The High-Way Is My Home

Just past the outskirts of Espanola, I caught a glimpse of a pair of boots, sticking out of a culvert that went under the road. It was cloudy over the Sangre de Cristos, and a flash flood sweeping down that arroyo could wash a body all the way to the Rio.

But dammit, I had a load of unprotected sheetrock in the truck bed, and Big Jim would be sore if any of it got ruined. Two weeks ago I messed up a prefab panel--cut the roof angle backwards, so the inside panel wanted to go on the outside. Big Jim took the cost of the replacement out of my paycheck. So I continued north on 68.

Even so, the thought of leaving that sorry-ass sucker to drown in a gullywasher was gnawing on me. I started looking for a cut in the median, to turn around. 

And wouldn’t you know, the turnaround was right across from Ray Smith’s store. Old Ray was an original, son of an Okie who never made it to California. Ray was lean and sunscorched as a cornstalk in a drought, with a face shaped like a worn-out shovel. He’d married a local gal, and his Spanish was as good as any who was born speaking it. His store, however, was not really a store, just three 48 foot-long trailer houses, completely gutted out, and parked side by side, to make what was arguably one building. Mostly it was full of junk. Stuff that the tenants in his trailer park had left behind, or that he dragged back from the dump, or begged or swapped for or bought for peanuts from the other hard luck cases in the Valley. But once in a while, there would be a decent arc welder, or a usable well pump, or a nice Skilsaw--which more likely than not was hot. You don’t ask about provenance in Ray’s store.

And as luck would have it, Ray was out front, greasing his ancient Farmall. He recognized my truck and waved at me. I’d asked him to be on the lookout for a swamp cooler for my own trailer, because the pan was rusting out and water was always dribbling down over the front door. The wife was on my case on a daily basis, ruining her hair every time she let the dog out.

I pulled into his front yard, and he came up to the passenger side window and leaned in. He said, “Sixty five bucks. Hardly a scratch in the paint.”

“How big?” I said.

“Thousand CFM. Oughta do for your little place.”

“Sixty,” I said, and pulled out my wallet. “Here’s ten; I’ll come around with the rest after payday. Don’t sell it to anyone else in the meantime.”       

“Thanks, but don’t go past Saturday.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. Thanks for keeping me in mind.”

The clouds were getting darker, and I could see rain on the horizon. Likely it was evaporating before it fell, but I nailed it anyway, fast as I dared, with my ass end swaying under its load. 

By the time I got back to the arroyo, there were lightning flashes in the foothills. Sure enough, the boots had not budged.  The legs they were attached to belonged the man in the culvert, peacefully asleep.

I kicked the nearer boot several times, harder and harder, until he stirred. I said, “Yo! You wanna ride home?”

He was noncommittal about the offer, so I said, “C’mon, let's get in the truck.” He slowly extracted himself from the pipe, stood up, and gazed around, sun dazzled. Finally, he stumbled up the bank to the idling truck and clambered in. He wore rumpled jeans and plaid shirt, and threadbare blue bandana on his head. “Where do you live, my friend?” I asked.

He replied with his eyes closed, sing-songy, “The high-way is my home.”

“C’mon, man, which way do we go?” He just pointed north.

So I continued rolling up 68, past Velarde, veering east, almost to goddam Pilar, when he chanted again, “The high-way is my home.”

“Please, just give me some direction.” He pointed left. I took the turn onto a sunbleached, crumbling stretch of asphalt that led due north. We meandered along the gorge, to this rusty iron bridge over the Rio. At the yonder end of the bridge was a cattle guard, and as my overloaded truck rumbled over the rails I said a little prayer for my sidewalls.

Finally, after another five miles, we got to a decent state road that went west, and continued until we finally hit the four lane heading south. Black Mesa loomed to the east. When we reached the Chama, he repeated his mantra, again pointing left. That took us through San Juan Pueblo, and back to 68.

“The high-way is my home”, he sang again, and I took one more left. When we reached the culvert where I found him, he pointed to the east and said, “That’s my house.”

Fifty yards off the road, hard along the arroyo, it was one of those little ramblers, frame with fake adobe finish, that the feds build for the Pueblos. 

Again I pulled out my wallet, and found that I still had a five and three ones. I stuffed the ones in his shirt pocket. As he got out, I said, “Good luck, High-wayman.”  As he slammed the door, lightning struck just beyond the cluster of houses, followed by almost a simultaneous thunderclap. 

Big splats of rain were hitting my windshield as I arrived at Big Jim’s shop. I was about an hour and a half late. As I backed onto the apron, the overhead door went up. There he was, pissed off written all over his face. 

But when I explained why I was late, Big Jim asked, “Was he wearing a black and red checkered shirt, and a blue bandana?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be damned,” he said, with a grin struggling to break out across his stony face. “That’s the same guy who stopped me at the Post Office yesterday morning. I gave him a lift to his house. It was about 10AM and he was already drunk as a skunk. “Well, don’t just stand there, let’s get this truck unloaded.”