Laurentian Divide by Sarah Stonich

Author:Sarah Stonich [Stonich, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000 Fiction / Literary, FIC044000 Fiction / Contemporary Women
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

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When Alpo was twenty, he had a summer job driving semi to pay his tuition at VoTech. His cargo was prefab homes—little houses made of ticky-tacky. His route took him from the Iron Range to the Twin Cities four times a week with another driver, each delivering half of a house to the site. He picked up a lot of hitchhikers on those runs—hippies headed up from the Cities, some going to the old Communist camp where a commune was forming; a few making pilgrimages to Bob Dylan’s birthplace in Hibbing, perhaps expecting more inspiration than the unshaded pavements and the soaped storefront windows of a fading mining town. The girls smelled of patchouli and limes and did not shave their armpits and were wonderful. The boys offered or tried selling Alpo drugs. Alpo considered most of them deadbeats.

He’d become more selective after picking up a kid obviously doped with something.

“Acid, man. You should trip with me. Wanna tab?”

“Nah,” Alpo held up his can of Tab. “Already got one.”

That went over the kid’s head. The actual trip went from bad to worse when a doe leapt directly into the truck’s path. While Alpo pried the carcass from the Peterbilt’s grill with the claw end of a hammer, the guy was doubled over on the roadside, announcing repeatedly to each of his bare toes that he was “fucking freaking the fuck out,” then began swinging his head so forcefully a bead on one of his dreadlocks knocked one of his front teeth down his throat and Alpo had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him.

Some of his stoner passengers were more amusing, assigning wonderment and new perspective to sights he sped past without seeing. Tamarack trees. Who knew they were the color of a Push-Up? That heron walks just like John Cleese. What does a Red Pegasus have to do with gasoline?

Most were dropouts from school or their families or work—seemingly proud of doing nothing as if it were some brave act. Their only plans as far as Alpo could tell were to chill and get their minds blown—concepts that he frankly could not get his own around. None ever seemed to have any money, so Alpo ended up buying a lot of coffee, which seemed a small price for the company. As for gas, Pine Homes (The Man) was footing that bill.

He listened to their circuitous ramblings and philosophies and rage against the Establishment. When that got old, he let them tune the radio. Alpo sang along with them to the ballads and rock tunes, failing to picture himself going to San Francisco with flowers in his hair, wondering if Mick Jagger was being literal about wanting to be bled on.

On his last run of the summer, he was pulling half of a two-bedroom ranch, poly-wrapped so you could see into it like a doll’s house. His partner Rob hauled the other half, and since neither had any riders that day, they stopped for a long lunch. Each had a beer, then realizing they were on top of schedule, had one more.

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