Red and the Road

“The road doesn’t end—the travelers do.”
                             —Trucker saying

The highway north out of Oklahoma City was wide and empty, the afternoon sun so bright it bleached the land of color. Heat shimmered on the asphalt, and for a long stretch, there was nothing to see but yellow grass and sky.

Then, far ahead, a figure appeared — a man watching the fast-moving cars, still as a post. On either side of him sat two enormous white dogs. Even from half a mile away, he looked huge. The dogs, sitting upright and still, faced the oncoming traffic exactly as he did, as if trained to imitate him. They looked like sentinels keeping watch.

I slowed the car. Who, I wondered, would ever stop for a man like that — a giant with two beasts at his side?

Apparently, I would.

When I pulled over, he turned toward me. He had a quiet face, handsome, with a big smile. He nodded graciously and, without a word, opened the back door. The dogs climbed in as if they knew exactly what to do, their heavy bodies shifting the car’s weight. Then he eased into the front seat and folded his hands on his knees.

“Where you headed?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, calm and deep-voiced. “Wherever you’re going will do.”

I looked at him again — tall, broad-shouldered, red hair streaked with gray. The kind of man who seemed built by the land itself.

“And home?” I asked.

“Wherever I am,” he said. “That’s home enough.”

We rode a few miles in silence before he began to speak, not prompted but as if remembering aloud. The two dogs lay down in the back seat and stayed there the entire way, not a single bark, not even a sigh — as if they too had learned the discipline of silence from the road.

He was born in Idaho, he said. His parents were farmers — or rather, his mother was married to one. Across the road lived another farmer, a friend — the kind who waved every morning from his porch. The friendship deepened into something else, and when his mother became pregnant, everyone in town knew the child wasn’t her husband’s.

The boy’s hair came out bright red — just like the man across the road — and people started calling him Red before he could walk.

His mother, humiliated, eventually ran away, leaving him behind. His father — or the man he called father — kept him, but the gossip never stopped. His older sister reminded him daily that he didn’t belong. One morning, when he was eight, he ran away. He walked until he reached the highway and waited there until a truck driver stopped.

At first, the driver seemed kind. But somewhere down the road, Red realized what the man wanted. At the first gas stop, he slipped out and ran. Another trucker took him in. Then another. And another after that.

By the time he reached Los Angeles, he had no place to call home. The road had claimed him — raised him, hurt him, and kept him alive.

When he finished speaking, the sun had lowered a little. We stopped for gas in a small Kansas town — one pump, one dusty café. The dogs stayed in the car while he stepped out to stretch. A group of women in their thirties came out of the café laughing, hips swinging, glancing toward him. They moved like dancers pretending not to perform.

The word that came to my mind was prancing.

He looked once, without interest, then turned back to the car. When he got in, he said, “They were prancing.” The same word. It startled me enough that I didn’t answer.

Back on the road, I told him I was headed for Wichita and asked where he’d like to be dropped off.

“Near a bar,” he said. “There’ll be a woman there. Always is. She’ll take me home, feed me, spoil me for a couple weeks. Then she’ll get tired of me sponging off her and throw me out.”

He said it without bitterness — only certainty, as if describing the weather.

He looked out the window at the horizon, where the light was already fading. “Then I’ll start walking,” he said. “East, west, north, south — doesn’t matter. The road knows where to take me.”

For a while we drove in silence. The dogs’ steady breathing filled the car, deep and even, like the sound of waves against a shore.

When I finally dropped him at a roadside tavern outside Wichita, he opened the door, the dogs leapt down, and he turned once to nod goodbye.

Then he was gone, swallowed by the light and dust of the endless road.