The Alternator
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“Very talented author that does a great job of making commentary on society, religion, human nature and the randomness of life in general via crazy stories and sad, damaged characters”
“A great read”
“Poetic writing... This author is fantastic”
The Alternator - book excerpt
Joy to the World
He traced the river delta cut into his mind, seeing the branches in the aged cracks of the powder-blue Formica table. He pressed down hard on those fingers with the really bitten-down nails, feeling sharp pain in the quicks as he traveled back up the Mississippi, along the Rogue river, the Snake, the all-defining Rio Grande, how the Tennessee flowed north up into Kentucky Lake. He didn’t even need to reference the Rand McNally anymore, it was all stacked upstairs, a library of maps imprinted on his psyche, more a part of him than anything a stranger could gather from his scant words or actions. He was fused to the nervous system of America, its blacktop veins, neurons firing imaginary station wagons and motor homes through the Gateway Arch to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore onward on orderly numbered byways to all points west where Lewis and Clark and novice gold prospectors traveled blind, solely dependent on scouts and stars. As he grew up under the white buzzing lights, there were usually a few of the cockier truckers whocould be goaded by the regulars to yell over at him from their spinning countertop stools, asking which roads would get them to Bakersfield from Salt Lake or how many tolls would they pay rolling into the chaos of Boston. He’d slowly take off his fuzzy orange headphones as if gathering up the data flowers in his poppy-field mind and suddenly explode in a way that could make them jump a bit and get a jingle of the crowded keyrings they all wore clipped to the belt loop of their stale stiff jeans…reciting a route that sounded straight out of an ancient Latin Bible of lost scripture, a monotone chant that was exact and chilling. The caffeined-up interlopers would laugh nervously into their chipped mugs and sip the last of their bitter black coffee, until they left a meager tip and crawled back up into their cabs and took a gander at the pages themselves. His sermon was always true and, if they were humble, they would learn a thing or two and cut their run by half a day.
Most days you could find him in the very last booth by the bathrooms facing the door, next to a dull window he rarely gazed through. There might be a piece of half-eaten toast smeared with orange marmalade sitting next to a scabby elbow and half a glass of thick whole milk that the kid guzzled religiously. He still had the trusty maps, his atlas, with him every day, held together with paper clips and duct tape, even if he no longer needed it. There he would be, pushed into the corner of split vinyl and concrete wall, whether it was a sunny humid soup or a cold wet winter day under low-hanging clouds just a few feet away on the other side, flipping from state to state, each page its own story, its own equation of green state parks holding the lines against human encroachment or secret government testing grounds. One page turn would transport you from Utah to Vermont. He could reach to the back and take a swim through the sparse two-laners of territorial Northern Canada or the dense chaos of Mexico. If his companion wasn’t splayed out on the table with tired pages begging a final release from the rusty staples of the once glossy cover in a crooked stack, it was rolled up with a fat rubber band on the bench next to him waiting ever-patiently for their next adventure.
His dear old dad stole a glance every now and then, inbetween flipping a mat of hash browns or a row of fatty grey sawdust-infused patties. He was proud in a curious, itchy way that he never could communicate. He never could find the map that bridged the gap into his son’s world. Even when he was showing him off to the customers, “Ask my boy over there, he knows every road on this continent, by God,” he felt to be no more than a carnival barker and was left only hoping if his son’s exploits would produce more loose change scattered on top of the check. Still, it was sure good having him around and he loved him dearly from afar. Slaving eight days a week cooking breakfast and lunch in a no-name interstate truck stop didn’t leave much time for father-son bonding activities, so a man took what he could get through osmosis, 20 feet away, breathing the same food-ridden air. Felt like he had a permanent ticket to a show sometimes, seeing his offspring grow up sitting in a booth as if on a stage, the only one noticing the nuance in his son’s performance, barely ever a glimmer of emotion exposed to the crowd but it was there if you knew the tells, the slight tics, a tiny cough before he reached for the milk glass. Second-guessing always hung heavy on his thick shoulders. Was it the right thing years ago when he first started leading the boy over to the diner before daylight? Got him out of his mother’s hair as she was overrun by those days already with a host of demons. He didn’t protest, just put on his little overalls and took his daddy’s calloused hand and out the door they went into the still-sleeping world. It was just a bit more than a stone’s throw from their mobile (not anymore) home to the diner, walking around potholes filled with fetid water, cheap beer cans, abandoned truck tires and oil-slicked mud but he never needed to be carried, walked true like a little soldier. The very first day he grabbed that atlas –it was about as big as he was then –out of the wobbly spinning metal rack and climbed up into the booth and stared right through the thing with big eyes like he had been waiting to do it since he came into this world. Never had a day of schooling, he would brag to anyone, and no one ever did come around to check in as to why. Somehow, through the maps, he learned to read, meeting his fingers together time after time after time along the mileage tables he learned his math. His classroom was the whole US of A, the father reckoned –he would study the Everglades down to the Keys in the morning and be floating along the Colorado by lunch. Sometimes in those early days, his dad would walk over during that lull between breakfast and lunch, sit across from him and push across a fresh glass of milk, point to that glossy oversized book and ask the tiny kiddo if he wanted him to show where the two of them were in all that. Intensely green doe eyes, the green of a jungle as seen from a plane after a hard rain, would look up from maybe the top-heavy mess that was Delaware and there would be no connection. Dad would try to explain that it was a map of the country, their country, and they lived in it along with millions of others. Everybody was in there. It was real if you looked out the window. Nothing seemed to land. His mouth would open a bit and some jam might get reclaimed from the corner of his mouth with a flick of the tongue. He would understand one of these days, Dad would figure, it was a lot to bite into. One day he just flipped the upside-down pages to Alabama, the very first map in the book, as it so happened, and left a greasy fingerprint from the morning orders a hair off I-65 right near nowhere.
“Here,” was all he said.
Like a true scholar from a forgotten time working by a candelabra or a whale-oil lamp, the boy carefully earmarked the top corner of the now sacred page, a text that was beyond him now but would be understood with divine providence at a later date and went back to the Great Lakes. Dad slid out of the booth, mussed up his son’s stiff unruly hair and went back to scrape the griddle. He had an ignorant faith. The kid would turn out just fine.
Look Away
It was a mist that gathered thick on the windshield as soon as the wiper blades swung past. The clouds were heavy and low over the scarred blacktop, too tired to make real rain. Everything looked lost, the brick buildings with faded signs in a row waiting in a breadline that never moved, retired school buses dead and rusting, a mossy cop car strategically parked to catch speeders with no one inside. Ghosts policing ghosts. Even the stoplights were dim, the reds and greens switching on their own time, washed out from neglect as an invisible dog barked forever. He knew America in 1989, the forgotten heart that was a slow, faint corroded beat at best. It was expected when you took the business spur away from 75 with its strip malls and bulk stores but the used-up whore some still called the industry district didn’t bring down his nervous joy. He was heading to a lot somewhere deep in the rust of Dayton, Ohio, to pick up his very first load. The smell of burnt plastic off his freshly laminated CDL could still be picked up if he took a big enough sniff. He had been eating away miles on the interstate as soon as they handed it over to what was now his truck, a seasoned Mack, big, black and waxed to a sweaty sheen. The silver grill grinned at the bugs it devoured, the fresh tires humming a happy tune from the thick tread-slapping pavement. All was primed for a run to Dallas, the perfect distance to bust his cherry. Even if he had already seen the country laid out in his mind a thousand times over, he could barely contain his excitement atdoing it for real, run after run, city after city, long stretches of nothingness, sunrises and sunsets to chase down. Escape had been achieved, unmentionable horrors trapped in the rearview and now the only thing keeping him between the lines of experience was the low salted metal guardrails stretching down the coastlines. He was going to bounce back and forth and eat it all up like a starved Pac-Man. An untethered life lived along the mileage signs, rest stops, runaway truck lanes at the bottom of mountain descents. He couldn’t wait to tear down one of those as the airbrakes screamed. Nothing could taint his destiny. At an empty intersection, he reached over to flick the nondescript gold hoop earring hanging behind the rearview mirror. This memento was a trophy of sorts, a talisman that kept the steamer trunk locked and in the back of the attic. He turned up the top 40 countdown and yelled in his best Highlander voice to no one and everyone:“There can be only one!”
“Doing the Lord’s work, yes sir,” Derrick Gold thought with a toothy smile in holier-than-thou satisfaction. The gospel would soon be all across this great land, with his message alerting all of Jesus’ flock to the dangers of the devil infiltrating the vulnerable minds of our youth, ages 13 to 18. It was his job to minister to those whohad been entrusted in his stewardship, yep, and the good Lord saw fit to deliver him even further along the path, beyond a simple biblical tale of warning or uplifting badminton game to spread the good word on the moving billboards of the USA, tractor-trailers! Derrick was tagging every trailer in the lot with his homemade message, bumper stickers with red letters on a black background: “Satan is in Dayton!” There was as much stealth in his movements as substance in the words as he speed-walked tall between the containers with legs too close together as if on a desperate yet discreet trip to the toilet. Wearing a pink button-down under a plaid vest and pleated blue khakis did little to conceal his mission. He was perhaps overly enthusiastic as he had just picked up the box of stickers from the eye-rolling printer and had recently “cased the joint” after visiting the adult superstore a block away last Tuesday evening in an attempt to see what ole Beelzebub was up to on the front lines of the war for souls. He tried to avoid the sinners while nonchalantly perusing the countless rows of VHS tapes stacked tightly on the shelves like library books, hiding the screenshots of their nasty secrets. The wrap-around sunglasses he wore below a do-rag made it even harder to make out the content on the boxes he did pull so, in an increasingly feverish panic, he had wound up with a random array of food torture porn, summer-camp boys in trouble and a rather faithful hardcore parody of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The demons of perversion were apparently well versed in the struggles of the seventies working woman, even if the actor who portrayed Ed Asner was stiff in his delivery. The producers were probably in league with Planned Parenthood and their far-reaching schemes to kill the innocent unborn and promoting feminism, hell-bent on destroying the Christian family unit. There was not a line in the bible about a woman having to file a W-2. His wife had wanted to work, talked him into part-time, next thing he knew she was taking a flesh deposit in her little vault at the bank after hours from a loan officer named Brent, or so her letter he found stuck on the fridge alluded to in too much detail to be at all tasteful. Alas, she was now lost in the vast carnal desert of delights but the righteous would prevail. The worldly may have their pornographic videos and the Dolly Parton workforce and his wife’s letter may have been photocopied and shared at the church’s Easter potluck dinner but Derrick Gold held his flaming sword pointed squarely at the dark lord, sharing the good word affixed to one ground shipment at a time.
With a passing lack of interest The Driver had seen the pear-shaped female-looking man reaching into a fanny pack and slapping on a sticker as soon as he pulled into the lot. In fact, he took him for a husky lesbian trucker looking to leave a future message for the next time a minivan full of Cheeto-dust-covered ragamuffins with pissed-in short pants happened to be trapped behind a big rig on a two-lane road and were forced to read her sentiments. It was the utter disregard for placing them on straight that first rubbed him up the wrong way. He watched for a bit before he walked the cinder-block steps up to the prefab trailer on blocks that was the office. If you were going to go to all that trouble to be out here defacing property, wouldn’t you want to strive for symmetry? People were the worst.
Inside was what one would expect. A low ceiling, obscured by menthol cigarette smoke and a pungent waft of invisible cat shit. Since small talk was akin to death for him, he signed what was needed to be signed, dropped the pen attached to a string that itself was attached to nothing next to a Styrofoam cup half full of paperclips, pennies, lint and a few used mints, tipped his cap to the fat summer-teeth clerk and about jogged back out of the door, inhaling deep the damp chemical smell of outside Dayton as if he had just been rescued from a mine-shaft accident. Now that it was all official, his veins were thick with adrenaline-fueled blood and his wide, tall frame was a quivering bull in the chute. The buzzing edge his physicality involuntarily exhibited both frightened and aroused him. While the encounter inside was brief and uneventful, annoyance at the mere presence of someone who could wallow in filth like that fired off images of the string pen piercing ink through that fat skull, forced suffocation in an overflowing litter box. The dark matter inside his psyche had become that dangerous friend he always had memorable fun with, albeit always with an inherent risk that it could at any time manifest and damage others without any discerniblerestraint. He had to keep true to the code and hold any professional interactions that were necessary to a minimum for everyone’s well-being and to guarantee his lifelong calling had the bright future he deserved. Calmness must continue to prevail inside despite the stormiest of seas. Hug the coast. Retreat to the rivers and roads.Rivers and roads.The beautiful paths of glory.
He got the trailer all hooked up and secure toot sweet, no wasted motions, a one-man pit crew. He had gone over the checklist a hundred times in the last couple of days, closing the distance to his maiden voyage. Lying on his back diagonally in the cab at night, his pantomime motions created shadows from the rest stop lights onto the roof of the cab as he gnawed on hunks of peppered jerky. The maps and motions had already surrendered to him every possible angle; to the inch they were absorbed into his reflexes. Thus he was able to back right up on the first try, just using his mirrors. The clerk watched judgmentally through his tiny window in between bent blinds, expecting a greenhorn’s back and forth but the kid was as good as any old salty pro. So far, everything fit like a supple leather glove. Lady destiny had prophesized a prodigy of cartography who was to transform into the Casey Jones of long-haul. He was checking the running, turn and brake lights so very bright in the grayness of the day before pulling out toward all points southwest when that clerk lumbered out of the door of the office, carrying high a sawed-off shotgun and a shortness of breath. He was drawing a bead on a pink bulbous mass weaving through the metal sentinels patiently waiting their turn to be pulled out of the wasteland. The passenger door swung open, bringing in the wet afternoon and with it, a panicked Derrick Gold holding tight his limp fanny pack of stickers.
“Take me!”
The Driver motioned a noncommittal question with his long hands. He was far from being invested in saving someone who didn’t respect leveling. Were all the pictures hanging in this guy’s house crooked? Madness.
“Away from that shotgun? Please?”
He shifted into gear with Derrick still clinging onto the doorframe, trying to keep purchase on the slick running board as the truck lurched out into the street. One foot slid off and it looked like Derrick’s getaway would be aborted before it began. Instead of bothering to look over at his stowaway’s predicament The Driver kept his hands at ten and two and focused on the stoplight he was quickly approaching. If it stayed green, this situation would settle itself as he would speed through a left turn and let physics take its course. The light changed yellow right as he was about to push in the clutch and accelerate. He slowed down and downshifted to a stop, noticing the clerk tiny in the rearview mirror head back inside his stink. The new co-pilot climbed in and used both hands to close the door.
“Thank you, Jesus!” Derrick let out a nervous laugh and used his shirttail to pat the moisture off the exposed stickers. More like thanks to the Dayton Public Works for timing that light. The truck soon leaned forward again, Derrick really afraid to talk to this strange huge man behind the wheel of a huge truck. And The Driver, well, he locked the doors. He had his own set of fears, too. A doofus hijacking the thrill of his maiden voyage was not on the manifest. Heavy clouds began to gather behind his eyes.
They were an hour past the south side of Cincinnati on I-71 when Derrick realized he needed to assess the situation. There was getting away from a gun-toting mouth-breathing maniac but there was also heading 80 miles an hour nonstop away from your studio apartment with a youth fellowship the following evening at the shuffleboard court you were scheduled to lead. He did love him some shuffleboard, he couldn’t believe senior citizens didn’t just go at it all day. The nondescript landscape flying by offered no homesick heart tugs. Maybe it’d be nice to leave it all behind, a new beginning someplace where the sun was warm the whole year and the women were not succubus cuckolding deviants. A few loops down on the ole bible belt might do the trick, where women knew their place in open-floor plan plantation-style kitchens with copper pans hanging from hooks and men drove American-made lawn mowers all day sipping on sweet tea from the cup holder and daydreaming of the next monster truck extravaganza. Missionary-style sex was on the menu every Thursday night and you watched the kids play horrific soccer games on the weekend. He sneaked his eyes over at this behemoth that now was barreling him through Kentucky. The sun was finally breaking through the seams of the rainy-day blanket, an approaching sunset roaring through the windshield gathered up and ladled by angles over a thick head of golden hair. He was in the presence of an almost seven-foot monster in vigorous youth, Derrick wondered if he was even 20 years of age, if there was still growing to do, feet breaking straight through the floorboards to propel them Fred Flintstone style at bullet-train speed straight into the Gulf of Mexico. A whole lot of bright blue denim madeup the XXXL overalls that looked brand new, with fresh initials on the tag inside. The stone-carved face was just short of as expressive as a goodwill-store mannequin, blank and chills-inducing cold, yet he could sense calculations being performed incessantly behind the curtain. His country-mile jawline was a constant clenching of rippling muscle, yet hairless below green eyes that reflected the sky as a rain forest canopy would. Not quite traditionally handsome, something beyond that, striking. Someone whoif you saw them before a wedding, you wouldn’t know what side of the aisle they were going to sit on but you hoped it was the other side. Behind them he peeked to make out the sleeper cabin, holding a single thin mattress, with white sheets made up tight, military style. It perched seemingly uncomfortably on top of a row of gunmetal-black square lockersrunning from window to window, each with itsown padlock. None of the usual personal items were to be seen, no picture of a sweetheart or spaghetti-sauce-smeared toddler faces next to the speedometer and no bouncing Jesus glued to the dash, unfortunately. In fact, the only things up front was in between them, a dull gold hoop encircling the base of the mirror and an old rolled-up road atlas that had definitely seen better days on the bench seat.
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