The Open Road

The highway unwound endlessly before them. Cornfields gave way to soybean fields. Soybean fields gave way to rolling hills. Small towns appeared on the horizon and vanished in the rearview mirror. The radio drifted from classic rock to country to static and back again.

Jon drove while Brandi sat with one bare foot tucked beneath her and watched the country slide past her window. Neither of them had realized how much they missed this. They had real conversations, the kind they used to have before life became an endless series of responsibilities.

They wandered aimlessly from one subject to another without needing to accomplish anything. Conversations that started with something as mundane as a billboard or a passing truck and somehow ended an hour later in completely different territory.

There was no television competing for their attention, no phones buzzing every few minutes, no chores waiting to be finished. Just the two of them, sharing the same space for the first time in years without a schedule dictating what came next.

It surprised both of them how easily it returned. Beneath the routines and obligations and accumulated stress of twenty years, the friendship had never actually disappeared. It had merely been buried beneath mortgages, work schedules, family obligations.

A thousand other things that always seemed more urgent at the time. Out here, with the road stretching endlessly ahead and nowhere they needed to be except wherever the highway happened to take them, they found themselves talking simply because they enjoyed each other's company.

At some point the conversation drifted toward things they had never done. It started innocently enough. They talked about places they had never visited, foods they had never tried, and experiences they had always talked about but never gotten around to.

"That's the problem with adulthood," Jon said.

Brandi laughed. "Which problem?"

"The assumption that there will always be time later," he said.

She nodded. That one hit a little too close to home. They had spent years postponing things, not because they did not want them, but because there was always something more important. A bill arrived unexpectedly. The water heater failed. A relative needed help. The car started making a strange noise. A roof leak appeared after a storm.

One responsibility after another demanded their attention, each one reasonable on its own and impossible to ignore. By the time they dealt with the latest problem, another had already taken its place, and the years slipped by while they told themselves they would finally do the things they wanted to do once life settled down.

Eventually Jon grinned. Brandi immediately became suspicious. "No."

"I haven't even said anything," said Jon.

"You just got that look," she noted. "The one that means you've thought of something ridiculous, and probably perverted." Jon looked innocent. Brandi had been married to him too long for that to work. "What is it?"

He gestured toward the road ahead. "Truckers."

Brandi blinked. "What about truckers?"

"I think they have their own society." She stared. "I'm serious."

"You think truckers are a secret civilization?" asked Brandi?

"I think they're operating by rules the rest of us don't understand," Jon noted.

Brandi laughed. The laugh continued for several seconds. Jon remained completely serious. That only made it funnier. "You've completely lost your mind."

"Think about it," he continued. "They have their own slang. They have their own radio network. They communicate with each other." A tractor trailer thundered past them. Jon pointed triumphantly.

The farther towards the midwest they drove, the more trucks seemed to appear. Entire stretches of highway looked dominated by them. Massive machines carried unknown cargo toward unknown destinations, the modern equivalent of wagon trains.

Eventually Brandi glanced sideways. "I will admit one thing. They do seem to exist in their own little world."

Jon nodded. A comfortable silence settled over the car. Then Jon spoke again. "You know what's weird?"

Brandi groaned. "We were doing so well."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Jon pressed. "We talked about it when we were dating. You even agreed to do it, but then you chickened out on me."

Unfortunately she did. It was one of those strange pieces of American folklore that seemed to exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Everybody had heard about it. Everybody understood the reference. Yet neither Jon nor Brandi could remember ever meeting a single person who claimed to have actually done it.

The story simply existed, passed from generation to generation through movies, television shows, roadside jokes, and secondhand anecdotes until it became less of an activity and more of a cultural myth. According to urbsn legend, truck drivers appreciated certain visual encouragement from passing motorists, particularly female motorists.

The details varied depending on who was telling the story. Some versions involved requests communicated through air horns. Others treated it like an unspoken tradition known only to truckers and travelers. The more Jon and Brandi discussed it, the stranger it became.

Neither of them could determine whether it had ever genuinely been common or whether millions of Americans had simply convinced themselves it was real because everyone else seemed to believe it was. That uncertainty was what made it fascinating. Bigfoot sightings, alien abductions, buried treasure, haunted highways, every culture collected its own peculiar legends.

This felt like the road-trip version of one. Somewhere along the way, a simple joke had become part of the mythology of the American highway. Otherwise ordinary women flashed truckers, baring their breasts to them in a show of freedom. The fact that neither of them could separate fact from fiction only made them more curious.

Brandi shook her head. "There is absolutely no way that's a real thing."

Jon laughed. "You don't think so?" He had seen a small amount of amatuer porn proving at least a few women did, but he kept that to himself.

"I think it's one of those stories everybody knows and nobody has ever actually experienced."

"Truckers and Bigfoot." Jon grinned.

Another truck passed. By now the conversation had become less about the act itself and more about the mythology surrounding it. Was it something people really did decades ago? Had Hollywood simply convinced everyone it existed? The more they discussed it, the funnier it became.

By the time they stopped for gas, both of them were laughing. The conversation resumed when they got back on the road. Hours passed and miles disappeared beneath the tires. The subject kept resurfacing, like a joke neither of them could quite let go.

Eventually Jon glanced over. "You know."

"No!" Brandi shut him down.

"You don't even know what I was going to say," Jon complained.

"Yes I do." They rolled past a convoy of three tractor trailers. Brandi stared out the window. The lead driver gave a casual wave. Brandi waved back automatically, then frowned. "What if it is real?"

Jon nearly swerved. "What?"

"What if the whole thing is actually real?"

"You've spent six hours arguing that it's a myth."

"I know," she admitted. "Now I'm curious." Jon looked delighted. Brandi hated that look. "Don't look so pleased."

"I can't help it." He patted a happy beat on the steering wheel.

She sighed. The problem was that curiosity had always been her weakness. The more absurd something sounded, the more she wanted to know whether it was true. Another mile passed. Then another. Finally Brandi shook her head. "I cannot believe I am about to say this."

Jon sat up straighter. "That's usually a good sign."

She pointed a finger at him. "If, and this is a very large if, I were ever to participate in this bizarre piece of American folklore..." Jon's grin widened. "...it would be purely for scientific purposes."

"Of course," agreed Jon too eagerly. "Naturally. Purely scientific."

"And if I decide not to," said Brandi, "you never bring it up again."

Jon considered this. "I accept these terms."

"You accepted them too quickly." She fidgeted nervously with the seat belt.

"I was afraid you'd change your mind," he admitted.

Brandi laughed despite herself. The road stretched west beneath a brilliant summer sky. For the first time in years they were doing something neither of them had ever done before. Not flashing truckers. Not yet, at least, but just allowing themselves to be curious. And somehow that felt like the first real step of the journey.