Chapter Text
The howling of the cars on the highway sounded different out here than it did back home. Back east, the wake of the cars was offset by the sounds of city buses, construction, and people walking and talking. Out in Iowa, a ways west of Des Moines, there was none of that. Just the sound of your own feet in the gravel, the rustling of the corn in the wind (although the air was nearly still today), and perhaps a crow’s caw, if you were lucky. Otherwise, you stood alone, under the beating sun, in a flat and silent expanse, listening for the distant whine of an oncoming car.
When one came, every few minutes, they stuck out their thumb patiently. More than half the time these cars would be heading east, towards the city. If you could call any town in Iowa such a thing. The rest of the time, cars ignored them. The drivers were probably either scared to pick up a hitcher, or figured they wouldn’t be driving far enough to make much of a dent in someone’s journey.
It was unclear how long they were standing there since their last ride kicked them out, but the light was beginning to fade, and so they hoped someone would come along soon. Maybe a long haul trucker. A trucker had taken them all the way from Pittsburgh to Urbana.
An hour or so later, it was completely dark, and they were getting desperate. At the next sign of westbound headlights, they stepped out onto the highway itself, waving overhead with one hand and jerking their thumb West with the other. Luckily enough, the car turned out to be a VW van, packed to the brim with Oregon-bound Deadheads. If they were in New York, a hippie conglomeration of this size might’ve been annoying. But out here, it was a welcome relief from the Evangelical missionary hopefuls who tended to give out rides.
“So kid, what’s your name, then?” asked a redheaded woman, about 35, dressed in a tank top and a pair of flare jeans emblazoned with years worth of fabric patches.
They paused for a millisecond before they answered. “G.”
“Well, G, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Anna. This here’s Summer,” she said, gesturing to the young woman sitting next to her on the floor, “Calliope,” in the passenger’s seat, fast asleep, “and Robby,” behind the wheel. “We tend to just drive all night, take turns, try to make it to the gigs on time. Hope that’s okay with you.”
G nodded eagerly. They wanted to get further west, as quickly as possible.
“Where you coming from?” Anna asked, between stitches on whatever crochet garment she was working on.
“Uh, New Jersey.”
“Oh, Jersey! I had a boyfriend from Jersey once,” Summer piped up, smacking her gum as she spoke. “He thought he was fucking tough. But he wasn’t nothing but a big softie.”
“Summer,” Anna half-sighed.
“Well he was. I’m telling you.”
“And I keep saying you gotta get over that boy and stop talking off the ears of every stranger we meet about him!”
“Uh, where- what about you guys, where are you from?” G asked, hoping to no longer be privy to whatever this argument was about.
“Well, me and Anna are from Dallas, but Calliope’s from Minne-so-ta and Robby’s from Chicago,” Summer explained graciously.
“Oh, cool, cool, so are you two siblings?”
“Yeah, we are,” Anna smiled. “Kinda felt like I was her mother by the time I was 15, though. Had to drag this 4-year-old with me everywhere. Still do!” Summer reached over to whap Anna on the shoulder for that remark, proving her point in the process.
“You got any siblings, anyone back home?” Summer looked gently at G while saying this, as if they were a child to her, and not about the same age.
“Uh, yeah, yeah, I do. Mikey. That’s my little brother. He’s a sweet kid. Just turned twenty. Kinda the son with his head on his shoulders in our family.”
The conversation continued to pass pleasantly for a while, while the mellow static of the radio and the light turbulence of the van put G at ease. Then, the next thing G noticed was a nudge on the shoulder. It was light out, a little after dawn. “Hey kid,” Anna said gently. “We’re stopping for a minute. Gotta take a piss, get some snacks, you know the drill. Come on.” G wasn’t sure when they fell asleep, exactly, but after a couple days without rest, they should have expected something of the sort. They stepped down from the van, lugging their little duffle bag, and walked towards the diner in order to regain some semblance of land legs.
After a few days of hitching rides, one falls into a few habits. If you get lucky enough to end up at a rest stop, you make a beeline for the bathroom. Wash your face, rinse your pits, change your shirt and underwear, scarf down a sandwich with some coffee, and get back to your ride. Luckily, the bathroom was empty for once, and they were able to freshen up in peace, before they re-emerged into the restaurant and surveyed the space. It couldn’t have been later than 6:30 in the morning. The only people hanging around the diner were a couple working girls, a few truckers, and a waitress, who was over by the corner booth, taking the Deadheads’ orders. Everyone looked worn out.
Anna spotted them and waved them over to the booth. “...two eggs, sunny side up. Then whatever he wants,” she said, gesturing to G.
“Oh, are you sure? Thank you,” G spoke quickly, not giving her a chance to take back her generosity. “I’ll take a short stack, links, and a coffee. Thanks.” Their waitress, a 40-something brunette with a chin-length perm, nodded and walked back to the kitchen.
The hippies went back to their conversation, which seemed to be about analyzing some new Neil Young album. G had heard some of the album while hanging out with a friend, but wasn’t exactly awake enough to chat about it. Instead, they contented themself with looking around the diner a bit more. At the counter sat a woman with a teased ponytail which may have been neat when the night began, but certainly wasn’t now. She was staring absentmindedly at the top of the kitchen door as she tore up the paper wrapper of her straw in her hands. To G’s left, outside the window, there was a small highway, and beyond that, an open expanse of grassland. In the distance, there was something which looked like a low, tan mountain range.
“Where– sorry, where are we? What state are we in?” G asked, interrupting Robby’s speech on the virtues of “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown.”
“Eastern South Dakota by now. Maybe 200 miles from Wyoming, I’d say,” Calliope answered. Apparently she was the navigator, despite the fact she’d been asleep when G climbed in the van.
“Well, what are those, like, mountains over there? I didn’t know there were mountains in the Dakotas.”
“It’s not mountains,” Anna grinned. “Those are the Badlands. I’ve driven through them a couple times, on my way to other things. Gorgeous place.” G simply nodded, as though the news was nothing to them. As though they were not already transfixed by the sight of the buttes rising up over the prairie.
At that moment, their waitress (Barbie, as her nametag read) came back with a tray full of food for the table, lifting G from their thoughts. Everyone dug in, desperately hungry from traveling. Barbie went back behind the counter and refilled the ponytail-wearing woman’s mug with coffee, and asked her something G couldn’t quite make out over the conversation at the table. The other woman responded animatedly, shaking her head, hair swinging, and gesturing with the hand that held her cigarette. She grew louder as she spoke, until G could hear. “...and so now she’s fucking run off with a man who’ll leave her behind by the time they reach Omaha, and god knows what she’ll do with herself from there. I’m done trying, Barbie, I swear to god I am.”
Barbie shakes her head. “Suze, If she wants to go, let her go. Not like she fucking cares about us anyway. Leaving you on the hook for the rent and me out a waitress without so much as a warning. Just gone.”
“And you know what the worst part of the whole goddamn thing is? She didn’t even take Chuck.”
“She left that poor little thing? Fuck Jill.”
“Fuck Jill.”
G shivered. It was like the universe had dropped this right into their lap. A job, a room, and a beautiful, mysterious view, all within reach if they played their cards right. They tried to stand up cautiously, and instead ended up almost tripping over their own duffel bag, knocking some silverware around in the process of breaking their fall. Suze and Barbie glanced over briefly, then went back to commiserating as G approached the counter, only looking back up once G was standing right against the counter.
“Hey. Uh, sorry, I just kinda heard you talking about how you need a new waitress, and, you, maybe a new roommate. I’m looking for somewhere to stay, and some work around here, so that, uh, kinda works out, yeah?”
Suze and Barbie glanced at each other, then back at G, warily considering their nervous smile, fidgeting hands, and scraggly shoulder-length hair. Their hair often passed as hippie-ish in New York, rarely prompting a second glance, but out in these parts of the country, it seemed to play differently.
“I used to be a waitre– ter, waiter in New York, at a couple restaurants, a bar. Did a little bartending. Hosted, too, answered phones–”
Finally, Barbie cut them off. “No, kid, I don’t doubt you could do this just fine. It’s just we don’t get a lot of people moving in here. What the hell d’you wanna do that for?”
“Yeah, especially a big New Yorker like you, what do you want with us?” Suze asked, laying on a thick accent for New Yorker.
“Well I’m not a– ‘New Yorker.’ Not really. I mean, I’m from Jersey.”
“Still doesn’t really explain a whole lot,” Suze insisted as she put her cigarette out against her saucer.
“Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to get away from shit. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing here too. But I know this is where I wanna be.”
“Well, you picked the right place, then, cause there ain’t shit in Interior.”
“At least it’s beautiful,” they said, gesturing out to the Badlands on the horizon.
Suze nodded. “We’ll see.” Then, she turned to Barbie and shrugged.
“I’m alright to try this if you are, Suze.”
“O.K., Barb. Why don’t you take ‘em for the day. I’ll go get some sleep, clean up Jill’s shit, and if you still like him at the end of the day, you gimme a call. You can come down to the house. Okay, sweetheart?” Suze’s tone had shifted, like G had already passed her inspection. She smiled at G, almost amused. They grinned back at her.
“That works for me.”