’77 14, part 3

Texas has a road ID system that I've never encountered anywhere else in my crazy gallivanting. State highways are state highways, county roads are county roads, but we have in-betweens called 'Farm-to-Market Roads', or 'FM ', and there are kajillions of them. I've never researched it, but I assume most of them started out wagon wheel ruts of trails to and from, yeah, farms and markets. I also assume the numbering system started with the first trail that was converted to a state-maintained automobile road, and went on from there. If my assumptions are correct, then I currently live in a relatively old and new place as Farm-to-Markets go…the intersection of 5 and 1187. That or they were some FM buildin' motherfuckers in the day. I'd look all this up but it was easier and lots more fun typing this paragraph.

Anyway, the stretch of FM 917 between I-35 and Joshua meanders up and down and around rolling hills packed with live oaks, mesquites and cedars, fenced breaks of cleared farms and small cattle ranches, through little farts of communities with names like Keene (Seventh-Day Adventist village), Bethel (a water tank, three trailers and a gas station/general store), and Egan, Redneck Central. Egan was where you went to buy that used shotgun or cheap bale of hay you found in the Trader. In daylight. It was not the ideal place to be at 1 AM in a loud hotrod whilst tripping your long-haired brains out.

The headlights of the Chevy looked as if they were too slow to keep up; the orange color of 'em seemed kinda weird too. The passing trees and fence posts individually alternated between standing stock-still and frolicking off into the peripheral with green tracers chasing them. I had no fucking idea how Rodent was staying on the road, but with the constant road show I didn't have the time or concentration to think about it much.



I had completely forgotten about the gas. If you've ever had to urinate really badly while hallucinating you know exactly what I was talking about when I said: "Man, I don't know if it's just a strange gut-rush or real, but I do know it feels like I'm fixin' to piss in your purty black car if you don't get it pulled over somewhere."

"Quit yer bitchin'. Here we are."

"Where?"

"Here," Rodent said, and stopped the Chevy. I jumped out and pissed like a feral tomcat on your favorite doormat. Ahhhhh…I looked around. The stars were all falling out of the clear Texas sky; each one touched a fire on the tree branches around us then jumped fences and bounced into the woods and pastures. It was an irregular Friday night star shower, and it looked good. The dome lights from the Chevy had a warmish glow from between my legs on the ditch, critter eyes were sparkling from there. Spiders.

"Hey Rodent, looky here. Spiders." I finally got my rush or my bladder empty. The sparkly-eyed spiders crawled from the weeds, stopped, shrank from the lights, acclimated, skittled toward me. I zipped up. "Rode.."

"Shusssshhh. The old man's in bed."

I looked around. I recognized where we were. Egan. Back roads of Egan. Egan. The hole part of the ass that is Johnson County. Dale lives hereabouts. Gawd. A feller could get killed just bein' here, lookin' like this. I whispered:

"What old man?"

"The old man with the gas," Rodent whispered…his voice came from the other side of the road. Stars banged off the car. I concentrated.

"Where you at, man?"

"Over here."

I tip-toed to the back of the car.

"Where?"

"Here. Shush."

Rodent was laying belly down in the ditch on the other side of the road, peering across and down through a pair of magical binoculars; magical because the lenses looked like a huge pair of blur-purple sloth eyes with flaming stars bouncing off them. I ran across and plopped down next to Rodent.

"Them is the coolest binocs I ever seen, man. Whatya lookin' at? Does it look weird?"

"Shush. Look over there. See the streetlight?"

I looked. Yeah, there was a streetlight in the woods.

"Yeah. There's a streetlight in the woods. Why you reckon there's a streetlight in the woods?"

"'Cause the old man leaves it on to light up his boat."

"Light up his boat? Does he know there's spiders around here? He should light up the spiders. Fuckin' boat won't sneak up and crawl on him."

"Shush. Godammit Steve, you got to hold your voice down. He lights up his boat so's nobody comes around here and steals it."

I felt spiders on my legs. The stars were a bit subdued now; they started falling behind the streetlight in the woods.

"Say, Rodent, you feel spiders on your legs?"

"Yep. They're everywhere. But we gotta get some gas."

"Gas? Oh, yeah. Gas."

"Come on," Rodent said. He got up, brushed the spiders off his legs, then crouched and tip-toed back to the Chevy. I could see him fiddling with his car keys. The trunk lid popped open, he reached in and unscrewed the light bulb. "Come on!"