Read Hitchhikers for Free Online

drove off with me, or why she would want to keep
following me when I don’t have any food for her and I ditched her
at the first opportunity. I’m just glad she did. She’s dead asleep
now. Her paws are hot and I massage them, imagining all those miles
she traveled on those feet to catch up with me.
    When I was a kid I didn’t have many friends.
Our town in Montana was small, and there were maybe 50 kids in my
grade, most of them coming in from ranches sprawled out all over
the place. My father wasn’t a rancher and neither were my uncles.
We all lived close together on the outskirts of the Canadian
forest, and the only other kid near my age was Kayla, who was a
year younger than me. My mom was able to find work, seasonal labor,
because she’d grown up on a ranch and she’d help drive cattle and
with branding and stuff like that. Sometimes I helped her. My dad
never helped. He worked at the local bar in town, serving drinks or
bouncing or even cooking, whenever the manager wasn’t too pissed at
something or other he’d done. He got into a lot of fights, my dad.
If he wasn’t so darn angry maybe I could have bought a friend home,
if I’d had one. But we mostly kept to ourselves, and Kayla was the
closest to a friend I had.
    Maybe if I’d had a friend, it wouldn’t have
been so easy to run away and leave everything behind. Maybe I
wouldn’t have all these weird feelings boiling up inside me all
because some stray dog decided it was better to be with me than to
be alone.
     
     

 
-14-
    I smell like wheat and wet dog. It’s killing
my appetite though, which is a good thing, since it’s almost noon
and there hasn’t been anyplace to get any food.
    Lila and I have finally reached a town. La
Plata, established 1855, population not mentioned on the sign. It’s
bigger than the last town, at least there’s a separate gas station
and grocery store. As we get closer, passing buildings and
apartments and warehouses, my stomach starts to rumble with the
scent of food. Pizza and Mexican and Italian. We’re still pretty
far from the cheap restaurants, but I can smell it over the exhaust
fumes and sewage. Hot dogs. I smell hot dogs most.
    That would be because there’s an old man in
the parking lot of a strip mall selling hot dogs out of a silver
trailer. Not a trailer big enough for someone to sit inside, out of
the weather, but a cart-like deal. The man is sitting on a stool
reading.
    I’m standing in front of him before I even
decide I want a hot dog more than an entire
double-cheese-pepperoni-and-sausage pizza.
    “What can I do you for?” he asks, putting his
book aside. It’s On the Road by Jack Kerouac, which I’ve actually
read. I found it lying on a park bench last summer, and I must have
read it five times between that summer and that winter, before I
holed up in the abandoned house and found other things to read.
    I look over the four hot dogs roasting on the
grill. “I’ll take all of them,” I say. “Two on buns with ketchup,
mustard, relish… everything except onions. And the other two plain.
For my dog,” I explain.
    “Sure thing.”
    With practiced hands the man prepares the hot
dogs. He’s not as old as his white hair makes him look from far
away. His hands are big and strong, worn with years of work.
    “Anything to drink?”
    I order a soda and a water and add two bags
of chips, then pay with bills I’ve peeled off the roll hidden
inside my sweatshirt pocket. I toss one of the plain hot dogs to
Lila and stuff one of the loaded dogs in my mouth.
    “Have a nice day,” the man says.
    “Thanksh,” I mumble around the food in mouth.
His mouth quirks in a smile that softens his face a bit.
    Lila sits at my feet chewing on her hot dogs
while I make a seat out of the curb. Food never tastes so good as
when you’re hungry. My eyes are half-closed in the savoring of it.
I try not to think about the winter coming and the scarcity of
food. It’s the here and the now and hot food in my belly and