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"They make good money, those truckers, you know?"

I didn't say anything to that.

"Maybe you make money, too, huh?" he asked.

I didn't know what he was driving at. "Make money?"

"Yeah, we split fifty-fifty."

"Make money doing what?"

"You know," he said, and made a gesture like somebody brushing his teeth.

It took me a moment to get it, and when I did, I felt my dinner churning around in my stomach. I started walking away, and the guy called after me, "Hey where you go? You stay. We make money." But I never looked back, just headed toward the hotel, wondering if I'd finally been missed.

*

The car is fixed, and we are again flying down the road. Two days have passed since I wrote the first part of this letter, and I have had a lot of time to think. I still don't know exactly where we are going, but then maybe that isn't so bad after all. I think I'm finally getting the hang of how to survive these outings. I just fly down the okie-dokie highway- that is what I have come to call this road, or any road for that matter. We stop to see a big hole in the earth, and I think, "Okie-dokie, then," and we pile back into the car until the next stop, where we will see who knows what? But no matter what it is- a formidable reservoir, a vast junk yard, a dry riverbed, or whatever- after seeing it, it's "okie-dokie, then," and onward, until one day you run across something that makes sense to you, maybe even something that you can attach yourself to and call your own. Am I making any sense? I think I am, but I'm not quite sure. You'll have to tell me what you think in the fall, when I see you at school, assuming I ever make it back.

For now XOXOXO Darlene

Learn more about this author, Tom Upton.
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