The AM-PMt

The AM-PM
by pam ashlund

If a mathematician were in search of a practical example for a geometry class, he might say “here are two points, one here: X at the top, say Santa Rosa, California for instance, and another down here: X Los Angeles. Now to describe a line, we would connect the two points. For this illustration, the line will be Highway 5. He would be correct. This journey does not require a map. And yet today, as I sped down that Highway famous only for speeding cars (I made it in six hour)s! No it always takes me at least eight. How fast were you going? Numbers are passed back and forth faster than at a roulette-wheel table in Vegas. 80, 90, 110!) I managed to cull one single alternate route into a two-hour detour.

Highway 5, peaceful, light both in traffic and policing, good well-maintained roads, large fluorescent truck stops and park-like rest stops. Driving heaven. After the first three hours I look at the blue signs, but nothing looks large and comforting enough, and finally pull off, actually going over a drop in the pavement onto an old ill-maintained off-ramp into a small town called Delano. There is a K-mart, a Burger King and a very old looking AM-PM. I pull into the AM-PM, gas-up and drive back across to the on-ramp. There I am, back at good-old Highway….99 North. 99? I’ve never seen a route 99 north, I look again and turn back to the convenience mart behind me.

Excuse me miss? Can you tell me how to get back onto Highway 5, I just got off it, but now I can’t find the entrance. I’m sorry to ask such a dumb question, but… “Oh just a minute honey, the cashier says (who should have been chewing gum to complete the picture, but isn’t). Don’t worry, it’s easy, but I have to write it down for you as soon as I ring up these customers.

Write it down. It’s the kind of phrase someone uses that gave rise to the slow-motion, time has taken a walk on the wild-side, Hollywood stereotype, camera only on the mouth, directorial style first seen the Graduate, when Dustin Hoffman tried to comprehend his parents.

Write it down. It’s where the twilight zone music begins, and you start to remember the fog at the off-ramp and you realize the universe really does have a crazy sense of humor and maybe it’s all been designed at your expense as you knew deep down it must, and why was there that bump, that drop as the pavement from the Highway didn’t quite meet the pavement of the off-ramp, and maybe that drop was the single significant event, the moment that reality one ended and reality two began.

And so, pulling myself away from yet a third tortured fantasy, I asked the dreaded question: “If it’s so easy, why do you need to write it down?”. That is the kind of question every level-headed and reasonable person in this world should learn should never be asked out-loud. It only prolongs the inevitable agony that, like destiny, must be marched toward promptly.

“Well, you go down to the stop sign, and you turn left, and then you turn left on Chimera Avenue and go out till the light, where you turn Right on Highway 143. Now, you’re going to feel like you’re out in the boondocks, but keep going, out past the prison.”

Oh the prison. Now I am sure that time has expanded as far as it possibly can, but it expands at least another minute past real-time. I notice that my lips hurt, and that I am smiling, and that releasing the tension built up by the smile somehow feels connected to tear ducts and since crying in the AM-PM, surrounded by annoyed local Mexican field workers and one homeless man is not a desirable outcome, then perhaps I should just keep that smile going another time-exploded minute.

“Past the prison” I say.

“Yes, just keep going, it’s big and you can’t miss it. Follow 143 until you come to 198, and then take 198 all the way up ‘till 5.”

She has written this down, and I take the piece of paper she has penned for me and look at it. It feels like some kind of wafer, and I actually look at it, past the ink, for a moment, thinking about who makes these little pads, and why she has one here. And then luckily, snap back out of pre-psychosis to reality in the name of politeness.

She was written at the top: R=left lane and then R at 143, north to 198 east to 5, take Hamon exit. Why at exit, when you must been an entrance? Why the little code at the top to refer to only one R, which could have been spelled out, and why R not L? It is an organizational style that I am sure is a source of pride, the use of an intelligence that has just one too few opportunities for application.

“I-just-got-off-Highway-5-how-long-will-this-take, oh-god-I-will-never-get-off-at-this-exit-again” pause for short breath, “how long is this going to take?”

“About an hour to the end of 143 and another hour on 198”

“But I just got off Highway 5!” This sophisticated style of repetition-based-logic that only the desperate employ has now become my mainstay.

“Oh no Honey, you’ve been on 99 since the “grapevine” back in LA.”

And then I am off again, on the great open road, pondering among other things, “When do cows sleep”, “Where did all these bugs come from”, “What was that light?”, “Why am I the only car on this road?” “Why do people in small towns inevitably give directions without street names, like turn left at the old Jack ‘n the Box?” “Where is that man walking from, and were could he be going out here?”

The answer to the last, as my headlights illuminate the large muscled arms of a black man walking along the side of the road in a white muscle-t shirt, is, no doubt, from the prison of course. Which only sets off another panicked flood of memories of junior-high camp stories about the girl on the deserted highway, and the main the back seat!

Now I look around me, let the speedometer ease up to 90, and for a brief moment enjoy the peace and calm of the vegetable fields around me and the dark and open road. This is, before life becomes a living video game, when almost out of nowhere there is a very large piece of farm equipment lumbering down the road in my path, and I go from 90 to 30 the way a Porsche would go from 30 to 90. I am there, and he is in front of me. The deep rumble of his engine and the creaks and groans of the empty rusted metal obliterate the previous chirps of cricket song. Soon I know I have to pass, and I do. In front of him is another truck and I pass him as well.. And then a third. It is a convoy good-buddy. Now I am laughing a little , feeling this odd wonder and detachment. To die out here, hit by a white pickup driven by the jealous boyfriend of a local girl, and why? Because I didn’t want to wait for the truck to turn off. Luckily the fourth truck is the last obstacle I encounter.

I do find 198, just as she of the AM-PM promised and driving on to the “Exit” as she writes it, I find another delightfully dark and silent road. This time the prison is an Air Force Base, with a huge drive-in movie theater sized lit sign that says “Drive Carefully When Entering”. I am well past the air-force base when I see a light. I interpret it as a flying plane, following an airstrip, low to the ground, with a dimly illuminated truck following behind it. I watch the “plane” fly about 50 feet, then the direction of the beam changes, points upward, disappears and re-appears. As if the plane has done a slow-low to the ground loop-de-loop, as smoothly and quietly and in the smallest of spaces possible. In fact, defying more than one law of the universe. I watch it again, flying straight, flipping and going back, twice, three times, and then I dismiss it and drive on. Optical illusions involving lights and planes and the proximity of the Base all combine although they did provide the sketch for my soon to come article in the National Inquirer “Woman Sees UFO in Desert at Midnight.”

I drive and drive (and dare I say, drive some more), at least 30 minutes past the odd non-planes when the sky lights up, an impressive display, two quick bright flashes. The clouds and the fields and the great wide plains are illuminated as in daylight. I see the interior of my car clearly. The flashes startle me into a state of awake ness that rivals a Double Latté. I have another science fiction moment. In the stillness of the night I think of Close Encounters, and my eyes scan the horizon for beautiful small pink alien starships, but they do not come. I will never know if the cause was a military explosion or just a bit of heat lightening.

Then ahead is Highway 5. Two hours and suddenly a fleeting sense of disappointment. Back to only Franchised-Planned-and-packaged events, gas, truck stop, Motel 6, not even a run-down AM-PM. I look at the little crunched piece of paper, still in my hand, with R=Left at the top, and finally release it to flutter down to the floor boards with the Evian Water Bottles and the empty earth-friendly grilled chicken box from Burger King, and turn on cruise-control.

Fin.

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