the sky above, the mud below
One dark night I found myself in the Selkirk Mountains standing on the highway trying to catch a ride. I looked up and just about fell over. I’d never seen anything like it before. So many stars, billions of them, and so close I could almost grab a handful. I was literally awestruck. Stars the size of grapefruits, brilliant white in a black sky.
Al old Pontiac pulled up into the gravel and I climbed in. A guy not much older than myself, maybe twenty or so, was drunk and pissed off. He’d been thrown out of a bar and was heading east about twenty miles to the next town with a bar. Ten minutes later there were two women standing in the gravel, thumbs out. Get in the back he tells me. One for me and one for you. So I got out and he tells the thin one to climb in beside him and the fat one gets in with me in the back.
I was interested in neither of them, but what could I do? So I sat there in the back with mine and we both stared out our windows while he starts going at it up front. Driving and grabbing at her. Pretty soon he pulls over and and they’re going full blast and I ask mine her name, where they’re going, etc. She doesn’t seem to care either way about any of it. Pretty soon they’re done up front and the guy falls asleep. The three of us get out, they go off somewhere and I continue east, gaping at the glorious sky, listening for cars.
There may be a point to this story.