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Chapter 10: Get Your Kicks On Route 666
 By Jim Caple |
Previously at 24 College Avenue: Danny Edmonds’ attempt to clean up his life by moving out of the house and becoming an RA in a dorm isn’t going very well. When the administration catches him carousing with his residents, they enlist him to spy on them and find out if one is the suspect who started the fire at the San Marco riot (Chapter 5). Josh Williams has rounded up an eclectic group of new housemates, including Paul Fairhaven, a film major who speaks only in movie quotes. . . .
“Dude,’’ Danny said, “you’re not gonna believe this.’’
Josh already knew what Danny was going to say but he leaned over and glanced at the van’s fuel gauge anyway. The red marker was planted firmly to the right of the letter E. He sat back in the passenger seat and tried his best not to yell. Which wasn’t all that difficult given how exhausted he was from the past 24 hours on the road. He simply stared at Danny and said very slowly but firmly:
“How . . . could we . . . run out of gas . . . AGAIN?’’
“I don’t know, dude,’’ Danny said with an exaggerated shrug. “I guess it’s the fuel gauge. We must have busted it when we rear-ended the school bus. I swear it said we were at least half full when we passed the gas station a little ways back.’’
“Well,’’ Paul Fairhaven said from the second row of van, “here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.’’ (1)
Josh usually enjoyed his housemate’s practice of speaking only in movie quotes but this was not the time. He peered into the rear view mirror. “And just how far is ‘a little ways,’ Danny?’’
“I dunno. Maybe five miles. Ten tops. No more than 15, I swear.’’
“Enjoy the walk, Danny.’’
“Dude, let’s think this through. I know I should probably do the walking this time, but look at me. I’m a pig. It would take me hours to get to the gas station. You could run there a helluva lot faster than me.’’
Josh zipped up his parka and tried to get comfortable in the seat. “I don’t care. I’m just going to lean back and get some sleep.’’
“No, Josh, you have to go. I know it sucks. But if we don’t get that gas and get back on the road soon, we’re not gonna make it in time for kickoff.’’
Josh looked at his watch and did a painful calculation. Danny had him on that one. They had already lost so much time already, what with running out of gas the first time and the bus accident and the long delay at the strip club, that they were going to be lucky to make it to Arizona in time for the X-Treme Bowl.
The X-Treme Bowl, the so-called Great-Grandson of Them All, was just three years old. It had been set up by the American University Sports Conglomeration when the governing body of collegiate sports accepted a $2 billion, 10-year television contract for a true national football championship. By virtue of being No. 2 in the computer rankings (Mac operating systems division), State College was playing the Golden State Spartans, the school ranked No. 1 for the third consecutive year in the X-Treme Bowl System (a combination of sportswriter and coaching polls plus a complicated computer analysis that assessed strength of schedule, point differential, All-America awards, weight of the offensive line, market size, average alumni income, highway mileage from campus to the game and bra cup size of the cheerleaders).
And it was up to Josh to get them there.
“What are your legs?’’ Fairhaven asked him. “What are they going to do?’’ (2)
Josh had no idea what movie Fairhaven was quoting now and he didn’t care. Wordlessly, he opened the car door and got out of the van. It was colder than he expected. They had crossed into New Mexico a short time back and he figured it would be warmer by now. Instead, if anything it was colder than it had been anywhere on the trip. He looked at the sky for stars but saw nothing and assumed it was cloudy. He took a glace down the highway, seeing nothing but darkness. He glared back at Danny and began jogging along the shoulder. As Josh started down the road he could hear Fairhaven shouting behind him, “Run Forrest, run!’’(3)
Sometimes, Josh thought, his housemate’s practice of speaking only in lines from movies could be very, very annoying.
Two miles later, Josh’s lungs were burning not so much from the run – he had taken up running the previous winter hoping it would impress Nicollette (it hadn’t) – but from the cold. “Crap,’’ he said. “It must be in the teens right now. That gas station better be coming up soon or I’m going to freeze to death.’’
That’s when it started snowing.
This was supposed to be the highlight of the year – a trip to Arizona to see the Red Devils play for the national championship – but instead it had turned into the road trip from hell. Or to hell.
First, Danny hadn’t told them that a condition of taking the school van was bringing along three freshmen from his floor who didn’t have a place to spend Christmas break. So instead of a nice pleasant ride with several friends it turned into an uncomfortable trip filled with awkward silences and stupid questions (“So did Nicollette walk around in her underwear all the time?’’ “Did you ever get any from her?’’ and “Why not?’’). Then they ran out of gas the first time when Danny forgot to fuel up at the convenience store because he was too focused on buying a couple cases of beer (but at least that time they were only a couple blocks from a gas station). And then Danny rear-ended the school bus, which would have been very serious indeed, had the school bus at the time not been backing out of a strip club parking lot. Rather than explain what he had been doing at a strip club 30 minutes before he was supposed to begin picking up his students, the school bus driver let them go without reporting the accident. Danny, of course, insisted that they step into the strip joint to “calm their nerves’’ and he calmed his nerves so well that Josh and Fairhaven found him passed out in the bathroom and had to carry him back to the van.
“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son,’’ Fairhaven told Danny as they tossed him into the back seat. (4)
The rest of the trip had been relatively uneventful, enough so that Josh had kidded himself that the worst was over. Instead, he nowwas running for gas along a dark deserted highway in a growing blizzard. Just when he was wondering whether to keep running, head back to the van or simply crawl off the road to die, Josh was relieved to heard the rattle of a loud engine. He turned around and found himself illuminated by a pair of bright headlights. A large blue pickup truck pulled to a stop behind him and the driver rolled down his window.
“Need a ride?’’
Josh held his arm up over his face to block the glare of the headlights. He could just make out a middle-aged man with long, wild hair and several days of stubble on his chin. “Yeah, can you give me a lift to the gas station?’’ he said, hustling over to the passenger door.
“No problem, man. Hop in.’’
Josh opened the door and slid onto the seat. He smelled marijuana and saw several empty beer cans on the floor. He held out his hand to the driver. “I’m Josh. Our van ran out of gas a couple miles down the road.’’
“Yeah, I saw your van parked on the side of the road,’’ the driver said, shaking Josh’s hand with a surprisingly strong grip. “I offered your friends a ride but they said you were already running after some gas so I drove on so figured I’d catch up to you. Devil of a place to run out of gas. You’re lucky I came along when I did. I’m Ted.’’
Josh nodded and breathed on his hands to warm them. “Yeah. It’s @#& % cold out there.’’
“Where you all going?’’
“Arizona. For the X-Treme Bowl. We’re students at State College.’’
“What a waste,’’ Ted said with a hint of disgust. “You know the X-Treme Bowl System is rigged against the non-traditional powers, don’t you? It’s a conspiracy to keep the smaller schools down and the powerhouses rich.’’
“Yeah, well, I think we’ll win.’’
“Right. Like it hasn’t already been determined by the AUSC, the networks and Vegas.’’
“You’re not serious are you?’’
Ted looked over at Josh and sized him up. He smirked. “No? If you’re so sure the game is on the up and up, how about we make a friendly wager? Fifty bucks says Golden State wins in overtime, 43-42.’’
The way Ted smirked made Josh nervous. Deciding it would be a good idea to call Danny, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his cellphone. “Yeah, and if we bet, how would I track you down to pay up after I win?’’ He looked down at the phone but there was no signal. Damn.
Ted glanced over at him. “Cell phone, huh? Guess you don’t mind the government listening to all your conversations.’’
“What do you mean?’’
“I mean the government monitors all cell phone conversations, digitally records them and keeps them in a secret storage facility under the Rocky Mountains. It’s the same place they keep all your text messages and email records.’’
Josh looked around the truck’s cab, which seemed brighter than it should be on such a dark night. Then he noticed that the dashboard lights were being reflected by a layer of aluminum foil carefully mounted around the cab’s interior.
“So . . . what’s with the aluminum foil?’’
“It messes up the psycho-tronic rays that the government constantly bombards drivers with along the highway between here and Roswell. The properties of aluminum interfere with the signals and protects your brain from being scanned.’’
Good lord, Josh thought. What was with this guy? He considered asking Ted to stop and let him out but he could see the lights of the gas station glowing just ahead.
But Ted didn’t slow down.
“Hey! You passed the gas station!’’
“Aw, you don’t want to get your gas there. The next place down the road is eight cents a gallon cheaper. It’s just 12 miles away.’’
“Yeah, but I only need one gallon,’’ Josh complained. “I can afford the eight cents. And we’re in kind of a hurry. Let’s go back to the other one.’’
“And subsidize their court appeals over their share of the Alaska oil spill cleanup? No dice.’’
Josh suddenly had visions of being buried alive inside an old water heater. His nervousness was slipping into fear.
“Just turn around, and go back to the first gas station. PLEASE?’’
“All right, all right,’’ Ted agreed, skidding the truck to a stop. He backed up and turned around. “If you want to be an unquestioning drone of the system, I’m not gonna stop you.’’
They stopped at the station, picked up a gallon of gas and drove back to the van, with Ted railing about the great global oil conspiracy the whole way. “The auto companies are working with the oil companies to keep gas mileage low and gas prices high. Cars can get much, much better mileage. GM developed an experimental car that got 200 miles to the gallon in the early ‘70s. They accidentally sold one to this guy who drove across the country on a single tank of gas. He mentioned the great mileage to his dealer and the next night it was stolen, never to be seen again.’’
When Ted dropped Josh off at the van, he grabbed him by the bicep and leaned in toward his face. Josh feared he was going to kiss him but Ted only whispered in his ear, “Be careful. Remember – Big Brother is always watching you. Always.’’ Josh nodded and got out of the truck, giving Ted a half-hearted wave good-bye.
“All right,’’ Josh said, scarcely noticing that despite the snow, everyone was standing outside the van. “I’ve got the gas.’’
“Great,’’ Danny said. “But we’ve got some bad news.
“We’re locked out of the van,’’ said one of the freshman.
Josh set down the gas can. “What??’’
“I was worried that with the snow and the darkness, we might get hit,’’ Danny said, “So I figured we should push the van a little farther off the road. And somehow I locked the keys in the van.’’
“Well, can’t you open it with a wire hangar or something?’’
“We don’t have anything.’’
“No wire hangers, ever!’’ Fairhaven said. (5)
# # #
There was no option but to break open a window, which made for a long and very cold ride to Arizona. They arrived just in time to get stuck in game day traffic, finally pulling into the parking lot 12 minutes before kickoff.
This was the point when they realized that they had lost the tickets.
"I thought you had them.’’
“No Danny, YOU had them. You were waving them around in the strip bar. Calling them our ‘nest egg’ and trying to get one of the strippers to join us.’’
“OH, @#&%! I THINK I LEFT THEM BEHIND THE TOILET WHEN I WAS THROWING UP. EITHER THAT, OR I STUCK THEM IN THAT STRIPPER’S G-STRING.’’
“Say it! Say it!’’ Fairhaven shouted at Danny. “Say, ‘I lost the nest egg!’ Go on say it!” (6)
Because the freshmen were under age, they wound up watching the game in a TGIFriday’s a couple blocks from the stadium. Despite an excellent game from Kenan Hill (14 tackles, one interception, one forced fumble), State College lost. In overtime. The final score was 43-42.
No one spoke much on the long, cold drive back to school.
Next: An Old Friend
Here are the movies Paul Fairhaven referenced in this chapter:
(1) Ollie in many Oliver and Hardy movies
(2) Jack in “Gallipoli’’
(3) Jenny in “Forrest Gump’’
(4) Dean Wormer in “Animal House’’
(5) Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in “Mommie, Dearest’’
(6) Albert Brooks in “Lost in America’’
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