At the Edge of the Road

by Dale Neibaur, 1977

It was crazy, but it looked like me standing there in the weeds beside the road – like I’d always imagined it, I mean. Faded blue jeans, backpack leaning against a reflecting mile marker, and a nonchalant thumb showing clearly in the slow sweep of my headlights. It had been another lousy night, and even the skin along my shoulders felt dirty from just being packed in with so many nameless people for so long. All I wanted was a chance to wash away the day with a warm shower before bed, and besides I wasn’t even going on the freeway. But there he stood, and who else would give him a ride at two in the morning? I pulled over.

“How far ya headed?”

“Cheyenne.”

“Hop in. I’ll get ya started.” He opened the front passenger door, hoisted the old pack over the seat to the floor, then settled in beside me. I accelerated the car up the freeway ramp, inexpertly missing second gear.

His hat and worn boots spoke for themselves. “You been riding the circuit?”

“Yeah.” His shrug said more than his words.

“How’d it go tonight?”

“Drew a mean one. She tossed me in five.”

“Too bad.”

“Naw. Normal.”

I turned my head to get a better look at him. He was slouched low in the seat, one dusty levi knee jammed against the dashboard. His hat was pulled low across his forehead, and his eyes were closed. He didn’t look much older than me; I’d have guessed maybe twenty-two or twenty-three. I was eighteen, but everybody said I looked younger.

“Headed for another rodeo?” I asked finally to break the quiet. I wanted to learn about him, and maybe to hear of places I should go if I ever really took off like I was thinking about. Maybe he knew that was what I was thinking, maybe not. Maybe I was just another kid in another car for another ride. I don’t know.

“Yep.” It took a second to realize he was answering my question, and another to remember what it had been. I really wasn’t up on rodeo much.

“Still too early for the big ones in Cheyenne, isn’t it?”

“I can’t afford the big ones. I stay on the small circuits.”

“Oh.” There was silence for a few minutes. Then he shifted and eyed me.

“You’re up a little late, aren’t you?”

“No more than usual. I work in the park you were riding at.”

“You work in the amusement park?”

“Unfortunately.”

He let that remark pass for the moment. “You run a ride?”

“One a’ the games.”

“That should be fun.”

“Not really.” Then, seeing his look, “Oh, it was all right at first, I guess. It just got old in a hurry.”

“Lots a’ things do. What’s wrong with an amusement park?”

It was my turn to shrug. “Nothing changes. Same kinda people, same kinda faces, same thing happening over and over. Seems useless. Like everything else around here. I dunno, guess it just got old. …How about following the circuit? Bet it’s exciting – always going some place new, always moving.”

“I suppose. It can get old too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sure.”

I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. “Then how come ya keep going?”

For a few minutes he just looked out the window at the blackness. Then he chuckled a little, the way people do when something is more hurt than funny but they don’t want to admit it.

“Got me a wife in Laramie,” he said finally. “Guess I’ll go see her after Cheyenne. She’s always happy to see me an’ I’m happy to see her; we kiss and hug an’ everything’s fine. Then after a couple a’ months I start to get itchy and she starts to nag, an’ she throws me out ‘bout the time the circuit opens again. Happens every year.”

I let him out at the base of Weber Canyon, at a junction where he’d have the best chance of being picked up by a trucker or another late-night car. “Thanks a lot,” he said as he reached over the seat to retrieve his pack. He stepped out onto the long black asphalt, then poked his head back into the car.

“You drive all the way from here to work every day?”

“No.” I smiled. “I live back by the park.”

“That’s what I thought. Don’t let the wanderbug bite you too hard, friend. And thanks again for the ride.”

“Sure thing.”

Then he was back in the weeds, pack against a reflector post, thumb up to an oncoming semi. I bounced my car across the divider and headed back home wondering, wondering.