter bottle and a bag of pretzels tucked under my arm, and a row of candy bars lined up underneath my other arm, he started to ring it all up. I kept up my smile and turned back to get another load of the liquids I’d picked out. I brought them back to the counter and went for yet another round.

     I came back from the glass wall, having scooped up the rest of the bags and boxes and candy bars I’d laid down on the ice cream cooler. I brought it all up front and dumped it before him. He bagged as he scanned the food and beverages and finally hit the total button. I slid my mother's credit card across the counter. He ran it through his machine and slid the receipt and a pen across the counter. I picked up the pen and forged her signature. Then he said something I wasn’t expecting.

     “Ma’am, I need to see your driver’s license, please,” I didn’t even bat an eye. I fell onto the floor and shook my body against the grimy linoleum and rolled my eyes into the back of my head.

     “Oh my God!” He yelled from behind the cash register. He ran around and held my head up for a second, mumbling “Oh my God, oh my God” relentlessly, then ran back around the counter and fumbled for the phone still crying “Oh my God, oh my God!” I jumped up.

     In the few seconds his back was turned, trying to get to the phone and dial 911, I grabbed the handles of the plastic white bags, and lifted them all at once with both hands. I grunted a little as I took a step backward. He turned around at the sound of the plastic bags, but he was so startled to see me now lifting fifteen pounds of two-liter bottles and gallon jugs and enough junk food to clog the arteries of a car full of people, he just stared at me and only mumbled out, “You must be okay,” the phone still half way to his ear. I loped through the store and kicked open the door, at which point he seemed to come back to life himself for it was then that I heard a “Hey!” behind me. I tossed everything into the back seat and jumped in. The sun was hovering above the horizon, and the surrounding country side was green and flat and quiet. Birds flew across a field. I pulled out of the parking lot so fast smoke rose up behind me and my tires screamed. Within a minute and a half I was soaring down the exit ramp to head for that needy mouth. That endless mile of tongue that lay so insistently in front of me and lapped up the miles. I wondered if I could keep driving all the way until the road just could not go any further, until the sea provided the only force of nature strong enough to put an end to it all.

     The wind blew my hair all about my head. I needed a shower. I rubbed my tongue across my teeth. And, worst of all, in the confusion at the store I had left my mother’s credit card behind. The cashier had still held it in his hand when I had toppled over onto that dirty floor. I kept driving another 75 or so miles, chewing on candy bars and downing dark liquid straight from the bottle as I passed a wall of trees on either side of the two northbound lanes. The white lane separators methodically fell under my left tire. After the initial sugar rush, I slapped my face hard a few times to stay awake.

     Finally I saw what I was looking for: a billboard, rather faded, advertising a cheap motel coming up on the next exit. I hit the turn signal and scooted up the hill to a stop sign. I looked at the motel, sitting in a state of quiet just on the other side of the overpass. I turned left and drove over the overpass and on past the brick building. I needed to get a better look at the place. I passed a Waffle House next to the motel. The hard part was the car. It was the kind of car that caught a person’s eye. I needed to be inconspicuous. I turned around at a light about a mile away and came back. I nosed into the Waffle House parking lot. I parked toward the back, out of sight of the large windows in the front of the restaurant. I pulled my hair up into a pony tail and then I reinserted the T-tops into the top of the car.

     I went into the Waffle House and climbed onto a stool. I ordered a cup of coffee. Once the waitress walked away, I slid back off the stool and went back outside to feed change into the slot to get the local newspaper out. I walked back in through the glass doors. My coffee was already waiting for me, steam rising out of the cup. I climbed back up and looked the paper through and drank from my cup. Two waitresses ran back and forth in front of me and behind me, filling customers’ coffee mugs, yelling out their orders at the cook, and wiping down tables when the patrons left.

     When I got to the back of the paper, I carefully read the want ad section. I saw a job advertising for psychics. You just had to sit by a phone and listen to people’s problems and then pretend you could see their future. I picked skin off my lip considering this. I asked the waitress for a pencil and I circled that job ad.

     I paid for my coffee and left.

     I walked around to the back of the Waffle House, and crossed through some squared off bushes into the motel parking lot. I walked quietly, my newspaper tucked under my arm. I walked around to the back of the motel and looked for the maid’s cart. I saw it on the second floor. There were two doors open behind the cart. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and quietly walked down the concrete walkway to the cart. I didn’t say anything. I walked on by, looking inside the two open doors as I did so in order to see where she was exactly. I didn’t see her. That meant she must be cleaning one of the bathrooms. The bedspread was pulled off the beds in one room. In the other, the beds had been made up. I kept on walking and I turned the corner into a middle passageway. Within it a set of stairs led back down to the first floor and vending machines and a drink machine and an ice machine lined up against a concrete-block wall. I dug into my pocket, but realized I didn’t have enough change on me. In frustration I went marching back. All of this show, of course, was for anybody who might be watching.

     When I came up on the open doors again, I stopped for a minute, absorbed suddenly in retying my shoe. I peaked my head around the bottom of the cart to look again into the first room. Still empty except for the unmade beds. There was no sign of life in the other room yet either. I reached over and grabbed a roll of toilet paper out of her cart. I stood back up and walked into the made up room. I quickly checked the bathroom. Empty too. There was no closet in this cheap place. Just a pole stretched across an empty area next to the sink where a person could hang a shirt or two. I glanced down at the bed. It was too low to the ground. I could never squeeze under it. I was running out of options. The only place to hide was the bathtub.

     I climbed in, and closed the curtain. I put my newspaper over the drain and I took the paper wrapper off the toilet paper and squished the roll in my hands so that it flattened out. I lay down and I put it underneath my head. I said a little prayer for this to work. The bathroom curtain hid me easily.

     Silence prevailed for a long time, but presently I heard the roar of a vacuum cleaner being pushed and pulled next door. I stared up at the ceiling tiles over my head. There were six of them directly above the length of me. There was a spot in the corner where there’d been a leak at some probably distant point in the past and one of the tiles had turned brown. The egg color shower curtain had been in service for a few years. There was nothing else to look at. It seemed to me she had only done an okay job of cleaning, but then I knew she was only making minimum wage.

     Finally, I could hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner as it faded into silence in the next room. I lay there, listening. Nothing. I thought she must be making up the beds. The next thing I knew, a door slammed.

     I sat bolt upright. I had fallen asleep. This had not been part of my plan. I had no watch, so I had no sense of time, but the occupant turned the TV on and the sounds indicated that the evening news was being reported by the usual talking heads. This person was here to stay. My mind wheeled out of control. What if this person turned out to be an ax murderer, a rapist?

     I lay back down but I brought my knees up to my chin and I hugged my shins. I tried to figure a way out. I had only meant to cat nap. Maybe, if I survived this, I would become a psychic and make enough money to pay for expensive cars and hotel rooms. My heart thudded in my chest. I heard the footsteps of the tenant suddenly arrive at the bathroom sink in the dressing area. I now knew for sure my motel roommate was a man from the heavy sound of his tread. I covered my mouth with my own hand to keep myself quiet, and I began biting on my finger involuntarily. I heard him enter into the bathroom and the toilet seat lift. I was so scared I felt my stomach knot up and inflate and I thought I was either going to shit my pants or suddenly upchuck all over that shower curtain. I heard his fly unzip, and water tinkle in the bowl. Then the zip up and the toilet flush. His footsteps died away.

     I was so relieved he hadn’t peaked into the shower or decided to read the paper while sitting on the throne that I almost broke into a spasm of coughing. I sat back up as I couldn’t lie there any longer and I sucked in deep breathes of air. I wandered how long it would take him to fall asleep. I wasn’t certain I could remain in that shower hour after hour. Plus my stomach roared now with a gnawing hunger. Some time had passed since I’d eaten those candy bars. And my bladder was making itself felt, too.

     I decided I had no choice. I boldly stood up, stepped out of the tub, and shut and locked the door. I peeled out of my clothes. There was a knock on the pine paneled wall next to me.

     “Hello?” A male voice came through the wood.

     I turned on the shower. “I’ll be out in a minute!” I called.

     I ran a little soap and water over my face and hair. I heard a door slam. I let my bladder go in the tub. Since my morning newspaper was still lying over the drain, and the toilet paper was falling apart in the water, the tub was gathering a soapy swirl around my ankles. I figured I had about three minutes, if even that, before the man returned with help to kick me out, and maybe 10 minutes before the bathtub overflowed.

     I didn’t bother to turn the water off, dry off, or get back into my clothes. I wrapped a towel around me, and scooped up my clothes against my chest, but I did take the time to stop and relock the bathroom door and shut it behind me. I streaked through the room. I ran out the door and down the concrete walkway to that middle passage I’d found before. I ran down the set of stairs that descended from the vending machines, and I poked one eye out from around the corner to look down that long stretch of concrete sidewalk that lay alongside another row of identical doors on the first floor. I saw two men come round the opposite corner and head up the stairs at that end of the walkway. Once they disappeared above, I ran down the first floor concrete path underneath them.

     When I got to the end of the concrete, I let a moment of silence go by to make sure they were in the room, then I ran.

     My feet pounded on loose gravel or pebbles. I ran through the square bushes and got to my car. I was hidden now by the Waffle House, but a woman wrapped in a towel could not afford to dally. I got my keys out of my jeans, bundled up in a wad in my arms, and I got into the car. I tore the car around and roared out of that parking lot. I raced to the interstate, crossing the overpass bridge, counting on the fact that the Waffle House waitresses wouldn’t know enough yet to write down my license plate number. My tinted windows hid my nakedness. I turned onto the exit ramp. When I slid into the right hand lane, my steering wheel was already shaking so bad I could barely hold it. I came off that ramp doing 80.

     After a while, I decided to just keep driving in my nakedness. I felt almost as free, as if I were flying. When I came up on an exit for another interstate, this one heading west, I took it.

     Shades of dark blue began to slide down through a sky of brilliant pink as the sun set. I put my lights on and honked at a semi that passed me. He gave me a friendly honk back. I reached back with my hand and blindly dove inside the plastic bags. I pulled out a bag of chips, the box of donuts, and a candy bar. I pulled out another two-liter bottle. I put it all in the seat beside me and feasted, naked, while driving westward toward midnight. I ignored the needle on my gas gauge.

    Just before day break, I pulled over onto the shoulder. I thanked the gods in all the heavens for the millionth time for those black tinted windows, which kept me completely hidden inside. I tugged back into my clothes. I got out and pulled my duffel bag out of the trunk. Cars and trucks whizzed by me in the dark, shaking the car as they flashed by. I ran back to the side of the car and climbed in. I had lost my rubber band somewhere, probably back in that shower, but I brushed out my hair. It was so tangled, this took a long time and brought tears to my eyes. I rubbed some toothpaste in my mouth. I felt better. A hint of gray began to lift the night sky. I got back out and pulled the T-tops back off. Then I climbed back into the car once again. I pulled out that sealed love letter from underneath the comic books at the bottom of the duffel bag. I looked at it awhile, started to open it, but thought better of it, and just tossed it out of my window. Then I grabbed those comic books and tossed them out, too. I watched the row of car headlights coming from behind till I saw a break, and I let my red machine roll in the shoulder before sliding back onto the freeway. I only had a few more gallons of gas left and just a $20 and a few ones in my pocket. But I was heading westward in the morning air.

originally published by Word Riot 2011

Susan Melinda Moree's poetry appeared in New Mexico Poetry Anthology, 2023 and New Mexico Writers awarded her with a grant to support a poetry manuscript in 2023. She has been a featured poet at Piltdown Review and anthologized in End of Summer Poems; Wayfinding: Poetry celebrating America’s parks and public lands and Bright Bones: An anthology of contemporary Montana writing. She has been long listed for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She has also received support from the Montana Arts Council. She edited the Brooklyn Review and created the position of drama editor for the journal while a graduate student. MFA: Brooklyn College where she received the Louis B. Goodman Creative Writing Scholarship.