Idling

by Antonio Salinas (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find USA

My mother and I were quiet. The rocking cabin of her eighteen-wheeler bustled down Highway-95 North with about as much ease as the old steel could give us. In one glance through the windshield and another through the rearview, I saw both “Welcome To Asheville, North Carolina” and the mint-black stretch that had followed us since we left Florida six hours ago. We had only one item in the trailer: a triple-wrapped canvas strapped to the floor with a specific temperature monitored every two hours. They couldn’t tell us the name of the painting or what it sold for. “It’s old and it costs a lot,” was all we got from the security detail. We would be in New York City in another eight hours. Or at least, so we thought. This was during the holiday break of my sophomore year of high school. Both of my parents were truck drivers and would usually drive together, leaving my grandfather to watch us for about half of the year. But this time it was just my mother and I riding through the Appalachian pines. She knew I had always wanted to go to New York City and this was my Christmas present. But I was in a deep pain, a pain that dug deeper than the usual discontent of adolescence. We had lost our family dog a month before our departure. She lived to be eighteen years old, and left this earth in my mother’s arms with as much serenity as she had entered it with. She was a black-spotted chihuahua with eyes ever-present and a little snout always dug into somebody’s arms. She was the warmth of our house, and when she climbed into the semi-truck, she was the warmth there too. But despite the recognition of her long and requited life, I still felt pain in my chest and a lump in my throat. The truth was, I just missed her. As I was left to the spiraling thoughts in my head of anguish, longing and guilt. That is, until I heard a loud thunk from the engine and the rumbling cabin came to a halt. The semi had broken down outside of a truck stop in the mountains. The fiberglass painted a postcard visage of terracotta rock and cloudless sky. Our frame-rail chateau loomed high above the winter landscape. Pretty? Yes. Stagnant? Also yes. We had to stay there for the day and the security guards weren’t too happy about having to book a hotel in the boonies. But by that point it was three in the afternoon and there wasn’t anything for miles. So it was just my mother and I sitting in an idling semi-truck, clinging to the hot air from the vents. And for the first time in the entire ride, we shared something more than idle chat. We talked about our loss. With tears in our eyes, we laughed and sobbed over the life that our sweetheart canine had given us. We remembered her habits, her favorite foods and the impeccable heath she had until the end. When my mother wrapped her arms around me and rested her face against my sleeves, I regretted not hugging her enough. I regretted being a teenager. And yet, I relished the knowing that I would be okay because I could admit the truth to myself: that I was a son that needed his mother. The next morning I woke up to cars honking in Lower Manhattan. I wiped my eyes and heard banging from inside the trailer. My mom watched my smiling face brightened by the midday sun and skyline windows. The city was better than I imagined. And for the first time in a while, I was really there, and not in a place in my head. We walked down Bleecker Street and landed in a small pizza joint with the faces of celebrities plastered all over the wall. And as I sunk my teeth into a slice of thin-crust pepperoni, she looked at me and said rather nonchalantly: “Hey, the guys finally told me who the painter was. Ever heard of a guy named Edward Hopper?”