FICTION - PROMISED LAND

I've had a thermos full of coffee, handful of No-Doz. Eyes are still burning from lack of sleep and too much driving. These midnight stretches of desert all look the same; tar black rivers, yellow lines passing by to the beat of Duke of Earl. No light but the wobbling amber of my headlights, dimming from a bad alternator. Not sure which is going to give out first, me or this aging Chevy.

I pull to the side to take a leak, gravel crunching beneath threadbare tires. Fall in the desert. So cold my cock shrivels to a nub and I stand out there hopping from foot to foot just to get something moving. Goddamn prostate.

There's a sound from the bed of the truck. A whimper under the tarp. I kick the side to shut it up. Fifteen hundred a head isn't enough to move these people across. Not in this cold.

"You got blankets under there. Shut up or I'll leave ya on the side of the road."

A hundred miles more. No heat in the car. No heat in the bed but from what comes up from underneath. Four kids, four adults. Stacked like cordwood. How many of them are going to make it, how many are going to last a month, a year? A lifetime?

Is it worth it for them? For me?

I climb back into the cab, start the car. Turns over on the fifth try. I'll have to pull the jerry can out of the back in fifty miles or so. Fill up the tank and keep going. Can't keep the Promised Land waiting, after all. They've paid their price. Who am I to keep them from it?