Travelin' Man (7 page)

“Hey man, what you doing in there?” Seamus calls.

He panics, worried that this freak Seamus could be ransacking his duffel bag and the pockets of his jeans, not satisfied with the cash he's taken from Darrell. Darrell's too high to stop him; he won't even try. KC jumps to his feet and rushes into the bedroom and finds them both naked. Seamus is on his back, sprawled across the bed; the soles of his feet are black with dirt. Darrell's on his stomach, lying between Seamus's legs, lazily sucking the younger man's cock. Seamus pulls himself up onto his elbows, not understanding why KC is putting on his pants and tying his shoes.

“Come over here, buddy, and fuck me. You're gonna fuck my ass, aren't you?”

KC picks up his duffel, still unpacked, and smiles, explaining he'll be right back.

“I gotta do my laundry first. All my clothes are dirty,” he explains, promising to bring back a bottle of Belvedere.

“We'll be here partying, buddy. As long as there's cash to spend,” Seamus says, falling back in the mattress.

The keys to Darrell's rental and the parking garage ticket are lying on the bureau. KC slips them in his pocket and closes the door behind him.

 

It takes KC an hour to find the rental car in the garage. Either the cashier gives him shitty directions to Interstate 5 or he makes a wrong turn. He's stuck in traffic near the Space Needle, then drives in circles until he finally finds the entrance to the highway. He doesn't stop until he's miles across the Oregon border. He parks behind a Burger King to call Mr. Stapleton. He reaches into his pocket for his phone, finding only a few loose coins. A frantic search of his other pockets yields nothing but his wallet and a dirty handkerchief. His heart is pounding in his chest and he feels the blood pulsing behind his eardrums. He unzips his duffel bag and dumps the contents on the back seat of the car. He finds the charger, but nothing to charge. He opens every door of the car and drops to his knees, running his hands under the seats, praying that the precious phone is lying on the floor. He slumps onto the asphalt and squeezes his skull with his hands, trying to remember the last time he held it in his palm. The bathroom. His phone is on the bathroom floor of Darrell's hotel room where he dropped it when he thought he was being robbed.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” he hisses, spitting the words through gritted teeth.

He rises to his feet and pounds the hood of the car with his fists. His whole life is fucked, he swears as he kicks the tires. He could turn the car around and go back to Seattle. He can saunter into the hotel room as if nothing had happened, that he hasn't been AWOL since morning. Darrell's probably still too high to realize his car keys are missing, but the rental company won't be forgiving if the car has already been reported stolen. You can't use a phone in jail and it's not worth the risk he'd be taking if he returned to retrieve it.

“Hey!”

A kid in a fast food uniform shouts at him, keeping his distance, not straying far from the safety of the back door of the building. KC can be scary when he's angry and the fry cook doesn't want to be tomorrow's headline, the victim of a lunatic with a knife or a gun.

“Hey, dude. You gotta go.”

KC starts to argue with him. It's a free country. He can park here if he wants.
Go fuck yourself, asshole,
he shouts.

“This lot's for customers only,” the kid says, retreating a few steps further.

“I don't want your fucking shit burgers,” KC yells as he slams the car door and races the engine. “You're a fucking loser,” he shouts out the window as he peels out of the parking lot, barely avoiding a collision with a car traveling north.
Asshole!
the driver shouts through an open window. KC floors the accelerator, intending to chase the motherfucker, coming to his senses when he sees a patrol car approaching in the opposite lane. He makes a sharp right into the lot of a Dairy Queen and the cops continue on their way. He realizes he hasn't eaten all day and needs something in his stomach.

He orders ten bucks worth of food, thinking he's famished. But he barely touches the crap on his tray, choking on a few bites of a cheeseburger. He's finishing his Coke, about to dump the rest of the greasy shit in the trash, when a boisterous group of boys, none older than twelve, storm the door of the restaurant. Their grass and dirt-stained jerseys are wet with sweat and they're wearing blue baseball socks and Adidas shower shoes, with black-and-white striped flaps. The Beaverton Grizzlies are celebrating a hard-fought victory. The coach, a good-natured middle-aged slob with a belly that droops over the waistband of his sweat pants, makes a futile effort to get them to form a manageable line. They ignore him and rush the counter like a litter of wild puppies, shouting over each other, confusing the young girl at the register trying to take their orders.

KC recognizes each of the boys from his own Little League days. There's the fat kid, with power in his thick shoulders and arms, but too slow to reach first base safely unless he sends the ball deep into the outfield. The nerd with Coke-bottle glasses won't be put in the game unless it's a blowout, win or lose. The runt of the litter, a motormouth who is always talking trash, runs like a demon possessed and is the leadoff hitter on the team. Most of the boys still have the smooth, pink faces of childhood; a few have a faint shadow of hair on their upper lips. Some are gawky, with arms and legs too long for their bodies. The larger boys will soon develop the hard, defined muscles of young men. And one, lingering at the edge of the crowd, is clearly the leader, the captain, a boy who is deferred to, quiet, almost solemn, the player on the team who commands everyone's respect. KC knows that boy well—the one he used to be.

At that age, KC still believed that one day he'd stop being a lonely kid whose real name was Kevin Conroy, resented by his mother, beaten and abused by his alcoholic stepfather. He would be the Mighty KC, admired and envied, rich, with his face and stats on a Topps trading card. After he'd signed with the Rangers, his mother, a widow now, bitterly regretted how she had treated him. She seeks him out, sending letters pleading with him to write her a check because the house is in foreclosure or the car's been repossessed. Mr. Freeman sends her a little money now and then. He calls it Christian charity and she always complains it isn't enough. But KC won't return her calls, refusing to speak to her, punishing her for not protecting him from a childhood of drunken insults and fists. But now he's not a ball player anymore. The Mighty KC is just the stupid name of someone he will never be. He's no one special. He can hear his mother mocking his failure, proving she'd been right all along when she said he'd turn out bad. He's the loser she'd always known he would be. And worse yet, he's a fag she can't trust around her boys.

Coach Freeman believes the Lord never turns His back on anyone, but God doesn't answer everyone's prayers. He picks and chooses, deciding who is worthy of His attention. KC's not among the chosen ones. He'd prayed every day that God would change him, make him normal, unburdened by secrets and shame. But Jesus hadn't bothered to respond, knowing KC's faith was never strong. He's not the Christian the Freemans believe he's become. He's a liar, a dishonest fake who told them what they'd wanted to hear, desperately needing to be accepted. He's a homo who has sex with other guys, sometimes for money. And now he's a thief too, a fucking criminal who will be thrown into jail when he's caught driving a stolen vehicle. It's too late for anyone to save him. If he ever prays again, he won't ask God to waste any time on him. There are plenty of people more deserving of His help, like the quiet, confident captain of the Beaverton Grizzlies who seems uncomfortable, even a bit frightened, when he realizes he's being stared at by a young man with a black-and-blue face.

 

It's a constant battle with the gas pedal. KC typically has a heavy foot, causing the needle of the speedometer to flutter into dangerous zones. He's been fortunate so far, avoiding speed traps and traveling below the highway patrol's radar screen. His heartbeat races each time he sees a cop car in the rearview mirror. He tries his best to look unconcerned and nonchalant as they overtake him in the passing lane. He's playing a dangerous game, driving a vehicle that's sure to have been reported stolen by now. Sooner or later, he's going to get pulled over. He needs to ditch this fucking car in a bus station parking lot the first chance he gets.

He absentmindedly sticks his index finger up his nose to pick at a dry and jagged scab deep inside his right nostril. He gently scratches, distracted by the gaudy tour bus of a country music star traveling to his next gig. He feels something wet and slippery and is surprised to taste blood as he explores his upper lip with the tip of his tongue.

He remembers Mr. Chandler's advice but the damage is done. Mr. Chandler stopped the bleeding by pinching his nose, but it's hard to steady the car with only one shaky hand on the steering wheel. His clumsy attempt only makes matters worse and now the blood is actually gushing from his nostril. The front of his shirt is turning bright red. An exit for Eugene, Oregon, is two miles ahead. A road sign on the exit ramp, a white capital H on a blue background, directs him to a hospital one and a half miles to the left.

The woman at the emergency room registration desk doesn't appear to be too alarmed, or even much interested, in a young man with a bloodied face holding a dirty handkerchief to his nose. The triage nurse, a burly middle-aged man with a thick tuft of blonde chest hair sprouting from the neck of his scrubs, is kinder.

“What did you do to yourself?” he asks.

KC is too embarrassed to admit he'd been picking his nose to a handsome dead ringer for the
Six Million Dollar Man
he used to watch on cable reruns.

“Couldn't resist sticking your finger up there when the scab got itchy, I bet. Looks like you've broken the clot. Now this is gonna hurt like hell,” the nurse warns.

“I know.”

“Go ahead and holler if you feel like it. No one's gonna care,” he says as he pinches KC's nose. “What's your name?”

“Ricky.”

The nurse smiles, but doesn't comment on the obvious boner rising in KC's pants.

“Okay, good-looking, that ought to hold you ‘til the doc can see you. Tell you the truth, I'm more concerned about that mark on your cheek. Who bit you? Barnabas Collins?”

KC looks at him, mystified.

“You're too young for
Dark Shadows
and I'm too old to know the name of the
Twilight
vampires,” he laughs. “Seriously, though, we need to take care of that. We need to clean it out and get you a shot. But it looks like it's gonna be awhile before they can see you. You tell that gal sitting at the desk to call me if you start bleeding again.”

KC nods his head.

“And don't shake your head. Try to sit still,” he says as turns his attention to a young mother holding a barefoot young boy who's stepped on a piece of glass.

KC is still sitting in the waiting room two hours later. It's been fifteen minutes since the last patient was called to be seen. He suspects the sound of multiple sirens outside means the arrival of far more urgent cases than a bloody nose. He reaches for his duffel bag—he keeps it close by his side now, in case of an emergency—and pulls out the envelope to count his remaining money. He's got less than seven hundred dollars left after paying for fast food and filling the tank and ransoming the rental from the expensive Seattle hotel parking lot. There's no reason to waste more of it paying a doctor now that he's stopped bleeding. He throws his duffel strap over his shoulder and walks out the door. A dazzling full moon, white as a bleached skull in the sands of the desert, hovers over the horizon, illuminating the poorly lit parking lot. Ahead, he sees a cop standing behind his car, calling in the license number of a possible missing vehicle. He turns and runs back inside, throwing the keys, evidence tying him to the car, into a trash can in the men's room.

He locks himself into a stall, resting his feet on his duffel. He doesn't wear a watch. He always relies on his cell phone for the time. What could be only minutes feels like hours. His butt and thighs feel heavy and numb. Other men come and go. They do their business, wash their hands (well, most of them) and leave. He realizes he can't hide forever. Eventually he has to emerge. He may as well risk it now he decides, summoning the courage to walk to the parking lot where a tow truck operator in greasy coveralls is hooking a chain to the axle of Darrell's rental. The cop makes a last phone call, confirming the recovery of the vehicle, and leaves.

KC's stranded in a strange city, watching his way out of town being hauled away, dangling from a boom. Motels are expensive and even the desk clerk in the worst rat holes would be reluctant to rent a room to a kid who walks in off the street with no car and whose face bears the aftermath of a recent fight. Besides, he has to conserve every dollar and try to never let his nut dip below two hundred bucks. He might not sleep in a bed again for a while. Who knows the next time he'll be able to shower? He'll have to piss and crap wherever he gets an opportunity, most likely outdoors on many occasions. He'd better be prepared so he returns to the men's room to empty the toilet paper dispensers, stuffing the rolls into his duffel. He can't steal liquid soap, but he grabs a stack of paper towels that could come in handy. He washes his face and hands, paying close attention to the bite on his cheek and carefully avoiding touching his nose. He splashes water on his hair and makes a crude attempt to style it with the palm of his hand. He needs to make one last pit stop at the vending machine in the waiting room before beginning the long walk to the interstate. He buys pretzels, Snickers bars and Oreos, two cans of Coke and a Mountain Dew, his dinner tonight and his breakfast in the morning. He might wait all night before some bored and lonely trucker takes pity on him and offers a ride.