Part 6

We crawled back to the truck after that, and pulled off our soiled and soaked clothing. I turned off the lights, confident that we were far enough off the road to avoid disaster. She pushed me against a wall and stuck her tongue into my mouth, possibly the first young lady I'd had take charge of such an interaction. That muscle explored every corner of my cheeks with gusto, a process it continued above and beyond. We made love twice more that night, and again the morning after… the young creature’s energy and enthusiasm dredging up a stamina in me I no longer thought possible. The thin mattress in its tiny cubbyhole a dirty and unsuitable stage for such bliss, soaked as it now was in the rain and mud and other fluids that poured from our bodies. In my lechery I resolved never to clean the damn thing again, lest the juices that spilled from her be lost and the whole encounter be resigned to an old man’s lonely hallucination.

We slept restlessly between those bouts of lovemaking; two bodies almost certainly not meant to share such close quarters. Hers so fine and fresh, a young lady just entering her prime. Mine so old and scarred, in ways far deeper than could even be seen on the surface. Old aches got the better of me, but I laid there still. Just watching her lithe form breathe. As the storm finally passed and dawn’s first light crept in, I tried to sear that vision into my mind: in vain hope that when I did finally fall into that last ditch on the roadside… that image might be the last thing I’d see. I can’t tell you whether I succeeded in that, but I sure ain’t forgotten the sight yet.

Then in the morning we started rolling again, lurching back into motion in silence and contemplation. She was back in those tiny denim shorts and her tank-top, but had kept my shirt as well. If some small part of me was disappointed to see her fully clothed once more, it didn’t begrudge her the extra warmth at all. I’d seen far more than I deserved already. Somewhere along the way, she reached up and hung something from the sunshade: her panties. That lacy flag a souvenir for what we already both knew was coming. One that’s remained dangling in my cab for all the world to see every single day since, funny looks from bystanders be damned.

Around 10 we hit a truckstop on the outskirts of the city, I left her fidgeting in the cab to go drain one tank and fuel another. When I came back… she was gone. Saving me the pain of a fare-thee-well or the humiliation of begging her not to. I heard a roar of engines and turned to see some rough-looking types on Harleys forming up a messy squadron. Sure enough, there was my shirt: flapping in the wind. She was riding in a younger man’s lap, with those shorts pulled lower than they ought. Perhaps trying for a deeper sense of security, with a new latch hooked in her crook.

Still… she offered me a single wave, as the dust cloud rose and fell. I knew there was little to lament: such a creature could never have stayed. She was just another spirit of the roadside now, a true embodiment of what it meant to be free. Still I watched those dots fade all the way to the horizon… already giving myself the first retelling of this story. For even back then I struggled really to believe it, as I’m sure so has every smart bastard I’ve told since. But I go back to my cab, and see that flag that she left me and smile to myself all the same.