A big, scruffy tow-headed youth scrambled and unfolded himself out of the driver’s side door.

“Are you alright?”

“No man, I’m fucked up.”

“Is there anybody with you?”

“No.”

He continued stumbling towards the Chrysler. I was unsure if this was set-up or what. Both mine and Jack’s heads pivoted, looking for some high desert desperadoes to come catapulting out of the mountains from behind some rocks and to jack us for our money or our lifestyles, if not our lives. As lookout, Jack was rather worthless, about like Ray Charles or Mr. Magoo riding shotgun in a John Wayne movie or something.

I could smell the booze on this big Baby Huey of a knucklehead as he continued to amble towards us. I put the transmission in park and told him we could take him to Trona, but beyond that, he was on his own.

“That’s where I live.” Come to find out that Trona is the ONLY place he has lived in his entire life.

“How many people live in Trona?” Jack asked, fascinated.

“About 3500 and they all work for the mining operation,” the lunk replied. “And about 2500 of those are on drugs.”

We asked what kind of drugs, but we knew the answer already. Crystal meth, the plague of bored American youth.

“That’s why I crashed.” the kid blathered.

“You’re on crank?” I asked.

“No, my girlfriend is all tweaked on that shit. She always pisses me off and drives me to drinking when she gets on that stuff. A couple of hours ago I got mad and left her house and got drunk and just had to get away.”

“Where were you headed exactly?” Ray Charles asked. “I mean there’s nothing out here, is there?”

“I had to drive into nothingness in order to clear my mind.”

We said nothing – and I don’t mean to speak for Jack – but we both knew exactly what he meant.

“Dude, you are lucky to be alive.”

“I know.”

PPPUUHHH-WWHHOOSSH!!!

I asked him which roads were open and which were flooded. All the shortcuts I wanted to take – via Randsburg or Garlock – were flooded and fucked.

“You gotta’ watch the desert, man,” the drunken prophet in the backseat spluttered. “This place will play tricks on your mind even when it isn’t raining. Right now it’s one big sinkhole.”

He had Jack suitably spooked. True, we were in the middle of the shit, but the only solution to our dilemma was to stay alert and power through the adversity of broken roads, bad vibes and hostile weather. I dropped the kid off at the fire station in Trona. He was truly on his own. For life. Did he know that?

*****

The car was drenched by roadside flooding a half dozen times by the time we reached a road that had any recent influx of tax dollar-driven maintenance. It was Highway 395 and we’d have to take that down to 58 East, and backtrack through Mojave, before continuing south. Would it ever stop raining?