Ted of the d’Urbervilles

I crawled through the busted-out window of the deserted house, catching my foot on the jagged sill. In I tumbled, landing with a dull thud and a loud oomph on the junk-ridden floor. Sighing as I righted myself, I managed a “Ta da,” if only for the benefit of the scampering roaches and other assorted vermin I shared my home with—home of course being such a subjective word. Hovel was more appropriate. Dump, yes; dump definitely would’ve worked, too. Hey, let’s also throw in some nifty adjectives here, just to better paint the picture: ramshackle, bleak, moldy, and, um, demolishable. Not that the last one was a word, but this wasn’t a home either, at least not mine, at least not legally, so we’ll go with it. All that is to say…”My name is Ted d’Urbervilles and I am a squatter.” A mosquito admired my candor as he also admired my jugular. I swatted it away as I hopped up and dusted myself off. I would’ve taken a shower, but the shack—yeah, shack would’ve worked, too—didn’t have running water. Running mice, sure, but water, not so much. Dripping water, but only when it rained. As for electricity, well, at least I could plug my iPad into the wall at the nearby gas station. FYI, I found said device. FYI, I found it sitting on a table at Starbucks. Finders keepers, losers can go buy another f*****g iPad. Last FYI, for now, I also showered at the gas station. Or at least sinkered. Which was also not a word so much as a way of life, what with my life being quite, uh, sunk. By some sort of miracle akin to Moses’s parting the waters—had the hovel/dump/shack had any water, when it didn’t rain, that is—the place did have an Internet connection. Sort of. That is to say, somewhere within some sort of radius of me and my vermin friends there was a person with an Internet connection and a password that was indeed password. Ergo, I had Internet because the nearby he or she was a moron. So, there I stood, iPad on the counter, the only light that of the screen, illuminating my face as I perused. Porn. Because when you’re dead broke and sucking on a McDonald’s ketchup packet as a midday snack, porn is pretty much the only thing that gets a guy through the day. And night. And, uh, morning. Porn and ketchup. That’s what my life had become. Me and the mice. I wondered if mice liked gay porn. I’d have to ask them. They tended to come out at night, just after I’d come at night and had then huddled myself in a corner. God, I wished for a f*****g break. Or some bread to spread the ketchup on. Or for a blanket, as the corner was rather drafty. Or for a roof that didn’t leak. Hey, even the Internet was spotty, but wasn’t that par for my f*****g course? Par and birdie and eagle. Heck, it was a hole in one, and holes I had plenty of: in the roof, in the walls, in the floor, in my ramshackle, demolishable life. Yeah, that last one especially. Ding. I craned my neck up from the drafty, dusty corner. “Ding?” I again hopped up. My ears went left to right and back again. Where had the ding come from? As my ears came to a standstill, my eyes landed on my still glowing iPad. It had been on when I found it. I’d quickly changed the settings so it wouldn’t turn off. So long as it had power, I didn’t need the password. I walked to the glowing device, my nightlight, my connection to a world I no longer seemed to inhabit. Poverty, as it turns out, tends to relegate you to the seedy recesses of the world. I glanced at my surroundings. “Seedy,” I lamented. I then glanced at the iPad. I’d checked my sss earlier. There had been nothing but spam. Numerous people offered me ways to break my timesharing lease. Seemed to me, I was already on borrowed time, which was far more sad than ironic. In any case, I now had a real email, my first in longer than I could remember. I had no family. My friends had vanished just as my money had. That was also more sad than ironic. Still, I checked my sss when I could, if only for consistency’s sake. And now I had an email from one Maximillian Ditmore, Esquire. Maximillian didn’t write for the magazine, namely said Esquire, but he did practice law. Turned out, my cousin Mortimore had died. Turned out, I had a cousin Mortimore. I didn’t know what to be more astonished by, that I had a cousin or that someone could name a child Mortimore. I read further. Didn’t take me long. There was to be a reading of the will, and that was about all Maximillian had to say. As an heir, I was invited. The reading was in seven days’ time. I was in California. The reading was in New York, a two-hour drive from Manhattan. I was broke. New York might as well have been New Mars. Still, where there’s a will—literally—there’s a way. Which is to say, I RSVP’d yes. I neglected to say that I didn’t have a cousin Mortimore, that I didn’t have a cousin, period. I’d been an only child. My parents had passed away when I was seventeen, six years earlier. I had one aunt who had died in her youth. Cancer. Took my mom, too. Dad killed himself. Dad, turned out, wasn’t good on his own. Me, I was great at it, if only by necessity. They say that ten thousand hours of doing anything will make you an expert. Me, I had my Masters in bumming, a PhD in panhandling. Dad took the easy way out. I was either too chicken or simply a glutton for punishment. Or maybe fate had other plans for me. I mean, look at me; I was an heir. But an heir to what? * * * * I packed my belongings and left. Packing took all of two minutes. I left the iPad behind. I tended to doubt I could keep it powered on. Maybe Dad felt the same way. Bitter party, table for one? Fine, but, to be fair, everything I owned in the entire world fit into a small backpack, and so bitter was about all I could muster. Any other emotion would be too hard to maintain, and so I generally abstained. I walked outside as the dawn yawned its way to life. I echoed the maneuver. I had seven days to make it across the country, without a car, with five dollars and seventy-six cents to my name. It seemed daunting, but I’d survived the past six years; seven days across the country was a walk in the park. Granted, a three-thousand-mile stretch of park, but still. Plus, there were ketchup packets in every state. Porn, too. So what did I have to lose? More importantly, what did I have to gain? I headed east. I headed toward a highway. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Ditto for three-thousand. I’d washed in the gas station sink the night before. My clothes didn’t stink. I was young, relatively handsome, and gave great thumb. Which is to say, I was picked up in about twenty minutes flat. “Where you headed?” asked the truck driver from way up high in her cab. I shielded my eyes as I stared up at her. She looked to be in her fifties. She looked like she’d have excelled at roller derby and sounded like she swallowed half the gravel on the road. “You a mass murderer?” I asked. She winked down at me. “Gave it up for Lent. Saved me a ton on dry cleaning, blood being a b***h to wash out. You?” I shrugged. I pointed at my clothes. “No blood.” Mainly because I sold it by the gallon. Got me a free cookie and some juice and a few bucks in my pocket. “Didn’t even dissect the frogs in high school.” Life was cruel enough as it was, and what did a frog ever do to me? “Where you headed?” she asked. “New York.” I got a chill when I said it. Fork meet road. She shrugged and swung open the passenger door. It groaned in reply. “Heading to Phoenix. That’ll get you a bit closer. Okay?” I matched her shrug with one of my own. “I hear it’s hot there.” I ran around the front of the truck. I tossed my meager backpack up just before I tossed myself up. I then slammed the door and stared her way. She smiled. Her teeth were cigarette-filter yellow. You’d be hard-pressed to find a house painted that color. “An oven should be so hot, kid.” “Ted,” I said, holding my hand out in greeting. “Giselle,” she replied. She didn’t look like a Giselle. She looked like one of those women with a boy’s name. Lou. Or Berty. I wondered what my dead cousin Mortimer looked like. Dead was all I could come up with. “Buckle up, Ted. Blood is also a b***h to get out of leather.” “I hope that’s second-hand knowledge.” She chuckled. The truck roared to life. Both sounds sounded alike. “No fatalities yet,” she replied. “Here’s hoping you keep your record.” She made the sign of the cross over her ample chest. “From your lips to God’s ears.” I stared at the road. “He stopped listening years ago.” Six, to be exact. She didn’t reply. We drove in silence until she turned on the radio. Abba. It was a CD. Giselle was chockful of surprises. I bet she kept them in her bosom. There was room for half of Pittsburg in there, with a fair bit of Cleveland. Not that I’d ever been out of California, but it was a good guess. “What’s in New York, Ted?” she asked, once we were in the middle of nowhere and conversation was less boring than the road. “Family.” She nodded. “Family is everything.” I blinked. I held in a sigh. They say it’s easier to laugh than to cry. Me, I found both just as difficult. “You have a family, Giselle?” She flipped down the passenger-side visor. There was a faded photo. A man, three kids, a dog, a small brick house, and a manicured lawn. My sigh escaped. “Hard to be away from them,” she said, “but bills are bills.” Funny, I had no bills, and envied hers. Not ha-ha funny, though. “How often do you see them?” “Weekends. Curt works from home. Telemarketing.” Her chuckle returned. If you liked the sound of crunching gravel, Giselle was the woman for you. “I’m the breadwinner in the family. My mom cooked and cleaned and made us dinner every night. Me, I drive a truck.” She briefly looked my way. “Life can really f**k with you, Ted.” It looked like she was trying to pass some sort of wisdom along to me. If she only knew about my PhD, right? “What would you rather do, ma’am? What would you want to do if you didn’t have to drive a truck?” She nodded. She stared back at the road as she gripped the massive wheel. She was a big woman. The wheel didn’t stand a chance. “Dance instructor.” I laughed. I felt bad for laughing but, come on. Dance instructor? What, for prisoners? I covered my mouth. A tear streaked down my cheek. I stared at her family and tried to remember the last time I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. She was also laughing, large chest bouncing atop the equally large wheel. I relaxed. I hadn’t realized my shoulders had been bunched up. Then again, maybe they’d been that way for days, weeks. “Three kids and nothing but road food can change a person, Ted. Still, inside is a dancer. I think she’s lodged in behind a kidney.” Her laugh amped up as the truck picked up steam. “Anyway, you asked.” “I bet you were a beautiful dancer, Giselle.” I had less than six dollars on me. Meaning, I had little to bet with. “Thanks, Ted. You’re lying, but thanks.” I shifted in my seat and looked back her way. This was the longest conversation I’d had with someone outside of a coffee house or a gas station in ages. I’d been dammed up, but the cork seemed to have popped free. “Do you always pick up hitchhikers?” She again briefly looked my way. “When the mood strikes me.” She smiled. “Guess I was in the mood.” Her head again faced forward. “You ever been to New York?” I’d never been anywhere. Even when my parents were alive, we were mostly poor. If I got to go to a zoo, it was a day for celebration. Don’t get me wrong, though; I had a good childhood. My parents loved me and showed it, when they had the time. It was just my adulthood that sucked. I mean seriously sucked. Hoover should suck so well. “Nope. First time. First time meeting the family, too.” She nodded. Her boobs bounced. She could probably take me in a fight, I figured. Maybe that’s why she picked me up. I was company, not a threat. Then again, I’d been surviving off purloined condiments as of late, so threatening I was not. More lost-puppy looking, really. “You’re meeting your family for the first time? All the way in New York?” I was the heir to something. I had nothing. Something was better than nothing, and so, New York could just as easily have been a walk around the block for all I cared. Also, this was an adventure. Even if I was heir to a stuffed doll, I was leaving San Francisco. I was leaving California. I was leaving a past that held no future. It was as if the off button buried deep down in my soul had suddenly been flicked on, Dorothy now burnished in glorious Technicolor. But was my destination Oz? Yep, that remained to be seen. In any case, I replied, “My cousin Mortimer died.” It was now her turn to inappropriately laugh. “You have a cousin named Mortimer?” “Had. And yes. And that was my first reaction, too.” “You think they called him Morty?” I scrunched up my face. I turned and stared out the window. In the cab, you couldn’t see the other cars on either side of you. All you saw was passing scenery, rolling green hills, the occasional cow, hawks, scrubby bushes. I’d never seen any of this before. We were barely out of the city. “Morty.” I tried it on for size. Nope, it didn’t fit. “God, I hope not.” “Mort,” she said. “It’s Latin for death.” I grinned, and not because she knew Latin. I mean, she could drive a truck; that was pretty awesome, in and of itself. She raised three kids, so what was a little Latin? “Guess he finally grew into his name then.” I looked her way. “Better late than never.” “You always this gloomy, Ted?” I blinked her way. I wondered if her kids were proud of her. I wondered if her kids were embarrassed that their mother was a trucker. I had no family to wonder about, and so I wondered about hers. Only, now I had my own to do so with. Weird. “Gloomy. Always,” I replied. Always being six years. Six years can seem like a lifetime, by the way. I hoped I would also grow out of it. I hoped it would happen earlier rather than later. It was good to at least have hope, even if it was just a sliver. Either way, I had Giselle. Until Phoenix, that is. “You’re too young for that,” she admonished. Tell me about it. “Let’s just say, I’ve been through a lot.” Which was an understatement of the gross variety. She didn’t reply—at least not for about another twenty minutes. We drove in silence. The truck rocked me into a stupor. I thought of cousin Mortimer. How old was he when he died? What did he die from? How did Maximillian find me? How did he even know about me? Did I have other cousins, other family? All these questions welled inside me, swirling around inside my head like a swarm. I caught a glimpse of a tunnel up ahead. In we went. Giselle pointed up ahead. “Light.” I grinned. I got it. Here was her reply to me being through a lot. “Trucker philosophy?” Her now-standard chuckle gusted through my swarm. “Best not to let yourself get weighed down by the s**t, Ted. The s**t will always be there. My youngest needs braces. The oldest is failing English. English, Ted. The language he speaks all day.” We emerged from the darkness. “Every tunnel ends this way. Every single one. It’s okay to dip your toe into the gloom; just don’t get mired in it. Janie will get braces. Paul will pass English. Neither will remember the s**t. I’ll look back on it all and laugh. That’s life.” I smiled for her benefit. My parents were dead. They couldn’t look back on this s**t and laugh. I tended to doubt I could, either. I dipped my toe in and ended up neck-deep. It was slow-sand. Slow is far worse than quick. Slow f***s you up. Still, it was nice of Giselle to try. It was almost like having a mother again. “What’s the middle one’s problem?” She shook her head. “Don’t get me started on Jefferey.” “My father killed himself,” I blurted out. In six years, I’d never uttered those words. My friends, who slipped away as my life, too, slipped away, never talked about it with me. In any case, they called the first month. They stopped calling after that. I was damaged goods. I was an orphan. Teenagers don’t deal with heavy stuff all that well. I think they thought I was contagious, that death was following me around like some sort of lost mutt. I wiped the wetness from my cheek. I’d been crying. Go figure. “Oh,” she said, her hand over her heart. Or as close as her hand could get to it, what with all the bosom blocking her way. “I’m, uh…” “Yeah,” I sniffled. The tears kept flowing. Like I said, my cork had popped. Guess there was a lot of pent up stuff behind it. Again, go figure. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.” I stared at her through the salty water. “I think I got lost in the tunnel.” She reached across the wide divide and patted my knee. “You’ll find your way, Ted.” “You sure about that?” Because I sure as hell wasn’t. Her head bobbed up and down in time with her boobs. Maybe that’s why Janie needed braces: her baby mouth simply had too much to work with. “I’m sure, Ted. You meet people and can tell. You wouldn’t have started hitchhiking if you didn’t have the chutzpah.” “Chutzpah?” It sounded more like a way to release phlegm than a word. “Nerve, Ted. People without nerve usually don’t achieve anything.” “Usually.” A sigh replaced the chuckle. “Watch, Ted.” I didn’t know what to watch for, but I stared ahead. She pulled off the highway in order to merge with another one, to head farther south. We took a wide turn, the three lanes becoming two. The hills were replaced by farms. Something green was growing off to our side. “What is it?” I asked. “Artichokes.” I scratched at my chin. I was pretty certain I’d never eaten an artichoke before. Or stolen one from a McDonald’s. Or eaten one out of a dumpster. “There a lesson to learn from the humble artichoke, Giselle?” “Nope. Hate the stuff.” “Lost me.” She shrugged. “We took a turn. The horizon changed. Everything is new and different.” “You missed your calling, Giselle.” There was the chuckle again. It was a sound a person could grow to love. Sure, you had to like gravel, but love would bloom just like those artichokes did. “I missed a lot of callings, Ted. That’s okay, though; there’s more to be had.” “Just around the bend?” The shrug rose and fell again. “It’s always darkest before the dawn. Rainbows follow a thunderstorm. It’s all f*****g true, Ted. Pardon my French.” “French and Latin, Giselle; you’re a real renaissance woman.” The chuckle grew to a laugh. I wondered what the artichokes would look like when they grew. I only knew of lettuce and tomatoes, of what fit snuggly atop a burger. I’d only ever seen one horizon. But at least I had chutzpah. Perhaps I would find my way out of the tunnel, though I still wasn’t laying any bets with my less than six dollars. “I like you, Ted.” My heart suddenly pounded. Affection. I recognized it even though I hadn’t experienced it in quite some time. I touched my again-wet cheek. Damn. f*****g corks. “I like you, too, Giselle.” But you’re going to leave me. Phoenix isn’t that far away. New horizon, same s**t. I thought it; I tried really hard not to believe it. * * * * Eight hours and four Big Macs later—which Giselle paid for—and we were in Phoenix. San Francisco is cold. When it gets hot, it’s nothing but a passing trend. I was always cold, even in the summer. Or especially in the summer, when the fog took hold, when it sunk its teeth in like a pit bull with a bad temperament. Phoenix was hot. Phoenix could give an oven a run for its money. Phoenix was flat, too, not a hill to be seen, rolling or otherwise. The mountains stood guard in the distance, the sky already turning a brilliant pink, waiting, it seemed, for the inevitable purple and black. My heart again pounded as we pulled into a truck stop. This is where I got off. My thumb began to itch in anticipation. “Wait here,” she told me. She hopped out before I could ask why. I watched her as she walked to a row of trucks, all of them neatly lined up in the rear of the parking lot. She disappeared around the side of a semi. I thought again of Mortimer. Did he have a Janie? Did he have a Paul? Did I have cousins who would buy me Big Macs and let me cry inside their cars? Giselle didn’t look like a dancer. Did I look like a homeless person? Was the stink of it permanent on me? Could you shake the s**t off if you shook hard enough? Giselle reappeared. Her chest bounced in front of her. I bet she was popular with the other truckers, one of which was by her side. Handsome guy, or so it seemed from a distance. I guessed him to be in his mid-thirties. He had a beard the size of a beehive and short, cropped hair. He was wearing flannel, jeans, boots. She was smiling. He was smiling. I rarely smiled, so why start now? I hopped out of the truck and waited, backpack slung over my shoulder. The guy waved. I waved in return. “Howdy,” he said as ten feet grew to five, five to one. Up close, the trucker dude was even more handsome, a bit of grey at the temples, crow’s feet crinkling as his smile grew a few watts brighter. He held out his hand. “Chuck,” he said by way of an introduction. Chuck looked like a Chuck, though Chuck, like Giselle, didn’t look like a trucker. What did I look like? “Ted,” I said. I could feel the smile on my face. I thought to touch it, to see if it was real, but his hand was still in mine. Smiling was new to me. It would take some getting used to. Chuck, nah, Chuck would be easy to get use to, seeing how easy on the eyes he was. “And, uh, howdy.” Howdy. First time for everything. Giselle rolled her eyes. “Chuck’s headed to Denver, says he can take you there. That cool?” Cucumbers should be so f*****g cool. I nodded his way. “Thanks.” I turned to Giselle. Heat rose up my neck and burned my cheeks. I knew her for barely half a day, and yet… I blinked. She was hugging me goodbye. I stiffened, then relaxed into the embrace. Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I chalked my sudden bounty of emotions up to that popped cork, to a full meal in my belly, to my odd day of firsts. Mainly, I just missed my mom. “Take care, Ted,” she said. She broke the hug and walked over to the driver’s side of her cab. Up she went. I got a wink and a wave goodbye before she left. She’d told me she had dinner plans at a friend’s house. Chuck hadn’t been mentioned. I gulped. I was alone with a perfect stranger—emphasis on the perfect. I watched as Giselle’s truck disappeared down the highway. I touched my cheek. Damn, wet again. I looked to Chuck. “Ready?” He grinned. “We leave at six in the morning. Already been driving since Reno.” “Oh, uh, okay. I’ll meet you at your truck then.” What was one night sleeping outside? Wouldn’t be yet another first. Plus, it was still warm outside, and as for dinner, we were at a truck stop; dumpster diving should, I figured, prove bountiful. “See you in the morning, Chuck.” He patted my shoulder. “Giselle said to take care of you.” He grinned. He looked like a bearded version of George Clooney. “Actually, threatened was more like it.” He pointed at his truck. “You can have the front seat. I sleep in the back. Dinner is waiting. Come on.” He was walking away before I could object. Not that I planned on doing so, but still. My earlier gulp echoed itself, growing from lemon-sized to grapefruit. I had six more days to get to New York. I needed to keep moving. I needed sleep and food, too. I wasn’t accustomed to options. I wasn’t accustomed to bearded George Clooneys either. Besides, one night of sleep in a truck wouldn’t set me too far behind. I’d make up time later, I figured. Maybe Chuck would pass me along to someone else once we hit Denver. Or kill me in my sleep. Dump my body in the Rockies. No one would even know the difference. No one would even care. I was standing by the trucker a moment later. “Why are you crying, Ted?” I shrugged. “Allergies, Chuck. f*****g allergies.”