You called and reserved a spot in the Super 8 on your way over, just a couple hours ago. It was the nearest place to stay, it was cheap, and it was just starting to get dark. The only open place to eat at midnight was a Cracker Barrel. You saw one Black man with an orange trucker hat, a blue plaid flannel, and a maroon puffer vest. He was probably the only person of color in a 10 mile radius. The kitchen was tired, thoughts of going home sitting cold on the service counter. Thoughts of being too stoned to think fell on the floor on their way over. Your server brought you a pile of bland mush. It was warm, and you poured table salt on it. Your tastebuds needed at least a little stimulation. The kitchen staff was talking about the basketball game at the nearest high school, one town over. The front of the house was busy debating exactly how long the Black man had been sitting there, and if it was long enough to warrant asking him to leave. One new line cook had just been asked to load up a shipment of canned food from a truck waiting out back. The driver silently opened the truck up and helped pull pallets of instant mashed potatoes and bags of ready-to-heat-up mac and cheese out of the back. The green line cook found the driver’s silence odd, but he had never unloaded a truck before. He assumed this was how all truck drivers were.
The young cook’s shift had just started, but he couldn’t wait for it to end. 4 am stood like a coming messiah in his mind, when the morning shift took over and at least this part of his ennui would be condemned to return only at his next shift. Then he would go home, sleep until 2 pm in the afternoon, and eat an oddly-timed meal at 3 pm. He always hated this meal; nothing seemed to fit in this time slot. Waking up, he felt like he should eat breakfast, but it was already past noon, too late even for lunch. It was an absurdly early dinner, so no matter what sort of food he ate, he felt like he should be eating something different. He just didn’t know what. Then, he would flick through the TV. Even though nothing good was ever on, he still watched. It was a ritual. Something that he felt any good American should do with his time. It just felt right, it made him feel right. After finding nothing to watch on TV, he would find nothing to watch on YouTube. He spent a lot of time staring at his ceiling, waiting for his time to go to work. He would eat another oddly-timed meal before he left, go start his shift, then pray for the return of his televised messiah.
The truck driver needed to fill up with gas before heading out of town. He drove to the gas station, pulled up to the diesel pump, and started filling. It didn’t even feel like an action anymore when he did it, just like his body moving automatically to fulfill some need. The kachunk of the heavy nozzle fitting into the cab as familiar as a rush of air into his lungs. Like blinking or swallowing, it was as if his autonomic nervous system had also mastered driving an 18 wheeler. He didn’t have to think when he drove, so he didn’t. Instead of wandering, his mind stayed put in the cab. He let driving happen to him. He got out of his truck and walked into the convenience store. He liked convenience stores; they brought him out of his driving coma. Highways were all the same, but you never knew what to expect with a gas station. Sure, there were constants: grating cold lights, chipped “white” linoleum flooring, bathroom mirrors tagged up with key scratches. But, when you’re attentive enough, difference abounds. Different snacks, different methods of organization, different brands of cigarettes. This spot-the-difference game was so effective at waking up what little was left of his conscious mind that, when he tried to think about his life, all that came to him was a string of gas station convenience stores. Out-of-place candy bars were the only things he could really remember about the past few years. The rest of his life was spent in a trance: the rumble of his engine, the hum of the highway, the whistle of the air through his windows, the creaking of his brakes, the unlatching of his door, the kachunk of the nozzle, the ding of the door bell, the squeak of linoleum flooring, the buzz of the bright white, almost blue, lights.
Similar lights buzzed overhead as you pulled your luggage in through the rotating doors of the Super 8. The woman at the counter barely looked up at you as she took your name and handed you the keys. You politely thanked her, even left her a tip. Not exactly out of pity, but something like it. You walked to your room, undressed, and crawled into the bed. As you slept, the little town on the side of the highway hummed. It was inundated with the constant hum of the highway, travelers driving through the night. The buzz of lights that were made too bright. Street lamps that filled the town with splotches of yellows and blues. As streetlamps burnt out one by one, they slowly switched over from sodium vapor to LED. There wasn’t a real municipality to take care of the lights; the local Walmart paid to change them out, because when there weren’t streetlights on, no cars exited into what was left of this oasis of monotony.
Inundated with the background hum of one trucker’s mind, the movement of mental gears was audible now that every other process has been silenced. The constant clamor of racist hosts and hostesses, the clank of busboys unceremoniously dropping utensils into stainless steel sinks. As you slept, as your mind wandered, the rest of the town stayed put. Those that slept at night never dreamt. Neither did those that slept at day. And as soon as you woke up the next morning, splashed some water on your face, brushed your teeth, picked up a coffee at the front desk, gave back your key, politely thanked the hostess, stepped in your car, started the engine, sped up into the on-ramp, and got back on the highway, once the town was a glimmer in your rearview mirror, once that glimmer disappeared around a gentle, sloping curve, hidden behind the horizon, the rolling hills and expansive countryside that let you know you were in America, the land of the free, the home of rugged individuality and self-determination, the town was silent. All the humming stopped.