The Hat-- A new, emerging short story--

The Hat-

As the rain blurred across the windshield and the wind buffeted the small truck side to side, Mike kept his one hand tight to the steering wheel while he fiddled with the clasp of a bag- not a purse, he would argue- sitting on the passenger seat. If he could undo a bra in the dark while a goosey girl squirmed, he could get his own bag opened on the freeway in the rain. Just a little fiddling and… there… the clasp clicked and fell away and Mike slipped his hand inside and fished around.

Mike’s bag was basically kitted out like a purse. There were keys and medicinal bottles and lip ointments and tangles of unnecessary bric-a-brac. There were small grains of sand from the beach and small crumbs of cookies from broken packaging. The bag was a go-everywhere-with-Mike kind of bag, and its leather had developed shiny, well-rubbed patches from being toted and greasy sheens in places where things were spilled inadvertently.

The bag was a purse with a manly look and feel, but you didn’t tell Mike that, or you heard about it. Mike wasn’t a fighter, per se, but he would unflinchingly get in your face and let you know you were wrong when you crossed over his lines drawn with sharp sticks on hard ground. “Men didn’t carry purses” was one of those lines. They carried “bags“.

From the purse Mike pulled out one of those cheap credit card wallets with a clear plastic view-window on one side, and leather on the back. There was a picture of a girl in a bathing suit on a beach inside the plastic. Her image looked well-preserved and cared-for within the small wallet, and the wallet looked as well-traveled as the bag.

Mike took his eyes off the blurry, storm-distorted freeway and let them travel down the curves of the dark-haired girl. She had the curves of a coastal road which led Mike adrift. Caution bumps chattered beneath Mike’s tires, and he veered the truck back to the center of the slow lane where water was collecting faster than it was running off. Gusts of wind peeled these puddles up and hurled them sideways across both sides of the freeway. Mike looked at the girl in the picture again. It was an odd time and place to be thinking about “her”.

The wind and the rain in combination qualified this storm as one of the Pacific Northwest’s worst-of-the-decade. Mike was in the thick of it, driving South from Seattle to what he hoped would be LA in one reckless marathon driving stint.

She said “Yes, you can come see me,” and that was all the impetus Mike needed. Here he was, staggering down the interstate with the radio drowned out by wind, struggling with visibility and large hard-to-see puddles that splashed violently upward and physically slowed the small truck while muddying its steering.

The storm came out of the southwest- meaning lots of moisture and warmer air. The picture Mike held in his right hand was taken in the southwest, as well. It was taken on a beach on Kauai, almost ten years back, where Mike had pointed out the magic of the dragon “Puff” and had taken this picture.

“In a land called Hanalei…” Mike had sung. The girl smothered him with kisses and dripped the ocean all over him.

The memory is what Mike reached for when he reached for the photo. The memory of a devoted girl who simply wanted companionship and lots of sex and marriage and several babies.
“Whoa!” Mike said. “I’m far too young!”

“I’m not getting any younger,” said the girl.

“I’m only twenty-six!” Mike argued convincingly.

Mike won the argument and lost the girl. That girl was now married with three children and still- Mike imagined- having lots of sex. Mike was here, trapped inside of a small truck out on a large and lonely freeway in the wind and rain, driving toward the promise of good sex in poor judgment while his windows fogged and faded and fogged and faded.

Steam was finding its way out of a soggy engine compartment, and the little truck began missing badly. In the chaos of the smashing winds and the violent up-splashes of puddle water, it was hard to tell that the engine was having problems, but Mike was sensitive to these things. Mike was a mechanically-minded man who watched gauges and listened to the songs that machines sang, and his little machine was singing sickly. Water had gotten into something it shouldn’t have, and Mike squinted through the water that roamed across his windshield, looking for a way off the freeway.

Weed. There was a town called Weed just up ahead. Weed seemed like an odd name for a town, but Weed it was. Mike missed the first exit for Weed because he simply could not see it.

“Shit!” Mike leaned over his steering wheel and tried not to breath. There was another mile or more before another exit presented itself.

Mike sputtered off of Interstate 5 on Weed’s southern-most exit, and sputtered back along its main road- now heading north- looking for a dry place to park the truck. The rain had lessened considerably in a short span of time, but the wind continued to lift large sprays of water from the ground and carry them sideways. The truck engine died.

“Shit!” Mike turned off his radio and coasted over to the curb. “Shit!” This was not a dry place to repair a wet electrical problem. But this is where the truck had landed.

Even with the howling wind and the chattering of driven water against the auto glass, Mike’s world fell angrily quiet. There was nothing to do but sit here and go nowhere, Mike knew, until there was a lot less water blowing air-born in the wind.