The Last Hitchhiker

The Last Hitchhiker

By Chris Trevett

“Hare-brained idea! You do know that nobody hitchhikes any more, right?”

Hugo Simonsen sat on his haunches inside of a dust-caked phone booth in Oakley, Kansas. It was late August, 1992. He was talking to his girlfriend Juanita, who hadn’t known him long enough to have ever imagined that Hugo would do something as compulsive as going on a cross-country hitchhiking trip.

 “This is one of the reasons why I didn’t tell you in person. I needed support, not mocking.”

“And what was another reason?”

A dog idled outside Hugo’s phone booth, finally raising its leg to pee on the filthy glass. Hugo stuck his hand out of where a panel once was and let the dog sniff and lick it as he tried to decide how to answer Juanita’s question.

“I wasn’t old enough to do it in the 70s. I’m not going to be denied the fun and adventure because you say nobody does it anymore!”

Juanita smiled faintly on her end. “You’ll have to do better than that. And besides, I would never try to prevent you from doing anything.”

“I want to be just like grandpappy back in ’33. Did I tell you he once rode in a boxcar from Oakley, Kansas to Denver?”

“I was there when your grandfather told the story.”

“Hee, hee – right! So then you’ll remember what happened when he got to Denver?”

Juanita swallowed her news so that she could play Hugo’s game, whatever it was this time.

“One of the first people he saw was his older brother – imagine that, all the way over in Denver – and his brother told him to get back in the boxcar and get his scrawny ass home.”

Hugo snorted. “You tell it as good as he does.”

“Well, Hugo, I took the test…if you’re interested…”

Hugo had wondered when she was going to work “test results” into the conversation. The original plan for the trip was for Hugo and his buddy Scooter to drive Scooter’s car across country, or at least as far as Cleveland, where Juanita’s cousin lived. Then, Hugo asked Scooter if he’d be willing to try hitchhiking as a method of transcontinental conveyance, and he reluctantly agreed. But after Juanita announced that she was going to take a pregnancy test, Hugo suddenly claimed poverty to his friend, asking to postpone the trip indefinitely. Really he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts when he received the news from Juanita.

“Your voice even sounds unlucky,” said Hugo. All at once he could feel a volume in the air; as if Juanita had turned one of those air horns on the phone; only this was a fear and anxiety horn.

“I assure you that luck has nothing to do with it. Just because I grew up in the Catholic church, doesn’t mean I have any faith in the rhythm method.”

“I pulled out – I always pull out! If we were using the rhythm method, it’s news to me.”

“It looks like you didn’t pull out soon enough.”

Putting some distance between himself and difficulties was not generally characteristic of Hugo. In his 26 years he had come to understand duty, loyalty and even sacrifice; where each should be liberally applied and where each should be measured or withheld. He had always thought of himself as a rescuer; the first to champion the cause of an underdog. Only this time the underdog might very well be any child born to Hugo the wayward man-child.

“Were my predecessors as diligent in birth control?”

‘’Tell me,” Juanita diverged, “how did you manage to make it all the way to Kansas already?”

“I’m glad you asked! It’s really a funny story…but let me drop a few more quarters into this phone.”

Hugo scrambled in his pocket overflowing with change. “Hang on, darlin’.” He had never been more grateful for a change of subject – or that he had a limited amount of coins.

“Try to picture this scene. My first hitch after getting off the train. I’m riding with a farmer in his 1960s truck – he’s on his way from Klamath Falls to Winnemucca. He was a little uptight at first, but I got him to laugh when we dum-dee-dummed the Bonanza theme at the top of our lungs. Anyway, there is nothing – I mean nothing – between Lakeview and Winnemucca. Except something called Denio Junction, Nevada. I’d be in denial too if I lived there. Must be at least 80 miles with no services on the Oregon stretch of that highway. Anyway, we’re about halfway between one outpost of civilization and another…40 miles of nothing in either direction…when we see this flagger person in the distance – you know, for construction. The farmer says he wants to stop and talk to her – he’s never seen anyone standing or walking on this stretch of road. Remember – no services, no exits, no rest areas, nothing. The farmer says, ‘Hello there! Construction up ahead?’ And the woman waves her “slow” sign at us and says ‘Hello gentlemen. Thank you for slowing down for safety’ – in an Australian accent! The farmer and I looked at each other like we had just seen a ghost. She said, ‘Have a nice day’ and waved us on, as if there was some danger of another vehicle approaching. The truck barely moved for a few seconds, as if the farmer was peddling it. We looked at each other again and I said ‘Jesus, man, how far did we go???’ We laughed and laughed for a good mile or more before we realized that there was no construction to be found. Is that hilarious or what?”

“Bullshit artist!”

“I swear on my philandering grandfather’s grave it’s true! Straight outta the Twilight Zone.”

“What was this farmer like? I’m curious to know what kind of person picks up hitchhikers these days.”

Evidently Juanita had forgotten her original question, the sort of thing that she often did when they engaged in serious discussion. Or was it that Hugo always tried to steer away from having to answer certain types of questions? It always got jumbled in his verbosity.

“He was a nice man who didn’t think I was too scary looking, apparently. Did you say before that you would never prevent me from doing anything? Even trying to commit suicide?”

Juanita decided to nibble around the edges of this bait. “I kinda hoped it would never come up.”

There was a prolonged silence, eventually pierced by the dog’s sudden barking. “Besides, you’re not the suicidal type.”

Hugo exhaled. “Well, you never know what those interior voices will do to you – QUIET, DOGGIE!”

“At least you won’t have to feed a pay phone to take those calls. Why on earth would you bring up suicide?”

“I don’t know, it seems like the one thing people always want to prevent other people from doing. I suppose I should be respectful and stay on the subject of your pregnancy, right?”

“You still haven’t told me how you got to Kansas in four days while hitching.”

They were both poker-faced about not using birth control. Neither would make the egregious mistake that the other was solely responsible; but there was a flaccid quality to any discussion of the matter; quite the opposite of their passionate discussions about politics or music or food – food being Juanita’s pet topic, perhaps unintentionally metaphorical. It made them both feel unintelligent to not be able to speak frankly on the subject of sex.

“I managed to find another ride from Winnemucca to Elko. Then I caught a huge break. I went to a truck stop and struck up a conversation with a driver running his portable parking lot on to Denver.”

“How do you do it?” said Juanita. “You don’t know anything about truck driving. You’re always telling me how you can’t stand rednecks. Now you’re speaking their language?”

“When in Rome, my dear – or in this case, the Roman Road…”

Juanita had wanted to wait a little longer before introducing Hugo to her parents. Six months together after seven years between appearances of Hugo was enough evidence of the prudence of Juanita’s approach to the issue. They had first met in 1985 at an under-21 nightclub where Juanita was celebrating her high school graduation with her sisters. It was all perfectly innocent then; Hugo soon departed for his Peace Corps post in Ecuador; they exchanged letters frequently; and Hugo became very popular with his male Corps-mates when Juanita shared candid photos of herself and her sisters. In anticipation of his imminent return from South America, her sisters interjected provocatively on the subject of Hugo from time to time; but by and large were rather docile about the whole thing. They mostly remembered the lovable goofball who watched Soul Train to hone his dance moves and didn’t really think their big sister needed to take him too seriously. Her parents, on the other hand, had no interest in re-acquainting themselves with the man-child who they felt had abandoned their daughter years before; and she had forgotten that they already knew him – she couldn’t recall their meeting – and it never occurred to her that anyone in the family would be wary. Her parents believed that their daughter had taken Hugo for a ride – he was somehow safe from responsibility in her unquestioning love.

All at once Juanita recalled a somewhat disturbing conversation with Hugo, taking place not long after their reuniting, and she shuddered at the memory. “Almost everyone I know” he said, “my family, friends, almost everybody – is comfortable. I don’t have to worry about them…if they have an illness, it’s materialism. They can get help for that – a shrink, a pill. But those people facing famine in Africa, they have real troubles. And there’s not a damn thing they can do. They’re suffering is more important to me than any single relationship I’ve ever had in my life. Sometimes I can’t sleep thinking about all the suffering. I suppose eventually I’ll have to choose…”

Juanita wondered if this declaration had anything to do with Hugo’s bringing up suicide. She also wondered why she found this principled stance troubling. Did she think it unfair to pit the love of family against the love of the entirety of humanity? Finally, she decided that she could respect Hugo’s fiery compassion while also taking it as a warning. These were the moments when she felt more like an abandoned parent than a jilted girlfriend.

How many times had Juanita wanted to congratulate herself for making it easy for Hugo? It both pained her and cheered her to think that the child they had made together could inherent Hugo’s characteristic way of flailing about in directionless mayhem. And what did he mean about “…eventually I’ll have to choose…”?

“How did Joyce put it, ‘I am big with an unborn child in my brain…’? Or something like that,” Hugo remarked, in a pitiful attempt at some sort of reverse psychology.

“I like how you’re not trying to wrap the subject up.”

“Well, okay, I’ll be happy to continue to regale you with my wild stories of the road!”

“It’s your dime.”

“Right. So, Denver, okay. Oh, the trucker takes me to a sporting goods store in Salt Lake City so I can pick up a better sleeping bag. This I use for camping. It would be a waste of a good sleeping bag if I get caught in it in a boxcar.”

“So you really did ride the rails?”

Hugo had thought soberly about the folly of it all – for about five minutes.

“A couple of hobos tried to warn me off…said the railroad security is tighter between Denver and Western Kansas…but you only get one chance to do something like that…”

Hugo was, in Juanita’s eyes, always a responsible lover. He was a marvelous creature of habit in that he always carried and used condoms; he was rather insistent about it, in fact. But when Juanita vaguely suggested that perhaps they should attempt a greater intimacy and forego protection, Hugo embraced the notion as one would an enjoyable but strictly temporary lifestyle change; a New Year’s resolution to be tried on and quickly discarded as frivolous or seen, with a harried glimpse into the future, as potentially difficult.

“I get to Oakley. It was all an alien scene…you wouldn’t believe how flat it is…”

“I think I have some idea…” Juanita was thinking about her immigrant parents and their work on the farms in California in the time of Cesar Chavez. During breaks in the work her mother would stand silently and stare into the majesty of the distant mountains. She told Juanita it seemed like another planet away. Juanita’s mother cried when she took her children camping in those mountains years later.

“I’m covered in grease and grime and I’m thirstier than I’ve ever been. Thirsty enough to drink a Budweiser. I go into this bar with no windows except a porthole in the door…”

“This place was a trip…a real throwback…they actually had tankards! I had it in mind to steal one. And one of those old cigarette machines! All the old brands, you know, Salem, Kent, Newport, even Kool – it was a scream!”

“I pounded that goddam Budweiser like it was the last bottle of beer on earth.”

Almost everybody Hugo knew back home thought that everyone in the Midwest was “country”, and he and his friends didn’t consider themselves country in the same way. Although he and his tribe were surrounded by farms and fields, the vast majority of them had never set foot in a barn or on a tractor. Their rural landscape had been transformed into an increasingly cookie-cutter “exurbs” – a new-fangled term that no one seemed to have any use for. When he was in high school the city kids called he and his friends “goat-ropers” when in fact there were very few goats grazing on the lawns of the exurbs. Now he was in “fly-over country” and there was no clear demarcation point – even between areas that seemed largely uninhabited and those that contained rusty old phone booths that appeared out of nowhere. This was a source of spiritual stimulation for Hugo; a truly wide-open space that could be defined by even the loneliest of hobos. He felt a strange kinship with the people who could withstand this harshly barren environment and shape it into something life-affirming. He reminded himself that in west coast schools the history of the conquering of the West was one that “passed through” this part of the world to find the gold bars and the gold coast; and all at once he felt impertinent, disrespectful.

This adventure demonstrated for Hugo something else that he found exhilarating; he was feeling and sensing like never before. It was as if one element of his personality could be found in one state; another in a completely different part of the country…the only hitch was making sure he found his way to the right places…he thought about how the winds might be different in Nebraska, more fierce with nothing to impede them and funky in their agricultural dustiness; just as he often thought about how clouds might have looked and behaved differently when he was four years old…you could always count on storm clouds letting a little light peak through…but all the while the clouds were a storm of guilt. “I’m free and Juanita’s not.”

The sleeping sky awakened and roused him as well…he lay in a fetid, creaky bed, watching two flies stuck between the window glass and the screen buzzing, irritated…the dispersed sounds of the town had died down convincingly…hard to believe someone could get away with charging real money for this room…dingy, threadbare curtains…post-coital graying of the sheets…an especially funky smell of sex. In a twisted sort of reverse irony, a fly-swatter was held in place above the bathroom door by strangely strong interlocking spider-webs. He had made it all the way to Ohio, by hitching and by boxcar.

It was all well and good, thought Hugo, to trade barbs with the flunkies and junkies in rest areas and railyards; but now it was time to rub elbows with some of those real salt-of-the-earth folks he’d heard so much about – at a baseball game!

Ned Skeldon Stadium, Toledo, Ohio. Real Americana!

There was a huge banner strung along the front of the unused ticket booths: “Pre-game Pie Eating Contest”.

Hugo thought, It wouldn’t do to get spanked by a Buckeye at a pie-eating contest – even if they did have the home-pie advantage.

“Let’s strap on the old feedbag…get a good mouthful!”

“You said that? You’re always looking for an excuse to trot out those silly old sayings. In fact, didn’t I hear ‘It’s a scream’ back there?”

“Evokes simpler times, my dear. Anyway, at the registration table an old codger looked me up and down and said, ‘By God I think we might have ourselves a ringer here!’ Of course I assumed he was just egging me on. I said to him, ‘What makes you think I’ve got what it takes?’ He spits tobacco juice into his coffee cup and says, ‘You’re wiry and you got a big mouth.’”

“The ladies sitting next to him start tittering. I said, ‘Beg your pardon?’”

“Don’t get your back up, kid. You ever see ‘Cool Hand Luke?’”

“Sure. One of my favorites. But the egg-eating scene didn’t have very much to do with eating eggs.”

He snorted and nudged the lady next to him. “I’m sure you can dissertate all day about how it’s allegorical and all. But I’m talkin’ real strategy here, kid. I can be George Kennedy to your Paul Newman. We can win this thing.”

Juanita felt compelled to chime in at this point. “And you weren’t at all skeptical about his proposal, right?”

“Not in the least. When in Rome, remember. ‘Trusting souls we are, out west,’ I told him.”

“So you’ve got some tips for me?”

“I got more than tips, kid. It’s pert’near noon now, game starts at 1:30. You eat anything yet.”

“Not much…handful of almonds and a half a piece of toast.”

“Alright, we got somethin’ to work with here. Usually I’d advise to drink only tea the day of a contest, so we’ll have to make some adjustments. Let’s make you a paying customer and get you signed up. Then we can start the trainin’.”

“Training?”

“What did ya think? Snap my fingers and you’re the pie-eating king? Now let’s discuss terms.”

“Terms?”

“What’s in it for me. The prize is fifty big ones. Let’s say my cut is ten.”

Hugo considered this briefly under the scrutiny of the ladies and a few bystanders drawn in by casual curiosity. “I can live with that.”

“Listen, kid. When you’re digging into that pie, you gotta be able to breathe. But you can’t be liftin’ up your head or you’ll fall behind in eatin’. Ever swim the breast-stroke?”

“Of course.”

“You move your head from side to side to catch a breath, just like the breast stroke. And another thing. You gotta eat a hole out of that crust at the bottom…makes the judges think you ate more than you did.”

Juanita was only mildly fascinated. “How’d you do?”

“Won the damn thing. They even put my name up on the scoreboard.”

“Whoopeee!”

“Right. So I decided to celebrate by taking myself to a strip-club.”

Juanita was audibly nonplussed. “I thought you didn’t like strip-clubs.”

“Yeah, well, you know my theory about them…”

“Refresh my memory.”

“You know, it’s from Ferris Bueller…Cameron describing his home, comparing it to a museum. I don’t like strip-clubs because they are like museums…everything is very beautiful and you can’t touch anything.”

“You shouldn’t be touching anything anyway!”

“Agreed. But that’s blowing a lot of money for a lot of pent-up sexual frustration.”

“Hugo, I have no helpful response to that.”

“So I ordered an Alabama Slammer and settled in right in front of the stage. I didn’t know you could sit right up next to it like that.”

“Even I knew that.”

“Right. So I’m really diggin’ on this mega-mini-skirted stripper…not the usual empty-eyed look…real classy outfit, what there is of it, anyway…and she seems to be diggin’ my vibe too.”

“She works for tips.”

“Right. I figured, what have I got to lose…maybe I’ll dance with her. So I jumped right up on stage and started moving with her.”

“Sounds exactly like trouble.”

“Sister, you have no idea! The lady didn’t seem to mind…but one of the other patrons called the manager over and the next thing I know, I’m in a police car.”

“What???”

“Oh, it gets better. It turns out the manager has a thing for this particular stripper…so really I just chose the wrong one.”

“And you think that’s your only problem?”

“That’s not all! I’m sitting there by myself in the squad car…and less than five minutes later, they throw her in with me!”

“No!”

“She starts talking about how it’s not good karma for me to just jump on the stage like that – or even metaphysically speaking. “I said to her, “Figures I’d get thrown in with the philosophical stripper” and she said, “Well, now I see why you might end up in here in the first place” and I said, “Don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with being a stripper” and she said, “But there is something wrong with being an intelligent one?” She also said that my overwhelmingly plaid shirt was a northern nerd’s idea of a Hawaiian shirt…she’s from the south, I guess.”

“Did you actually end up in jail?” Juanita was now completely enraptured.

“Nah, Denise says he was just trying to scare me. She offered me a ride but I decided to walk back to the motel.”

“She didn’t lose her job, did she?”

“I doubt it. But I did get the impression that she was looking to get out…the manager guy is getting aggressive about her inattentions, or something like that.”

Hugo thought back to his two-mile walk to the motel. As a cooperative moon lent him the safety of shadows in the Toledo night, all at once he felt mightily alone and began to ponder the future with Juanita. From this, however, he was easily distracted. It all seemed too easy; why easy – he had no idea; and soon he was instead thinking of what he hadn’t done yet with his life…the travel, the dating, the work that he felt he needed to do to cope with being saddled with existential guilt that transcended marriage and children…he thought about all those solitary glances we steal in crowds, while we’re in pursuit of something that resembles our daydreams.

“I did all that in four days time, said Hugo. “It didn’t take me four days to reach Oakley…I’m back here after all that.”

“I would have held you back,” said Juanita, finally breaking an interminable silence between them. “You’re a miracle, you don’t know what you’re looking for or what you’re running from!”

“You’re right! You’ve opened the door a crack and I’m running through it! Come hell or high water!”

Hugo paused to listen for effect that wasn’t forthcoming. “Come on, Nita…” He felt a little out of breath. “By not talking about it properly, you are punishing me. The perfect should try to be merciful to the imperfect.”

Juanita drew in a considerate breath. “Now that’s allegorical. All things considered, I think I’m speaking as properly as I can…”

“When someone says, ‘All things considered’ you can be sure that they haven’t…”

 “You know I’m not keeping it because I’m pro-life, right?”

“I know.” Hugo wasn’t at all certain of this position.

“For all we know, I could be giving birth to another Hitler.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hugo sneered. “Besides, Hitler’s mother didn’t give birth to Hitler either.”

“Oh no?”

“She raised him.”

Juanita gave a near-to-crying-weighted laugh. “Very clever. Did you quit a psychology course too?”

She was referring to Hugo’s reaction to the Rodney King Riots, which so unnerved him that he watched the Los Angeles news off his father’s satellite dish for 36 hours straight; then promptly stopped attending classes at the local community college in preparation for moving south to “help with the recovery.” It was never clear to Juanita or Hugo what helping in this case would look like.

“It was cultural studies,” said Hugo indignantly. “Once you’ve watched thousands of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves, you’re never the same.”

“Maybe you really would do more good down in South Central.”

Hugo didn’t allow any silence to pass. “I’ll send money…no matter where I am.”

“Oh, be still my heart!”

She thought, “In lieu of phone calls?”

“And I’ll be back.”

“I won’t take you back.” Juanita expelled a determined breath. “Promise me you’ll give me up and devote yourself to helping raise your child.”

The recorded operator’s voice disconnected their call.

Juanita was grateful that he could not see her eyes swimming in tears under swollen lids. She was 

unnecessarily extending the conversation; as if hoping for Hugo’s rise into full maturity with just a few more 

quarters pumped into the pay phone. But a man’s life is not so easily changed…even with the promise of love.