This Route Requires Tolls
There is the slightest hint of blue in the sky, clean, no clouds to be seen. Following the nightly rain, the grass is bright and green. Below, the road, the gray, dark, road seems to go on for eternity.
My mother and I begin our road-trip, first experiencing the joy that comes with just getting on the road. We are thrilled to start our journey, finding ourselves thinking about nothing but the destination that lies ahead of us. But soon, these thoughts of arrival turn to thoughts of the torturous ride in our midst. Just thinking about the next seven hours causes our backs to become stiff and our bladders to become heavy. We squirm in our seats and constantly change the radio, having run out of conversation topics early, in the first twenty minutes of our drive. Riding in the passenger seat has its advantages; the freedom to keep my eyes unfocused from the boring yellow lines of the highway, most of all. I resort to people watching.
The cars that surround my own speed by. There is a family, clearly driving home from Wal-Mart, in their mini-van, watching Dora on the car’s built-in theatre system. A semi-truck with a series of mattresses, precariously duct-taped and attached to the back with bungee cords, sits in the lane next to us. To our front, I see a u-hall being pulled by some sort of Kia, moving into a new home or transporting goods for a privately owned business. It appears to be a good day for a move. A clear sky, no apparent chance for rain in these parts, but the sun is hard to find in the sky. Nice conditions for the constant walk between u-haul and home, no storm or blinding, hot sun.
As we travel south, it’s beginning to rain. The pavement gets wet and slick. All the drivers on the road flip on their wipers and their headlights are bumped to full capacity. It’s just a light drizzle, but each driver can be seen, through their windows, gripping steering wheels a little tighter, while leaning forward in their seats to getting a better view of the darkening high-way.
We pull up behind a small school bus. Although, I see this day as my time away from school, these children have spent the last eight hours bent over school work. The young girls and boys sat in their small, wooden desks, while copying pages upon pages of information from the dry-erase boards, before finally being released out to recess, and eventually out to the yellow busses that would take them home. While they spent all this time learning, I have spent the last few hours uncomfortably sitting six inches from my mother in a small gray vehicle. My aunt, who has now joined us, sits in the back, spewing information at my mother and I. Her speech is almost too fast for me to comprehend, and I wonder if it would help to give her a dry-erase board, in order to visually express her lectures.
We stop at a gas station for provisions. I walk into the convenience store to use the restroom. Just beyond the threshold, I encounter shelves full of cowboy hats and tacky souvenir lighters. I force myself to purchase a sandwich, despite my lack of hunger, in hopes to avoid a stop later on in the trip. My mother and I each buy a coffee. At this, more or less, halfway point in the trip, we are both running low on energy and need a bit of a pick-me-up. We hope the sugar and caffeine in our cappuccinos will get the job done.
As I return to the confines of our metal trap, I unwrap the sandwich and force down a bite. I am pleasantly surprised. For a rest-stop deli, the Italian sub is shockingly first-rate. I realize how hungry I must have been, and scarf down the sandwich. Before my mother has time to finish pumping and paying for gas, I have already finished my half of the morsel and am ready to give her the rest. With my belly full, I feel my eyelids get heavy and tired. It is time for my mid-trip nap.
Try as I might, sleep refuses to come as we reach hour four of our ride. I twist and turn in my seat, attempting to find the most comfortable way to rest. The seatbelt is too tight around my neck this way, too loose if I shift the other, and eventually, I find, that even with the seat reclined to its fullest capability, I am unable to find comfort in a car of this size. I sit up angrily and turn up the radio, trying to startle myself to the fullest point of consciousness. I sit, steaming at my car’s inability to serve as a proper bed, and guzzle my coffee.
Back into the rhythm of highway traffic, we are saddened to find the rain has picked up. Now, driving through a steady downpour, my mother clings even tighter to the wheel, her eyes glued to the pavement. My aunt and I grow quiet, allowing her to concentrate. The sky begins to darken, and, despite a lack of visible clouds in the sky, it continues to rain. As night sets upon the endless fields, cars become more and more scarce.
We come upon a toll road. I scramble around the car as my mom yells to me, “We need cash! I don’t have any! Where is your purse?” I manage to find a few dollars and some change. She plucks the quarters from my handful of metal and hands the woman inside the booth five dollars. Once again, we are off. But this encounter has heightened our spirits. Now on the toll road, we feel our destination is in sight. We know there is only this final stretch of highway standing between us and a warm bed. My mother and aunt will drop me off at school, where I will return to the familiar, and altogether curious, smell of my dorm room. While I quickly run to my bed, my dearest family will find rest without me, in the cold-unknown beds of a hotel room.
We continue along our final bit of pavement. Exhausted, we do not speak much. The moon is high in the sky, and the rain has long since ceased. The occasional semi-truck passes, splashing leftover rain water onto our low-lying windows. Their drivers sipping their coffee and “5-hour energies” while they diligently deliver bread or soda across the country. The road is now calm and forgiving to us midnight drivers.
