My Guardian
My guardian drives a semi, and in the summer, when school’s out, he takes me along. It’s a sleek black Mack, his rig, with silver exhaust stacks thrusting up from the cab. My guardian’s pretty sleek himself, a lean, towering specimen with curled-toe cowboy boots and wavy hair the color of fresh leather. Believe me, the ladies like those feathered locks—good lookin’ ones, too, with warm smiles and soft breasts. My guardian, Nick, doesn’t talk much, but then, he doesn’t have to. Cool as they come, a Steve McQueen long-hair.
We tend to crank the eight-track on our cross-country trips: Eagles, Doobies, Stones, ZZ Top, Elton and, of course, Seger, the trucker’s spokesman. Nick absorbs the music squinty-eyed, as if he’s falling asleep at the rawhide-wrapped wheel, but I know better. Sometimes I hear him in the back of the cab, sucking and snorting behind the velvet curtains.
You can’t blame my guardian for exposing me to the things he does. I’m not his fault. He didn’t ask to be best buds with my dad. He didn’t ask for my parents, young as they were, to disappear in a fiery ball that reduced our trailer to a mess of charred tin. All this while I was at school. Me: The One Kid in the World with No Fucking Next of Kin. At least that’s what the cops called me.
Nick loves baseball, and when we pass through St. Louis we’ll listen to his favorite team, the Cardinals, on AM. I rib him that Lou Brock’s an old man (true), Keith Hernandez is overrated (not true) and that he should be rooting for the Tigers (totally true). Where, I ask, is the home state loyalty? Nick just smiles that killer smile and says once a Missouri boy, always a Missouri boy.
Each day, unless it’s raining or Nick’s especially stoned, we’ll throw and catch hardball at the rest area, fifteen painfully short minutes I look forward to more than anything. Even when the ball lands in dogshit—and you know how much dogshit there is at rest areas—I’ll wipe it off on the grass and fire it back. Nick’s already taught me a knuckle; now a curve.
So it’s baseball, music and, like I said, ladies. Lots of ladies. There’s JoLene in Chicago, Josie in Indy, Barb in O-City. Occasionally one of them will come along for a long weekend, and at the truckstop, late at night, Nick will slip me five bucks and tell me to go play some pinball. I’ll stay gone a good two hours, then attempt sleep on the front seat, the vinyl seams etching grooves into my cheek. I hear things through the velvet curtains, little squeals, frantic whispers. No no baby, don’t stop and Right there right there right there. I can smell their passion, an intoxicating musk that makes my heart gallop and my arms tremble. I do my own thing. I’m at that age. I’m as quiet as can be.