My Name is Jonah Ross- 2

When I started out on the road all I had with me was a few changes of clothes, some food, water, a sleeping bag and pillow, the emergency kit in my truck, my wallet, a couple of books, and the truck itself. It was a dull red Toyota that would probably run forever, and was pretty nondescript as trucks go. I didn’t have any stickers or chrome stuck on it, and there are probably thousands exactly like it in the United States. I was relieved to find that cops did not pull me over on sight, even if they drove behind me for several miles, with plenty of time to get a look at my plates. From this I assumed that the FBI or whoever was looking for me had yet to involve the police force. Good thing, too- the road is an easy place to get lost, but it’s also an easy place to get caught.

In that first frantic month I roamed west, then north, across state lines, never staying in one place longer than a few days. I couldn’t draw money from an ATM machine because that’d tell my bank exactly where I was, and what the bank knew, the feds would certainly know. I started to run out of cash, though. I saved what I could by sleeping in the bed of my truck parked in some out of the way place. Eventually, the inevitable happened and my money ran low. I found my solution in one of those little truckstop towns in the middle of nowhere.

Nowhere is a lousy place to put a town, but because of the road, truckers, and bikers, this weird subculture exists to flow in and out of these odd little crazyholes that have maybe one gas station, a motel, and the inevitable greasy little diner. I got to know these kind of places on an all too intimate level, from the framed antique news clippings and faded movie posters on the walls to the graffiti-smeared steel and tile of the dingy restrooms. The diners always smelled the same- black coffee, cigarette smoke, beer, grease and maple syrup.

I usually bought myself whatever had the least syrup or gravy involved in its cooking and settled in a corner with a newspaper. Most of the people in a truckstop diner want to be left alone, either consoling a beer or coffee, or muttering conversation to  a chosen few friends, or watching whatever game was on the television set in a corner. I fit right in, a young man with a wary look and a scruffy face, curled in a dark booth studiously examining a newspaper so as not to have to talk to anybody. I  got called “hon” and “sweetie” by tired waitresses who all looked strangely alike, and I rationed out some cash from my ebbing supplies to pay for the meal.

In one particular such diner, picking over the last of my fries in their paper-lined basket, I noticed a pattern. Several men would come inside, order maybe a drink or two, and take their drinks through a door in the back. This kept happening and I finally asked the waitress where the door led to. She looked at me for a moment, then shrugged, to let me know she knew perfectly well where, but felt safer maintaining plausible deniability.
“Thanks,” was all I said back to her, and leaving my money on the table I went over to the door, turned the handle and stepped through. There was a flight of concrete steps leading down into the dark, lit by one failing pathetic flourescent bulb in the ceiling.

I remember thinking to myself that this was one of the stupider things I had done so far, and that for all I knew this was the location of the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan. This thought was followed by reasoning that I didn’t have much to lose, and I was curious. When you’ve had a few beers with dinner, curious seems like a perfectly good reason to do some really stupid things.