The Hat-- Part 2 A Growing Short Story With Wind

Mike’s radio was now off and all his lights were off and the truck rocked gently side to side as the wind slammed against it in pulses. There were other cars out on this stormy night, cruising slowly along a four lane boulevard, going one way or the other and sending waves and ripples outward as they cruised through puddles with their tires. For a brief moment, Mike thought to run to them- the unseen faces in these slowly cruising cars- to ask for help.

But only for a moment.

Resignation came over Mike like a rain storm, and he hunkered down. After nine hours of sitting and driving, he could surely sit some more. In the busy silence the storm became music and Mike tuned in to stave off stagnancy. There were the singing wires. The dripping downspouts. The tittering and the popping sound of water droplets striking anything and everything.

Within this tinny, stormy tune and the swaying of Mike’s shelter, there were thoughts and feelings and human, living moments of blinking and breathing, of fiddling with knobs and of days and dreams all called forth to consider, as if the storm and this dead vehicle were conduits to catching oneself up to one’s own busy life.

Most of what Mike valued were trapped and dry in here with Mike. There was his bag. There were the contents of his bag. There was a pillow case full of his favorite traveling clothes. There were a collection of oddities collected over the years and strung together to hang like a talisman on his rear view mirror.

Mike’s transient nature that so appealed to him was adequately represented by what Mike collected in the cab of his truck, and sitting here listening to the music of a storm, Mike was at peace with his predicament, with his stranded situation, with him just sitting here on the side of the road while a storm carried on all around him.

“Yes, you can come see me,” she said over the phone. Mike was stunned. As often as he had visualized pulling her shirt up over her head and the way he would unbutton her button-down jeans with skillful fingers, and as clearly as he saw his hand resting heavy on her pelvic bone and his cheek rubbing coarsely across her pubic bone, the face had disappeared.

Vanished. There was a voice on the phone. There was a body so very much unlike his. There was a scene where they met along Venice beach and a dinner and a date. But there was no face. There was no picture of a face. There was a blank fuzzy memory where a face most assuredly existed. Mike closed his eyes and willed himself to remember the face of a girl he was driving to see. Her face would not bend toward Mike’s strong will and did not show itself. Mike felt cold and lonely. The situation had transformed itself with the absence of a memory. Without her face, Mike was just a guy trapped in a small truck on the side of the road in a big storm in a small town called Weed.