Suzie’s House 492 : Blanking the Slate

“Hey! Whatcha doing?” The old geezer shouted his question as he walked across the Walmart parking lot. He had crusty jeans, but a fresh plaid shirt over a faded but clean tie-dye T-shirt. His long, gray hair was pulled back in a frizzy, puny ponytail.

Great. Probably another refugee from the Hippie generation. Jim ignored him.

“You really wanna be doing that? Seams like a real waste.”

Jim kept scraping. It took him more money in paint removing than he really wanted to give up and all morning to spread it around. Of course he was going to keep on scraping.

“I mean, that was a really high class piece of rolling art you had going there.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim muttered, still scraping. It seamed like some of the original white of the van under all the graffiti was coming off with the rest of it. But so what? It was just a van. Man, what he would give to have a road crew willing to do this for him.

“Oh, don’t scrape off that part. The way the lady lays there all impish and languid is premo!”

Jim scraped the naked lady off with a vigorous slash of his plastic tool.

“Aaaaah!” The old man held his hands up to his head. His voice was high-pitched and airy, like the way a scream would be if it could be a whisper.

Jim told the guy to shove off. He didn’t need this kind of agrivation.

“Looks like a lot of hard work. So, why you doing it?”

“Tired of looking at it.” He gave the scraper a hard work out, stripping off layers and layers of the personal history of this half-assed trip. The mushrooms Rick added to the bottom came off easy. The swearwords some idiot from Nebraska slipped in when Rick wasn’t looking, and the reason for the mushrooms, came off slower. “It all must go.”

That shut the guy up long enough for Jim to work his way over and up toward the rear view mirrors.

“So. Blank slate, huh? I guess we all need a fresh start sometime.” The old man talked so quietly that Jim stopped to look at him.

“Yeah. That’s exactly right.” He took a deep breath before starting up again. Seemed like it was getting easier. Mostly.

Big swaths of paint came off like snakeskin. Some places went all the say to metal. Looked like he was never going back to a nondescript white again. He’d have to put on new graffiti. But at least it would be his own work. He was no artist, but he could put together a decent mural. Not like how Rick did things. Which reminded Jim he had to hurry up. He wanted to get another tank of gas and move along as soon as he could just in case Rick caught up with him.

“Looks like you’re on the road.” The old man had his hands up to either side of his face as he looked in a tinted window.

“Hey! Quit that.”

“Which way you headed?”

“No where fast.” Jim grinned at his own joke. He really did need to get to as much of a no where place as he could as quickly as he could. Jim moved around the back as much to make the old man back off as to work on the other side. He’d already done the back.

“I bet you could use some gas.” The old man danced backward, out of the way.

“Yeah. I could.” Jim’s ears pricked.

People kicked down gas all the time. Mostly they did it when they wanted a ride, but some righteous people had totally filled the tank for no good reason. There was even once that a cop filled the tank just so they’d leave town faster. This could be just what Jim needed.

“I need a ride to Madison. Wisconsin? Just a couple hundred miles. You’ll still have half a tank left after, right?” The guy smiled.

Jim had heard shit like that before. He pulled out his smart phone and googled it. “More like 266 miles.” Then Jim hesitated. Madison? Where he grew up? Where the family that threw him away still lived? Did he really want to go there?

The old guy shrugged. “So I’ll fill the tank again when we get there.”

“Deal.” Jim held out a hand to shake on it. “Name’s Jim.”

“Trent. Nice to meet you.” Then the old man waved across the parking lot. “Sonoma, Honey! I got us a ride!”

To Jim’s mild surprise, an old lady came running across the lot. Oh well. A full gas tank was a full gas tank no matter how many people were in the van.

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