Clouded Rainbow (13 page)

“I’m surprised they had it opened already. And you slept right through it,” Jack said as he glanced into his side-view mirror.

Roger peered into the mirror on his passenger’s side and saw the edge of the tall cables on the bridge. He wished he had seen the structure. The accident Jack explained piqued his attention, and he felt a desire to see the sight of this…accident.

Was my answer there?
he thought.

“Say, what were you up to last night?” Jack added to his mostly one-sided conversation.

“I don’t know. I’m trying to find my wife,” Roger confided, but as he began to open up, Jack began to close down.

The trucker was the type who liked to toot his own horn, but when another fellow wanted to chime in, he just glazed over him. Jack focused on the busy city limits as a maze of green road signs reflected back at him.

“Hey, man. You got to do what you got to do. My turn is coming up here. I need to take the outer loop… How about I drop you in front of the mall?” Jack asked.

“Sure… I could really use something to eat,” Roger responded.

Roger knew his ride’s offer to assist was only a transport into the city and, now that they were there, the trucker’s assistance had reached its end. Roger was anxious to explore the reason he had ventured to the heart of the city—the dinner reservation. While he didn’t exactly know where to take his next step, being physically in the same area of his mind’s last concrete image would hopefully lead to the next piece of the puzzle.

A shopping mall came into view on the side of the road as Jack gestured toward the gas stations, fast-food restaurants, and stores. While the sight of a gas station left a sour taste in Roger’s mouth, a glowing hamburger establishment only sweetened it.

Jack turned into the large parking lot of the mall. As he calmed the bulldog he was driving, Jack glanced over to Roger’s high-water pants. He chuckled to himself without letting it be known, but sincerely hoped his new friend would find his way. He reached into his jeans, grabbed a crumbled five-dollar bill, and then tossed it on Roger’s lap.

“Go buy yourself something to eat. On me,” Jack offered.

Roger exhaled as he prepared to respectfully refuse the kind gesture, but he didn’t. He just grinned and looked at the burly man. Jack was his savior of sorts and no matter how he or his friends had looked down on blue-collar workers, sometimes the brawn of a sloppy truck driver was the best way to get back on one’s feet.

“I appreciate everything, Jack. You’re a good man.”

“Hey. No problem. Just remember to watch out for those store displays!” Jack said.

“And alligators!” Roger added.

The truck stopped in the massive parking lot. Roger opened the clunky door and stepped down like an old man stepping out of a sedan. He splashed into a puddle of water left behind from a downpour and turned to look at Jack sitting high in his captain’s chair. While Roger knew deep down that this was the first and last time he’d see his newfound friend, he would always think of Jack whenever he heard the roar of a tractor-trailer.

“Good luck!” Jack howled as Roger shut the door.

He stood in awe as the truck geared up and the engine came to life. The truck moved with grace, shifting in perfect rhythm. Roger thought how differently the truck looked from the outside, its black paint and dark windows giving it an enigmatic appearance. Roger, however, knew that even though it looked aggressive and menacing on the outside, compassion filled its heart. Then, like a card trick, the truck vanished in the shuffle of vehicles.

Roger felt the pain of hunger wrench his stomach. He faced the mall in the distance, but the deserted structure left him looking elsewhere to cure his appetite. Then like the family dog sniffing the neighbor’s barbecue, Roger turned to the structure that tickled his senses, “Buddy Burger.”

Roger moved toward the busy street with just four lanes separating him from food. The place was lit up under the starry sky as it tried to lure passing travelers by stimulating the sensitive rods in their eyes. Cars whizzed by in each direction and, for a moment, Roger felt like he couldn’t make it across. Finally, he saw a break in traffic, but he paused for a second with the realization that his body might not make it. His hesitation transformed into panic, which made his breathing escalate and his heart race. Just as his heartbeat accelerated, a shot of adrenaline ignited him, which gave his steps enough pep to make it.

Large signs with promotional items were plastered on the all-glass facade. Cars scattered the small parking lot. Roger followed his sense of smell to the side of the building, and then to the entrance of the tasty edifice. A sign with a juicy hamburger caught his attention, “Get a Buddy Burger Deluxe and a Buddy-sized soda for only $3.99. Don’t forget to bring your buddy!” While the cute wordage attempted to entice customers, this patron had no energy to be amused by a marketing gimmick. The picture of a mouthwatering burger magnified tens time to scale fixated him. He knew the pictures never resembled the actual item, but it didn’t matter as only a glass door stood in the way of satisfying his hunger.

Roger pulled the handle to the door, but it failed to budge. At first, he questioned his misfiring muscles, but after a stronger tug, the door still mocked him. He looked through the cloudy glass spotted with dried rain and saw two male high-school aged workers. One was short and stout with a boyish face sporting a blotchy beard. The other was as thin as a rake and hunched over from his lankiness. They both wore silly shirts that were a piercing red color tarnished with grease stains. They swooshed mops back and forth on the floor. The two workers looked at Roger’s image tugging at the door.

“Sorry, buddy, we’re closed!” the short and stout worker yelled.

The lanky kid pointed at the clock on the wall. Roger tried to focus his eyes, which were overwhelmed by the bright interior lights, but as they adjusted, the minute hand, a smidge past nine o’clock, glared back at him.

“Come on, I’m starving here,” Roger shouted through the glass barrier.

He looked at the workers and plastered the five-dollar bill on the door. If his image didn’t allow entry, maybe Abraham Lincoln’s would.

“Sorry…but our drive-thru is open,” the lanky worker said, pointing.

Roger couldn’t believe it. If he had arrived just a few minutes earlier, the doors would have been open. He thought about where he could have gained some time, crossing the street more quickly, less talk with Jack in the parking lot, or possibly even walking faster from the gas station to the trucker’s vehicle. However, all of his thoughts were hindsight and the situation required him to roll with the punches, an all too familiar action.

The rear of the store was dimly lit with only the condensed menu illuminated behind the microphone. Roger pondered his ability to order from the drive-thru. He had no idea where his black SUV was and, while he lacked a vehicle, he wondered whether one was actually required. His reasoning was if they couldn’t discriminate against a handicapped individual, how could they discriminate against a man without a car? He referred to the group “they” as a collective body of society sliced to represent the overall cultural and political correctness of the time.

The moments of dithering mounted as he stood in front of the faceless microphone.

“Can I order a Buddy Burger?” he finally asked.

A void of silence replied. Then, the speaker emitted a loud buzz.

“Um… Uh, you can’t order here,” one of the kids said.

Roger squinted his eyes. For the first time he could recall, he felt discrimination—like a waitress failing to land a job based solely on her small cup size.

“Why not?” Roger barked back.

“Well, you have to order in a car. Sorry, we don’t take walk ups.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Roger yelled.

He looked around to see if a covert camera was capturing his every movement, but he failed to locate such a device. He wanted a place to glare, a place to direct his rage. All he did, however, was throw his hands in the air in exhaustion. He was so close to satisfying his taste buds, yet a kid not even half his age was somehow given such authority. He glanced around and noticed a dumpster in the distance. For some reason, Roger gravitated toward it. Finding himself drawn to such an object baffled him; however, his primitive instincts had kicked in—the same instincts that drove the millions of bums who wandered the streets.

In the dumpster, Roger tossed around the refuse. He grabbed a folded newspaper, but threw it aside because a murky brown substance smothered its pages. Toward the bottom, a plastic bag was crumpled. Roger reached for it, trying to position the clear plastic in the hard overhead light. It housed a hundred hamburger buns, but as he rooted around inside, poisonous pieces of week-old bread scorned him.

Behind Roger, the headlights of a Buick sedan lurked around the building. Inside was an elderly couple out after a night of shopping. The elderly man drove around toward the rear of the hamburger joint ready to place his order. He craved a Buddy Burger with extra pickles and a side of fries, a snack he had frequently eaten after shopping at the mall across the street. His wife refused to eat after eight p.m., but she let her husband indulge after the shopping trip, which had been mainly for her. As they turned the corner, the headlights swept the dumpster. Light moved across the metallic bin and lit Roger just enough to reveal his desperation.

“Aww, that poor bum is searching for food,” the elderly woman remarked.

“I wish they’d get a damn job!” growled her husband.

He was a man who gave a beggar on the street a word of advice instead of an ounce of loose change. This was because he had grown up on tomato sandwiches and sugar water, a childhood that had pushed him to work hard no matter what. The elderly man proceeded to order his meal as Roger, the wealthy man incognito, unearthed something to help him curb his hunger.

Moments later, the sound of squeaky wheels filled the cool night air. Roger sat on a beat-up red wagon like an eight-year-old mimicking the family sedan. In his mind, he thought his ploy would somehow work; after all, the definition of a vehicle was an ambiguous term. However, ambiguity was a word that most teenagers probably could not define, Roger concluded, and this simple fact would most likely stand in his way.

“I’d like to order now,” Roger asked with a desperate tone.

Silence filled his ears, until finally the same teenager uttered, “Sir, you can’t order unless you’re in a car.”

“I am! Define the word car,” Roger whipped back.

“Well, uh, it has to be drivable.”

“I can drive this just fine, you see,” Roger explained as he moved the handle back and forth, figuring his demonstration would somehow vindicate his request.

“It has to have gas! You have to be able to fill it up!” the worker said.

Roger stood up and hurled the wagon in anger. He felt a tingle behind his ears, a sign that adrenaline was on its way through his body. “I don’t believe this! I just want to order some food!”

Another vehicle approached the microphone. It was a bright red SUV about ten years old, but built to last, as its owner would brag. The man driving was a construction worker in his mid-fifties. He was trying to satisfy his appetite, which was building since his early lunch at eleven thirty. The driver noticed Roger rolling the red wagon back toward the dumpster.

The SUV stopped short of the microphone as its driver contemplated his order. Roger decided to try his luck at another approach. After all, he was a paying customer.

“Excuse me, sir. Can I ask a favor?” Roger said through the open passenger window.

The man turned and removed his focus from the menu.

“Um, what?” he stumbled.

“I don’t have a car and I’m trying to order food. Well, um, I mean the dining room is closed and I don’t have my car to order food in the drive-thru. Could I give you some money to order for me?” Roger said.

The man gave him a blank expression. He could understand how a beggar would do anything to stay alive, but he thought this man was different in that he actually offered money for his bizarre request. Luckily for Roger, the driver was someone who actually stopped and threw in some pocket change for the vagrant holding the cup at the traffic light.

“Uh, okay I guess,” he responded.

Roger smiled, an expression that hurt his face. He reached into his pants pockets and dug around for the piece to his puzzle. Suddenly, he felt something metallic in his hand. He removed a set of car keys as both he and the driver furrowed their brows. Roger returned the item back into his pocket, the item he had unknowingly carried around since the hospital. Finally, he found the crumbled five-dollar bill and handed it to the driver.

What should I order?
Roger thought.

Then the special plastered on the front of the door flashed in his mind, “Get a Buddy Burger Deluxe and a Buddy-sized soda for only $3.99. Don’t forget to bring your buddy!” While Roger didn’t bring his “buddy,” he was sure the special didn’t actually require proof of a friend’s accompaniment.

“I’ll just have a Buddy Burger Deluxe Special with a coke. Better make it a diet,” Roger said.

The driver squinted. Here was a paying beggar who was concerned about his sugar intake.

Since most people in America seemed to be concerned with their diet, why shouldn’t this apply to the bottom-class as well?
the driver reasoned.

Roger found a place to camp out, behind a nearby utility shed, as the truck pulled forward to the awaiting microphone.

As Roger vanished into the night, the driver’s ears filled with the squeal of the pubescent worker.

“Hi, welcome to Buddy Burger. May I help you?”

“Yes. I would like to order a number two combo, medium, with a coke.”

“Is that everything?” responded the worker, ingrained with the overused question.

The driver looked down at the five-dollar bill as his eyes shifted to the deserted area. Even though he could not see Roger, he knew the man was awaiting his meal like a dog staring at its empty bowl.

“Sir?”

“No, that’s not everything. I want an extra Buddy Burger Deluxe Special with a diet coke,” he replied.

“Medium or large?”

He looked over and saw Roger emerge from the shadows.

“You’d better make it a large,” the driver added.

“Okay. That will be eight seventy-one. Please pull ahead,” the worker unemotionally responded.

The middle-aged man lifted his foot off the brake pedal. He looked toward Roger’s location, but he was gone. The first window greeted the driver as he waited for the worker. After several moments, a figure appeared at the second window, waving the man forward. The short and stout worker revealed himself as the body that belonged to the voice. The worker sized up the SUV’s driver, who suddenly felt nervous. The pimply faced worker, however, was totally detached from the moment. His teenage mind wandered to the image of his female classmate’s breasts and, as he offered the driver’s change, his thoughts shifted to the same girl’s legs. Then his accomplice, the lanky worker, slid toward the window and handed the man his bag of food. The smell of the cooked beef filled the cab of the truck as the man pulled forward, home free.

He drove into the last spot of the parking lot and parked his truck. He let the engine idle as he glanced around for his acquaintance. For a moment, he wondered whether the man actually swindled him, but after thinking some more, he realized he would not have been the victim of a ploy; it would have been the other way around. Roger finally emerged near the driver’s side window.

“Here you go,” the driver said as he handed Roger the burger and diet coke.