05 August Smoke · 5 of 7
My sister Bethany spots the sign rising sixty feet in the air, Lady Luck Truck Stop. She flicks on the turn signal and heads toward the sign—a caricature of a woman with enormous boobs and a lace negligee sliding off one shoulder. The woman on the sign rolls dice, and a crinkly blonde curl falls onto her forehead à la Marilyn Monroe. She looks out at the world with dull brown eyes, both innocent and provocative, desiring and desirable.
I’d asked Bethany not to purchase that pumpkin-spiced latte at the Starbucks seventy miles behind us. “You’ll need to pee,” I said. “You know I don’t like to stop after dark.” She ignored me and bought the latte.
Bethany and I attend the same college, she a senior, I a sophomore. We’re driving home for Thanksgiving, both of us looking forward to bounteous food, family, and those gigantic pumpkins Mom showcases on the front porch. We’re merry.
I groan when we pull across the mucky oyster-shell parking lot and stop near the entrance. Bethany sticks her tongue out. “I can’t piss in a bottle,” she says with more than a little sarcasm. Sisterly love, I think.
“You coming?” she asks.
“Nope, I’m not the one who drank that latte.”
“Suit yourself,” she says and slams the door.
Cold and drizzly describes this night. At least plenty of folks are here, so I won’t be waiting alone. As I watch Bethany go inside, I spot a girl who appears to be a teenager standing near the entry. A man walks toward her. The girl smiles. I think he’s her father, but he nods and steps inside.
Another man approaches from the diesel pumps. Again, the girl smiles warmly. He maneuvers around her as if he doesn’t see her. As I watch, I realize with a jolt—the girl is soliciting. She attempts to gain attention from any man who walks by. She wears jeans with holes in the knees and a hot-pink hoodie, but the hood isn’t pulled over her dark hair, which appears wet or dirty. Her clothing isn’t sufficient for a cold, damp night. She glances at the trucks parked in the side lot.
A trucker parks his rig, jumps from his cab, and approaches the store. The girl by the door speaks. The trucker pulls a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lights it for her. They chat before he walks into Lady Luck. The girl draws on her cigarette, rounds her shoulders against the cold night, and her back touches the brick wall.
Girls in my dorm use words like hoe to describe a girl they consider promiscuous. I hate the word. I have heard them use the words lot lizard—a female prostitute frequenting truck stops, the lowest version of a hooker. If there are lot lizards, I thought they would be older, rusty-headed, large-breasted women with even larger backsides—women who’d been around the block plenty of times. But here stands this dark-haired teenager in a pink hoodie, seeking a client.
Earlier in the week, I’d passed judgment on Jason, but I haven’t had an opportunity to speak with him yet. Jason served in the military before starting college and is older than the rest of us who work on the university newspaper. He stands tall and has a full head of sandy hair. In the military, he served on a small island in the Pacific, an island used for refueling military planes. Jason is cool, and he loves using the word babe. I’ve wanted to date him, and maybe I still do, but a conversation I overheard has left me wondering.
Jason and another guy talked in the backroom with the door open. “When people say, ‘thanks for your service,’ I want to laugh. Man, I stayed drunk,” Jason said. “There were bars where you could buy anything. Girls were cheap. Some really young.”
“Young?” the other guy questioned.
“Teenagers,” Jason answered. “I don’t remember everything. I drank myself into oblivion, but I remember those girls dancing on the bar—there for the taking. Little titties, and they wore smiles warm enough to melt candlewax.
That was all I heard. It was enough.
I think Jason should have taken responsibility and reported the bars to military brass. In a perfect world, the brass would have talked with the bar owners and made clear those girls should not have been for sale. I hoped Jason had not participated in something legal there, but illicit any place with a decency compass.
As I watch the girl, my thoughts warp. Am I Jason? All we could do is offer the girl a ride farther south, but there are plenty of reasons we can’t or shouldn’t. What will Mom say if we show up with a rough-looking teenager and no plan for what to do with her? Where would she sit? We have two clothes hampers full to the brim on the back seat—no room in the trunk for them. Besides, the rule is: don’t pick up strangers on the interstate.
Bethany comes out and walks past the girl without noticing her. She sits in the driver’s seat and blows breath across her hands before gripping the steering wheel. I wish I were Bethany and had not seen the girl, not even a glimpse. Bethany shifts the car into reverse, and we begin easing away from Lady Luck. “Good to go,” Bethany says. “Home sweet home or bust!” She taps her fingers against the steering wheel. “Put the music on. It’s par-teeee time!”
I look again at the girl, who, after rounding her shoulders, has grown smaller. She blows smoke past her red lips, and the smoke, resisting the cold, hangs in the air, clouding her face. I turn the music louder, loud enough to shake off any weight on my shoulders. Bethany jams her foot to the metal as we merge onto the interstate and move toward home.