MIssissippi

(This is not my photo. Sorry. I found it on the internet without credit.)

We were just north of Atlanta on our way home when Vladi asked, "You want to go to New Orleans?" I didn't have to think about it. We had been in the mountains for a week, but we still had time before summer was over.

"Sure."

And so we made the turn westward.

What wildness, I thought. We are traveling the country. We can go anywhere we want. As long as we had money for gas, we could just keep going. It seemed that way to me. We'd had our mountain idyl. Now we were in for something else.

Vladi made the turn onto I-20. We were heading for the Mighty Mississippi.

"How long you think it will take?"

"Oh, I don't know. Eight hours or so." I was looking at the map. "It is easy driving on interstate highways. No big cities, really. We should cruise."

"Then we should be there around nightfall," he said. "We'll check into a hotel and have a night on the town."

We passed through the rural landscape of the south, across Georgia and then through Alabama which somehow surprised me. This was True South. We were passing through Birmingham and the south of George Wallace and Martin Luther King. It was a little scary for us, two long-haired hippie boys in a van, and we remembered the trouble we'd had coming through on our way to New York, but we planned to stay to the highway all the way to New Orleans. We would just keep driving. As we drove, though, we passed through landscapes I'd never associated with Alabama, through gently rolling hills that were a lined with beautiful forests. "This is not what I thought of Alabama," I told Vladi. "Yea, it looks nice," he said.

We crossed into Mississippi and jumped onto I-59. The day wore on.

"Hey, man, we need to get gas. Keep an eye out for a station."

But as we drove on, the distance between exits grew. The world seemed underpopulated here.

"Here's an exit," I said, "but it doesn't look like there's a gas station."

"Let's try the next one."

And so we drove. And drove.

"We're running out of gas," Vladi said with alarm. "I sure as shit don't want to run out of gas out here. I hope we make it to the next exit."

A little while later, I pointed gleefully. "There's a sign. We can get off in a mile."

And there it was. An exit. And that was all. There were no gas stations, no Stuckey's tourist stands, nothing but trees and a small blacktop road.

"Shit!" I spat. "What're we going to do?"

Vladi looked worried. "I don't know," he said. "The gas needle is on empty now. We're running on fumes as far as I can tell. I guess we'll try driving down this road and see if we can find something."

This scared the shit out of me, but I didn't say it. "Which way?" Vladi turned left.

Neither of us said a word as Vladi babied the van slowly down the road. I was barely breathing. Images from the movie"Deliverance" were running through my head. I'd met some boys from Mississippi before, and they could barely talk. On we drove down the blank road without houses or barns, just a narrow road bordered with a heavy stand of trees. Vladi looked at me the way he did the time we were lost in the underwater cave.

"Look!" I yelled and pointed. Ahead of us was a crossroad, and there stood a little store with a gas pump outside. Vladi looked relieved and terrified at the same time. "I wonder what we'll run into here?" Vladi made the short turn into the parking lot and pulled up to the pump. A thin man in overalls came out of the store.

"Fill 'er up," Vladi said. The man stood looking for a minute, then walked to the pump. Vladi looked at me. I wanted to laugh, but I wanted to run, too. We both just wanted to get the fuck out of there. We sat silent. "Plunk." The pump clicked off. We listened to the metallic sounds of the pump going back into the cradle. Vladi was watching in the side mirror. When the man came to the window, Vladi handed him a twenty. We watched the man walk back into the store. I realized I was chewing on my upper lip. We waited.

"Where the fuck is he? What do you think he's doing?" I asked Vladi.

"Just calling the local redneck sherif," Vladi said. "They'll come pulling up here any second.

But just then the skinny fellow ambled out of the screen door. He handed Vladi back the change without saying a word.

"Thanks," said Vladi.

As we drove back toward the interstate, I wondered if we had turned the right way. "Are you sure this is the way we came?" I asked Vladi. He just looked at me. "I bet he called the cops. I'll bet we get pulled over before we make the interstate." Vladi kept looking in his rear view mirror. It was taking too long, I thought. We hadn't turned the right way. We'd gotten confused at the crossroads and were heading deep into the redneck interior. Then I saw the sign for I-59. We both let out a cheer.

We were cruising again and wouldn't stop until New Orleans. We both felt sheepish now about our naive fears, but we didn't say it. We were just happy now.

The highway was pretty here, a series of rolling hills, up and down, like riding a giant roller coaster. We were just settling back and enjoying the view when we crested a hilltop and saw what looked to be a roadblock up ahead. There were at least twenty police cars, all with their lights flashing. Policemen had spilled out on both sides of the highway and were puddled in the median. Vladi's foot came off the gas, but there was no place to go. We were the only car to be seen on the highway. Our eyes were popping.

"Ho-ly-shit," Vladi said. "What the fuck is this?"

"I knew that cracker would call the cops. I'll bet he saw that bag of pot you've got stuck in the visor. They're gonna put us in jail for sure."

Vladi looked guilty. But there was nothing to do now. We were approaching the blockade. When we got there, however, the road wasn't blocked. There were policemen everywhere we looked, but the highway itself was clear. And so we entered the mass of flashing lights, Vladi driving maybe thirty-five miles an hour, the two of us watching as the policemen combed the grass. They were looking for something, that was certain. Then I saw the dogs. It was like watching "Cool Hand Luke." Maybe someone had escaped a chain gang. There were people drifting off into the trees on the roadside, the dogs leading the way. I looked over at the policemen in their cars talking on their radios. And then we were through. Nobody had looked up, it seemed. Nobody had looked at us. Now, with every second, the flashing lights receded into the past. And then they were gone.

Vladi hit the gas. We waited. A mile. Five miles. Ten. Nobody was coming. There was nothing. I saw Vladi take a breath. I realized that I hadn't been breathing much, either. A minute more, then I dared a weak laugh. "We're nuts," I said. "We're paranoid." I looked at the plastic baggy above Vladi's head. "But if we had gotten pulled over. . . ."

"Fuck it," Vladi said with forced energy. "We're on our way to New Orleenz."