The room tipped and rolled like a ship in a storm. Ruben opened his eyes uselessly as the blurriness of sleep and alcohol left him temporarily blinded anyway. He rubbed his eyes and yelped in shock as his "seat" threw him a foot into the air and then caught him again with the comfort of bare metal on tailbone. He soon saw why. The barren desert skyline, waves of heat rippling from its surface like an inverted ocean, sped past him on both sides. A quick inspection of his surroundings showed him to be half-lying/half-sitting in the bed of a pickup truck, tossed around helplessly among beer cans, empty cigarette packs, other unidentifiable trash and, as if his post-drinking nausea wasn't enough, the sun-baked remains of a stringer of bass caked and rotting in the midday air.

Fighting back a mouthful of last night's dinner, Ruben tapped excitedly on the rear window of the pickup and motioned for the driver to pull over. This was not Ruben's lucky day, it seemed as the driver freaked out and increased speed as if trying to drive away from him. The seasick teen stumbled and fell, adding an unsightly "paint job" to the wheel well as he did so and slid about in his own chow trying to stabilize himself again. The driver obviously had been unaware of an unconscious body being loaded into his truck and the sight of the body suddenly appearing like that must have been a frightening sight indeed. From the looks of things, however, the driver was in no mood to pull over and get hijacked or axe-murdered out in the middle of nowhere and decided to let gravity solve the problem for him as the truck zigzagged drunkenly across both lanes of the highway, tossing the unwilling hitchhiker around like a forgotten rag doll.

After about ten minutes of truck surfing, Ruben decided to get off the truck - or should we say momentum decided to help him off... Either way, Ruben felt himself flying through the air one moment and getting hit with a ton of bricks the next. When he woke, he could see the night sky through a wide oblong gash on a wall off to his right. He was in a stranger's bed, head and right arm bandaged expertly and the hot flames of gashes on his back lighting up with each intake of breath. Pots and pans rattled in another room and the smell of steak sizzling on a dollop of butter slowly filled the room. Ruben slid his legs off the bed and shakily rose to his feet, a steady sense-dulling pressure wrapping around his mind and draining away his desire to stay in an upright locked position.

Against his will, his legs folded below him, bringing fresh stars to his eyes as his chin caught the bed's footboard on the way down and the side of his head kissing threadbare carpeting with a solid thump.

It seemed like an eternity before his eyes re-opened, but when they did, all cares and thoughts of the horrors of war seemed to vanish. A kindly, round-faced older man sat in a rocking chair beside the bed, one foot propped up in the gash in the wall, a well-thumbed biker magazine from the late 90's commanding the man's interest as if the chrome and steel was a form of pornography that Ruben had yet to understand. To him, a machine was a machine - something to get you quickly from point A to point B...not something you slobbered over.

"Well, good morning, sunshine!" the man laughed, throwing the magazine onto the foot of the bed and rising to his feet, "Thought I was gonna haveta leave you on the floor all night. Yer quite a weighty fella." Ruben, for the first time in his life, looked at his slight paunch with chagrin and shrugged, a witty comeback failing to fall from his open mouth.

The man pattered off to the adjoining room for a moment and Ruben heard the familiar beeping of a microwave timer being set. A few moments (and a few clattered dishes) later, his unnamed caregiver brought in a massive helping of the steak Ruben had smelled earlier, along with potatoes, green beans, corn on the cop, and about a half-dozen other side dishes. If the man had been poking fun at Ruben's weight before, he would certainly have fuel for more jokes after this meal. Before handing Ruben a fork, however, the man extended a weathered hand covered in scars. "Name's R.C., if you're wondering. That's my home your hard head ventilated, by the way...” he said, gesturing at the hole in the wall that Ruben had noticed a few times before.

"Uhh... Sorry... My name's Ruben...” he slowly answered. R.C. laughed.

"Well, glad to see you can still think and talk after that impact. Seen many a biker take falls lighter than that and wind up in some relatives yard starin' the colors off of flowers for a livin'. Where ya from, Ben? This here's biker country and even though you take a fall like one, you sure ain't no biker."

Ruben started to answer and stopped. Right where the answer should have been in his brain was a big ugly gray area. Ruben didn't know if it was the impact or the alcohol that did it, but the thought of the drinks made him laugh out loud and reply, "I had a lot to drink last night - I honestly can't remember..."

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