Alone with the Sun -- Chapter 3

I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was going, and I frankly didn’t care. I took a right when I felt like taking a right, I took a left when taking a left just seemed right, and I would go straight when I felt like I was headed in the right direction. All night long I drove with a steady hand, the radio off entirely so that all I heard was the loud hum of the engine and the serenity of the darkness.

When the loud bing of the gaslight ringed throughout the truck, I was shocked into a realization. I looked around at the fields and the rolling pastures, praying through panicked whispering that a gas station would suddenly come into view. It was then that I knew I was going to have to ask some complete stranger for help, and I was going to have to do it soon.

At the ripe hour of 6:45 I pulled down someone’s driveway, driving between cows and corn before I arrived at a small house atop a hill. Reluctantly I shut my truck off and climbed out the door, slamming it behind me as I stared at the humble home, taking in a deep breath.

“Can I help you?”

The question caught me off guard and I turned to my left, watching as a man emerged from a large barn carrying a bucket in one hand. He stared at me with furrowed brows of gray hair, adjusting the green cap on his head and wiping his grimy fingers on the faded cloth of his jean overalls. He was a man far past his prime with teeth missing and wispy gray hair sticking out from under his hat, and the look he gave me made me regret my decision of seeking help, but I eventually found the gumption to reply after several moments of awkward silence.

“Um, I need to know where the nearest gas station is,” I stammered, shooting a sad glance over at my truck. “My tank is getting low.”

The man let out a snort. “The nearest gas station is almost 20 miles from here. It’s in Geneseo. You got enough gas to take you that far?”

“Um…” I looked from him to the truck, racking my brain to estimate how many gallons I had left and how many miles to the gallon that hog got.

“What type you got?”

“What?”

The man let out a breath and stuck a short piece of straw in his mouth. “What type you got?” He repeated. “You’re truck, what type is it?”

“Oh,” I mumbled stupidly. “A 1990 Sierra, I think.”

“How much you got left?”

“I don’t know, the gas light just came on about a minute ago.”

The man shook his head as he chuckled in spite of me. “There’s no way in hell you’re gonna make it to any gas station then, kid.”

As if a bolt of lightning had come out of nowhere and destroyed everything I stood for, my dreams were brought crashing to the ground in an instant. I hung my head low and stared at the gravel beneath my feet for a couple of long seconds.

“Tell ya what,” the man started. “I’ll give you a little bit, just enough to get you to the gas station down the way.”

My head perked up and I started thanking the man as he walked off toward his barn, waving me off as he did so. I dashed to my truck and pulled a wad of cash out of the glove compartment I had stashed it in. I grabbed a ten dollar bill and met the man as I closed the door behind me. He walked up carrying a red container, walking lopsided as it swung back and forth. I quickly helped him pour it into my truck, thanking him profusely and offering him the money as I did so.

“Don’t waste any of your money on me,” he assured, refusing my offer as he lowered the container and sealed it shut. “Besides, I wouldn’t be using this anytime soon anyway. You can use the money on something more important.”

“Thank you very much,” I replied again, happily shoving the bill in my back pocket and edging toward the driver’s door.

“It’s no problem. If my wife were here she’d make sure you’d be walking off with a full tank and a basket of food, so, really, it isn’t anything. Where you headed to, anyway?”

“I don’t really know yet,” I said, grabbing the handle of my door and cracking it open. “I’ll find out soon enough.”

And with that we parted ways, me driving my rusted truck down his drive way and off into distance as he walked back to his barn with a bucket in one hand the gas container in the other. He hadn’t given me much, but he had given me enough. I followed his directions and soon found myself rolling into the small town of Geneseo, discovering the rundown gas station in a matter of minutes.

I had never been to Geneseo, North Dakota. And the only thing I even knew about it was that it was near the South Dakota border. But, I do remember that my short stay there was much less than impressive. The old buildings looked ready to crumble under the pressure of time, and the streets I drove were full of potholes and cracks, causing my truck to jump up and down enough to make a person sick. The gas station I stopped at was seedy and gross, smelling of dead animals and urine. I quickly filled up my tank and rushed inside with my money in my pocket.

The moment I laid my eyes on the racks of bad-for-you goods my stomach started to grumble. I hadn’t noticed that I had gone nearly eight hours without a single bite to eat, but it hit me strongly enough to force me to buy a bag of chips and two jelly filled donuts. I grabbed a bottle of water and filled up a cup of coffee as well, fumbling to carry it up to the counter without spilling or dropping anything.

As I set everything down I immediately flushed with embarrassment as I shot an awkward glance up at the cashier who chuckled as he started to ring me up. With shaggy brown hair and a gaunt figure clad in the usual gas station red and blue, his strikingly attractive face caught me off guard and pushed me into a state of humiliation at my baneful eating.

“You must be hungry, huh?” The young man asked with a smirk, pressing buttons on the computer screen without even looking at it. His large, hazel eyes were focused entirely on me.

I forced a soft laugh and shrugged my shoulders, my hands clawing at each other in a fit of nervousness. Every time I looked at him my heart sped up faster and faster until I was sure that I was going to drop over dead. “I haven’t stopped to eat in a while. And I guess I have a sweet tooth.”

“Well, you can never go wrong with donuts. Forty nine seventy seven.”

I dived into my pocket and pulled out a fifty dollar bill. As I handed it to him his fingers brushed gently against mine and I honestly thought I was going to explode. The smile he gave me as he handed me my change was undoubtedly one of interest, and the thought that a boy would ever look at me that way made me want to cry. I had never before looked into a boy’s eyes and saw him looking back at me with feelings the same as mine. I was never pretty enough or funny enough or charming enough, but at that very moment I was.

“You just passing through?” he asked as he shut the drawer of the cash register and handed me my receipt. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“Yeah, I’m just headed through,” I stated, grabbing my food and drinks in my hands. “I just needed to stop for gas.”

“Let me help you with that,” the boy quickly offered, snatching my coffee and chips out of my arms as he swung around the counter and opened the door for me as I left for my truck. “You drive that?” He asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It was my dad’s, it was the only car we had that I could take.”

“Hm,” he snorted. “I couldn’t see a fragile little thing like you driving that beast, but I like it. I think it’s sexy when girls drive trucks.”

I bowed my head so he wouldn’t see me flush. The walk from the station to my truck seemed far too short, and yet I couldn’t force myself to slow down my hurried pace. The boy’s obvious interest in me both flattered and scared me. I wasn’t used to the attention and I didn’t know how to handle it, so my responses were awkward and confusing, conveying my conflicted feelings inside. I quickly opened the door and set my food inside, grabbing the coffee and chips from the boy, emitting a happy shiver when his fingers brushed against mine once more.

“So, I suppose you won’t be staying around here then?”

“No, I’m just passing through,” I admitted, noticing with conceited satisfaction the look of despair that waved over his face.

“You ever going to be back around?”

“Hopefully not.”

The boy nodded his head and bit his lip, relinquishing a goodbye and a halfhearted smile as he waved me off and went back into the building. I watching him walk and let my heart slow down, congratulating myself on successfully attracting a member of the opposite sex. He may have been no Brad Pitt or Antonio Banderas, but he was far from an eye sore, and the fact that he had been so obviously interested in a puny little mouse like me made my heart soar.

And with that I left Geneseo, and soon I would leave North Dakota for longer than I had ever imagined. The sun rose the day I left my home state like a beacon of hope, driving away any sorrow my childhood had left me with, and filling me only with an unbearable excitement at what the future would hold. Though the only world that surrounded me was endless fields of pasture and corn, it seemed that now I could see past the horizon and off into the distance at what God was holding for me. I could see those skyscrapers, those oceans, and those Rocky Mountains. I could see everything that I had never seen before, and I can say with a purely honest heart that I had never seen anything more beautiful than what I didn’t see that day.

Around four o’clock that evening I could feel the strings of tiredness pull at my eyelids, and, even though I wanted to do nothing more than drive with the sun off past the horizon, I couldn’t fight the need to sleep any longer. I pulled my truck over on the side of some deserted road in South Dakota and leaned my seat back. The air around me was filled with nothing but a calming silence, interrupted only by the rare and faint roar of distant cars, or by the chirping of birds flying by. I realize that it may seem strange that, after leaving my home, my family, and the only way of life I had ever known, and jumping into a life of uncertainty and solitude, I could be at ease, but nothing could be truer. As I leaned back in the seat of that truck, staring off at the fields and pastures that lay before me, watching as the sun slowly but surely disappeared beneath the horizon, leaving behind nothing more than a trail of pastel colors, I felt completely and entirely at ease. I was lost, in fact, in my own sense of comfort. The world around me floated as if it were a dream, and the only worries that could have possibly plagued my heart evaded my thoughts.

My first full night of freedom was spent sleeping in the driver’s seat of my beat up truck, and I couldn’t have asked for it any other way.