Black Balloon

Chapter 23

I woke up to the schlubby man pounding angrily on the motel room door. I'd slept clear through checkout time, which didn't seem like it should have been a big deal because there was not a single car in the parking lot besides his own. Never matter. I apologized and paid him two bucks for his trouble, which he happily stuffed into the breast pocket of his thrift store suit, the same one he'd worn yesterday.

I had two objectives for the day: eat and get out of California. Run, Miles, Run. I needed wheels. I needed to hit the Nevada line and drive towards the rising sun until the wheels fell off or I got myself lost enough in the wilds of America's interior that the law couldn't find me. The prospect was scary but exciting. I'd be like an outlaw riding across the frontier on his trusty steed, skipping from small town to small town across America's wild west. I envisioned majestic vistas, snowcapped mountains, fields thick with elk, crystal clear streams trickling through meadows of wildflowers. I needed to throw off the shackles of California, breathe the Rocky Mountain air. And also, what I realize now but didn't then: I needed to distance myself from Carmen and her bitter memories. I needed to get away from her and the hole she'd left in my heart. Her smell was stuck in my clothes and in the cabin walls. She was everywhere I looked in Shiloh, haunting the place like some beautiful apparition. I had grown restless in California anyway. It seemed to grow smaller every day, closing in and suffocating me. I needed to spread my wings. Scary but exciting.

My first objective was easy: burgers, fries, and a malt from The Soda Fountain in Warren Station. Objective B...well B was more of a mystery. The prospect of spending another day walking, another five minutes even, made me want to die on the inside. I was still recovering from my ordeal of the past two days. But on the far end of town, just where the last buildings stopped and highway 84 plunged back into the dark forests from whence it had so recently came, was a used car lot. And on the corner of that lot, lazily decorated with a single yellow balloon, sat a pea-soup green 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coup. It was hard to tell which end was the front and which was the back. Scrawled on the windshield in white chalk was written "Runs - $400". The price was right and it met my one and only criteria. Although it was a major step down from my shiny blue Cadillac, if it could haul my carcass out of the state, that was good enough for me.

I didn't have to try hard to find a salesman. I had barely shifted my gaze from the car to the dealership building when I spotted a young fellow eagerly jogging towards me. He had a hungry salesmen's enthusiasm in his eyes.

"Hey there, partner," he shouted. "You lookin' at that Stoody there?"

He wasn't dissuaded in the least by my homeless appearance.

"Might be," I replied, trying to sound casual. "Would you take less?"

"No sir, all prices are firm. That's our no haggle guarantee." As he said this he gestured to a sign reading 'No haggle guarantee, all vehicles sold at lowest possible price!' "What you see is what you get."

I walked around peering through the windows not really sure what I was looking for, just making a show of looking.

"Go ahead, drive it," he insisted. "Runs like a top."

It was a 3-speed manual transmission with the shifter on the column, which would be a problem but I'd deal with it. I'd do good to drive it off the lot so I wasn't about to embarrass myself with a test drive. If he said it ran, I believed him.

"No, that's ok. I'll take it."

The kid was taken aback:

"You'll take it?"