Drive to Provide
He was not someone who you’d look twice at if passed by on the street. An everyday-man in every sense of the word. But beneath the ubiquitously ordinary looks was someone who’d always searched for more. Never seeming to find it and so he drove. Charlie always looks for an excuse to drive. In a city where most people live and die by their cars, Charlie is not the exception.
Charlie looks to his fuel gauge. His car is running on empty, propelled only by the warm gusty winds in the mountain pass. A warning light deemed, ‘low oil,’ blinks conspicuously every few seconds. Check engine. Check wiper fuel. Check oil. Check brakes.
Charlie’s chariot of choice (or lack thereof) is a cola brown 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, coupe. But as the logo read on the back end, it was now a ‘Cut_ass _____reme.’ He never bothered to replace the fallen letters. The interior was a coffee color cloth. The kind that retains all kinds of smells and bodily odors. And Charlie’s car was definitely not the exception to this rule. It is the rule to the exception. The car reeks of fast-food wrappers, crusty cereal bowls, and warm deposits of molecular human waste (i.e. farts) embedded deep into the seats. His doctor attributed Charlie’s constant gas to his sadness. On the rarest of occasions when Charlie has the company of the opposite sex, he routinely blames the odor on the vents.
At the time the car was manufactured it was marketed towards a Suburban Professional White Male seeking a luxurious sporty coupe. Charlie fit the profile, but he was 20 years too late.
“Why check it when I can’t refill it?” Charlie would tell the gas station attendant. “Fix it when it aint broke,” Farhad would reply in his thick accent. Farhad did not entirely have a grasp of the expression but to Charlie his version made perfect sense nonetheless. Repairs were imminent. Many things needed repairing in Charlie’s life. Especially his car. But like his emotional turmoil, his car would be put off.
He wondered whether he would make it home today. His car had given him trouble before but it always made it home. “I should have filled up last night when I had the money.” But he needed to eat. He had just enough to buy combo number one at Jack in the Box. Two tacos, french-fries, and a diet coke. “The tacos were tofu,” he’d rationalize to himself. He used to eat healthy. But eating healthy comes with a price. Everything good does, Charlie thought. No one believed Charlie when he’d tell them the tacos were tofu. Sometimes it makes Charlie feel special to say he is a vegetarian. He isn’t.
But lately his car has been requiring more fuel than he has. “What do you want from me?” he yelled. “I have nothing more to give.” He looks to the lanes beside him as other cars race past, honking as they cut him off. The car makes a loud clanking noise as the engine churns, struggling to make it up and over the hill. Much like Charlie’s life, the road up has been unbearable with few moments of ease but once over the hill, it’s been nothing but down. Mundane to the max.
He looks to his right admiring his favorite house off the highway as he passes. The house resembles a castle, secluded on top of the hill. With everything beneath it and nothing but the heavens above it. A dimly lit red light flickers in an open window. “Is anyone home?” Charlie thought. It doesn’t matter he thinks. Someone lives there and they’re happy. Even if they’re never home. Even if they take it for granted. They are happy Charlie thought. Taking something for granted is man’s way of unconsciously realizing that they have no use for it but cannot live without it nevertheless.
His place of residence was “quaint and cozy,” as he described it to his co-workers. A nicer way of saying small and inconvenient, he would realize soon after saying this.
He’s starting to become agitated. His gaslight went out the other day and he has no way of knowing if he’ll make it home. “Who would I call? You have left me with no one!” he yells. “The least you could have done is make me alone and filthy rich. Show me your master lesson another way. I’d live in that castle on top of the hill. And I’d be happy.”
He sees a man walking along the highway. He thinks to himself it can always be worse. God, what did he do to deserve that? “At least I’ve got this beat up shitbox,” but it wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He had it all and lost it all and even more on top of it all. His was the story of past regret and unalterable mistakes. But whose isn’t?
He lost everything when the stock market crashed. Followed by the loss of his lucrative position at a dot com. He was in debt. Who isn’t he’d tell his wife. She left him and took the kids soon after. There was always something more to give and nothing left to take.
“They will not take my soul. They took the house they took the cars. They took my fucking family. My pride. My dignity. My morale. My way of life. At least I have this fucking shitbox.” Just as he says this, the car stalls and a loud beep begins to drone endlessly.
“Drive!” he yelled banging the steering wheel. “You’re driving me fucking crazy. Don’t give up on me now.”
He pulls over to the emergency lane.
Charlie curses a mile a minute, punches his steering wheel, feverish. “This is not what I need,” he murmurs as he flicks his hazard lights on. “I don’t fucking need this, fucking shit box.” He steps out of the car and drives his knee into the driver side door. He makes quick work of the taillights smashing the exterior and the bulbs inside. He’s crying. A grown man on the side of the road driven insane.
The old man, who was seen earlier walking along the highway, slowly approaches. Charlie is now sitting on the floor against his rear tire, head in hands.
The old man looks tired of walking. His feet barely seem to touch the ground.
“Settle down, son.” the Old Man says. “Whatever you’re crying over is never worth it. Look at it this way. Think about whatever it is that you lost or can’t have. Think about having itâÂ?¦ but both your legs are amputated. Do you still want it?” The old man lets out a faint laugh.
“Get yourself a car, and get the fuck out of my face,” replies Charlie.
“I prefer walking.”
“I prefer it if you’d keep walking.”
The man does. Life seems to move too slowly to hold him down. He has somewhere to go. He moves with purpose. A destination is ahead. “It’s all I had,” says Charlie. “It’s all I needed.”
“You should have taken better care of it. Someone obviously never taught you to value what you own.”
“And what about you? What do you value? You’re a fucking bum roaming along the highway. I used to own a home. I had a house on a hill before they took it.”
“They?”
“Yes they.”
“They like to keep people like you down, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Did you ever stop to think that whatever it is that you lost, you never really had,” says the Old Man. “No,” replies Charlie. “I haven’t.” “Can I ask you a question?” says the Old Man. “Please do.”
“Do you own that car? Any payments, left?”
“No. It’s fully paid off,” replies Charlie.
“I wonder how you’d treat it if it belonged to the bank?”
“Where are you headed?” says Charlie. “Are you trying to offer me a ride?” replies the Old Man. “I don’t have anything to offer you,” replies Charlie.
“It’s unfortunate you see things that way.”
“I see things the way they are,” replies Charlie. “I see,” says the Old Man. “What exactly do you see, old man?” asks Charlie. “The light,” replies the Old Man.
“I see a light too,” says Charlie. “Good. I lit it for you,” says the Old Man.
“Excuse me?” asks Charlie. “What are you saying?” “The same thing I’ve been trying to tell you for the last two minutes,” replies the Old Man. “For the last 10 days. The last 10 months. The last ten years.”
“And what’s that?” asks Charlie. “It doesn’t matter now,” says the Old Man. “I had to come down to tell you in person.”
“Come down?” asks Charlie. “Do not confuse me with an angel, son,” replies the Old Man. “An angel I am not.”
Charlie begins to walk across the highway towards the emergency lane. He crosses the center divider and walks across the four lanes to the shoulder. He’s near the edge now. He looks down into the canyon beneath him. He kicks a crushed empty soda can over. He looks down to watch it’s fall but it’s too dark to see. The faint sound of tin is heard trickling down the hill. Charlie stares at the soil beneath his feet and watches it coming apart and sidle down the earth.
“He will,” yells the Old Man with all the force he can muster. Charlie looks over his shoulder. The Old Man remains on the opposite side of the freeway. Charlie nods reassured and slowly turns back around facing the earth with the gravel and concrete behind him. A smile forms on his face beneath an unseen frown.
He came all the way down to tell him. To answer the question Charlie needed an answer to. Yet, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough for Charlie. It never was. The soil was loosening beneath the Old Man’s feet. So he continued to walk along the highway, the cars racing past him, never stopping continuing on this vast freeway.
