Free The Empty Ones by Robert Brockway Page B

slow-cooking them in that enclosed space. It hurt just to hold them, they were so hot, but Jackie didn’t care.
    â€œSure, it tastes like somebody-spit-in-your-cough-syrup soup, but it’s better than drifting into a ditch,” she’d said, before downing her fourth of the day.
    Carey opened his door and carefully stretched. It looked painful, and sounded worse. Even his hips cracked. I tried to remind myself that he was only in his late fifties. He looked twenty years older, and acted forty years younger. He spat onto the ground and the pavement swallowed it right up. He squinted up at the sun. Directly at it.
    â€œYou’re not supposed to do that,” I said. “You’ll go blind.”
    â€œThat’s what they told me about jerking off,” he said, “and if they were right about that, I’d have gone blind twice this morning.”
    â€œBullshit.” Jackie laughed, kicking her Red Bull cans under the car like a little boy kicking errant toys under the bed instead of cleaning his room. “We’ve been with you the whole time.”
    â€œNot in the men’s room at the gas station.” Carey smiled. It looked like a catcher’s mitt splitting open.
    â€œGrooooss,” Jackie sang, and pushed past him into the passenger seat.
    I sighed, opened my door, got down onto my hands and knees, and started scooping the cans out from under the car. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Carey standing in the middle of the empty highway. We were surrounded on all sides by a western movie. Literal cactuses out here—for some reason I always thought that was just in cartoons. It was a beautiful, dangerous, and lonely place. Striated foothills loomed over squat green trees—the only spot of color in a world of dusty browns. Sagging power lines and the cracked pavement of Highway 57 South were the only man-made things around. It was like walking on another planet.
    Yet Carey had eyes only for my ass, stuck up in the air as I scooped Red Bull cans out from underneath a busted-up 2001 Volkswagen Jetta.
    I whipped one at his head, and tucked the rest under the front seat.
    â€œYou’re picking that up,” I said, slamming my door.
    After another series of painful stretches, he picked up the can, then threw it as hard as he could out into the desert. He sat down in the driver’s seat and started fumbling with the adjustment levers.
    â€œYou’re a fucking asshole,” I told him.
    â€œStop the presses,” he replied.
    Carey spent a moment carefully tweaking the mirrors, checked his blind spot, then stomped on the accelerator. We went nowhere. The Jetta screamed like a castrated robot.
    â€œIt’s in neutral!” Jackie yelled, slapping his arm.
    â€œOh right, and that’s … bad?” Carey asked, wiggling the shifter.
    â€œYou need to push the clutch and—holy shit, you don’t know how to drive!”
    â€œNever stopped me before,” Carey said. He jammed the knob into second gear and we took off with a massive lurch.
    Jackie spent the next ten minutes desperately trying to convince Carey that he needed to shift out of second at highway speeds. He reluctantly agreed, but only on two conditions. One, that she show him “where the highway gear was,” and two, that she work the “music dealy” for him. Jackie spent the next thirty minutes explaining to Carey that the Music Dealy did not contain all of the world’s music. Just the stuff she put on it. She did not have any Stiff Little Fingers. She did not know who The Stranglers were. She did, however, have some Gang of Four. A compromise was reached, and Carey agreed not to shift out of fifth without permission so long as we listened to Entertainment! on repeat for the next five hours.
    We ate miles.
    We passed through small towns now and again. “Towns” is probably the wrong word.
    Settlements? Outposts? Is that racist, if I don’t