Albuquerque

The sun lay over everything like a heavy blanket as the dust from the construction choked the air with smoke and dust. Concentrated into two lanes, the traffic was slow and tight, the sound of the trucks and machines deafening, construction workers sweltering shirtless in jeans, covered in sweat and filth, like something out of Dante's Inferno.

Finally, sweat beads forming on my face and hot air rushing out of my vents, I was forced to admit that my air conditioning wasn't working. No surprise. That's what you get for driving a ten-year-old blazer; you're more likely to flip, and the air conditioning quits working in Albuquerque. In August.

Rolling my windows down, I glanced over at the passenger seat to where my three-legged dog lay passively, calmly. Other than maybe a slightly heavier breathing, she did not seem affected by the heat. Concerned that she might be having heatstroke, I reached one hand over and patted her side, but she just raised her ears and looked up at me like she always does.

The hot air whipped through the wide-open windows of my Blazer, fluttering papers around in the back seat, blowing through my hair and left ear. There was not a cloud in the sky, yet the sun was obliterated in the haze of traffic and construction. Even the colors of the vehicles seemed subdued in the dust, the orange and gray of construction being the only colors that shone through. Lanes ended or merged, exits were blocked.

It was sometime late in the afternoon, and I had spent at least an hour and a half navigating through the construction of Albuquerque, when I pulled into the truck stop just west of town. My dog drank from the plastic margarine tub of water I gave her while I filled gas and munched on a banana from the cooler. Compare to the construction I had just endured, the truck stop seemed like a calm oasis. A trucker's paradise. Didn't I once hear truck stops called just that? I paid with my card, then pulled my Blazer off to the side so I could walk my dog.

She sniffed and tugged at her leash as I doused my system with an entire 20 oz. bottle of water. Most people would be surprised at how much water I actually drink in one day. It is said that you should drink at least eight eight ounce glasses of water each day, but I probably drink at least sixteen, if not twenty.

It may also surprise many people to learn that a twenty-five pound terrier with three legs can tug at her leash.

When my dog was finished, I pulled my vehicle into a parking space and, leaving the windows cracked and plenty of water in a dish, I went into the truck stop to quickly use the restroom. I had to pee like nobody's business, probably due to the immense amount of water I was consuming. When I was finished, I bought a half gallon of grapefruit juice and a small bag of mixed nuts to eat while I was driving.

"Hey, man, is that your dog?" The hitch-hiker, a guy maybe in his twenties, was wearing skin-tight blue jeans and a faded black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He had been leaning up against the fence surrounding the landscaping (mostly consisting of river rock) that surrounded the perimeter of the truck stop's main convenience store, but stalked towards me as I opened the drivers' side door. It took me a while at first to realize the guy was a hitch-hiker.

His question seemed rhetorical, so I continued to get into my blazer with my dog as the hitch-hiker continued to walk towards me. I'm the kind of guy who likes to think I can get along with just about anybody, but I have little patience for panhandlers and hitch-hikers. I had a friend once who bragged to me about how he hitch-hiked all over the country, panhandling and stealing from convenience stores along the way, finding people to buy his alcohol for him. That was the last conversation I had with that friend, about his hitch-hiking. What I am trying to show here is that having this hitch-hiker walking towards me about to ask for a ride was not exactly a situation I enjoyed.

The guy walked right up to my open window and said, "Are you going through Albuquerque, or are you headed the other way?" Something in the way he asked and the way he made eye contact made him seem suddenly much more sincere than my panhandling, alcoholic friend, and I was take off-guard by his indirect approach. The only thing I could think to do was to try to make an excuse.

"You know," I said, "there's not much room in my blazer. I have my sleeping bag and a few boxes on the floor, and my dog is sitting on the passenger seat."

"That's all right. I love dogs," said the hitch-hiker. "So are you heading into town?"

"Nope. Heading the other way, heading for Arizona. There's no room for you though, with the dog."

"Just need a ride downtown, it's not that far. I can hold the dog and sit up in the seat with my legs crossed. Is it a girl or a boy."

"Girl." I hesitated. My weak spot. People who care about dogs. It occurred to me that the guy would make a great salesman.

"It'll only take ten minutes, there and back." He kept looking at me expectantly. I sat thinking, but I was hot, tired, and I had run out of good excuses.

"You know, there's no a/c in here."

"Better than sitting here in front of this truck stop."

"If I drive downtown, I'll never find my way back."

"It's easy. Just two turns there and two back. I'll direct you."

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The sun was blazing. My dog had been standing the whole time we talked, but didn't get too excited, just trying to follow what was going on. "Be careful how you hold her or she will bite," I warned as I motioned for him to get in. "It's just a little sensitive where her leg is missing."

The hitch-hiker broke into a huge grin as he crawled up onto the passenger seat, avoiding the stuff on the floor, and gently took my dog into his lap. "Take a right out of the parking lot. What's her name?"

I decided to tell him her entire name, even though some people found it foolish. "Sandra Louise."
"Sandra Louise," he repeated softly. "I used to have a dog," he said, absently. "What happened to Sandra Louise?"

"Bone cancer," I said. We were heading down some sort of side street with no houses. It seemed like we were headed out into the middle of nowhere. I was struck by the thought that I had uttered the words bone cancer for the first time since her diagnosis. Osteosarcoma, bone cancer. I decided to change the subject. "I've never been to downtown Albuquerque. Is it nice?"

"Oh, man! It's real nice. Too bad you have to get to Arizona tonight. You could check it out for yourself. Take a left up here at this stop sign."

It was a strange drive from the truck stop to downtown Albuquerque because there was a long road with little to no traffic, and suddenly you made a left turn and found yourself in the middle of a city. It almost felt like driving in a midwestern town, like the time I took a wrong turn in St. Joseph, Missouri, and suddenly found myself driving through cornfields. Like that. It didn't fit my notion of a southwestern city. "Now what?" I said, taking the left.

"Now what?" The hitch-hiker softly echoed, and his countenance completely changed. For a minute, he seemed almost wistful, meditating on the phrase now what?

I kept on driving straight. I could see this street would eventually lead us into the downtown. Traffic was changing. There were more stops. Pedestrians were walking on the sidewalks. "Do you live here?"

"Huh? Oh, no," said the hitch-hiker, his face getting brighter again. "Just visiting. I live up north in Denver. I hitched here, mostly. Just wanted to get out of Denver and see the world, I guess."

"So have you seen it? The world?"

The hitch-hiker screwed up his face. "Hmmm. No. I guess so far, in the nine-hundred-some miles between Denver and here, I've seen a whole lot of the same. Met some interesting people though. Sometimes I wish I could take all of the good people I've met and get them together to form one big city of our own."

"Yeah," I agreed, "but I always think if I had all of the people I've been friends with together in one big room, there'd be a fight."

The hitch-hiker cackled. "Ain't that the truth! So many different personalities. You can pull over any time now and let me out. We're downtown."

Easing my car to the side of the road, I turned to the hitch-hiker, who was extending his hand. As we shook hands, he said, "I'm sorry, but I didn't get your name."

"Jeremy," I said, "Jeremy Storly."

"Jeremy...Storly," he repeated, and then did something that surprised me. He took out a small tablet and pencil from his pocket and started to write my name down. "St-o-r-l-y?" he said softly to himself as I nodded my head.

"I guess I didn't catch your name, either."

"Bill," he said, "Bill Baldwin." Smiling, he added, "I know that it sounds like a made-up name, but my name really is Bill Baldwin." He gently laid my dog back on the seat as he stepped out of my car onto the sidewalks of the streets of downtown Albuquerque. He stood there leaning against the frame of my passenger side door for a while, looking me right in the face with this kind of thoughtful smile, like he had something he wanted to say, yet was debating about walking away without saying it. I just sat there with my hands on the steering wheel.

Finally, the same kind of sad, contemplative look on his face, he said to me, "I have to admit something." He swallowed, trying to force some thought out that was stuck to the back of his throat. "As I sat there in front of the truck stop, I saw your dog in the window of your car, and I looked into her eyes, and I knew right away that you would give me a ride downtown, even if you were headed the opposite way. Any guy that has a three-legged dog, I thought to myself, would give a guy like me a ride.

"But I also knew something that would happen along the way. I knew you would tell me she's dying of bone cancer. Osteosarcoma. Don't ask me how I knew, 'cause I just knew. I just want to say thank you for the ride, and I'm sorry about your dog." Then, before I could even respond, he closed the door and walked away down the street.

It wasn't until later, at a rest stop on the Arizona-New Mexico border that I started to cry. I had just finished using the restroom, and was in my Blazer ready to drive away when I lost it. I cried about my dog, about the exhausting drive, about the lost time in Albuquerque, about the coldness and the kindness of the human race. The tears came for maybe a minute or so, and then I wiped my face with my t-shirt, smiled and scratched my dog behind the ears, and drove on.

The mystery is: what has become of my name, recorded so carefully in a hitch-hiker's tablet? In the miles he has traveled, has Bill Baldwin forgotten that I once gave him a ride from a truck stop to downtown Albuquerque? Does he look at his tablet every now and then and remember that Jeremy Storly had a dog who was dying of osteosarcoma? Does the tablet even exist anymore, with no phone number, no address, just a name and a shadow of a memory of one small occurrence of many that once took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico?