The Billboard People

short fiction from my hitchhikers series...

The first thing I noticed was the smell. She’d only been in the car five minutes when my nose twitched and identified something out of the ordinary. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t unbearable either: a heady mix of sweet spices with the faintest undertone of rot. Like a cup of damp cloves left in a high school gym locker. I sensed it was coming from the large bundle in her lap, not her person.

I’d picked her up in the parking lot of a Best Western in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. She told me her name was Charlotte, and she was carrying a weathered duffle bag. Cradling it like an oversized, mutant baby.

“I can’t afford a car of my own,” she said as I pulled out of the parking lot.

She told me that she didn’t normally hitchhike, but she had walked to the Best Western that morning, and now it was near dark, and she was tired. As I mulled over the possibility of inquiring about the smell, she pointed to the side of the road up ahead and said, “Oh, there’s mama. You mind stopping for a sec?”

I obliged, pulling on to the shoulder and alongside a bent figure wrapped in a number of drab shawls. Charlotte rolled down the passenger-side window. “What you doin’, mama?” she asked.

The bent figure kept shuffling forward, and I let the car inch along with it, matching its turtle pace. “She don’t hear so well,” Charlotte said to me.

There was a tiny wriggle under the shawl and a bare, withered arm emerged holding a white canister. It didn’t take long for me to figure out it was an airhorn.

“BWWWOOOOONNNNNNKKKKK!!!!” shrieked the horn into the dusk surrounding my car.

“Aw fer Pete’s sake,” said Charlotte. She yelled to the figure, “MAMA! MAMA! IT’S ME!”

“She carries that thing like it’s a can a mace,” she said to me, shaking her head.

Outside the window, the figure finally turned its shawl-covered head, revealing a crone’s face. It stopped in its tracks, and turned, body and all, to face the car.

“Mama, what you doin’ out here in the dark on the side of the highway?” said Charlotte.

The old woman shuffled closer to the car, put her hands on the window ledge, and squinted in at me with watery eyes.

“Who that man?” she croaked.

“He was kind enough to offer me a ride home,” said Charlotte.

“Hello!” I chirped a little too enthusiastically.

“What I tell you ‘bout ridin’ with strangers?” she said to her daughter.

“Mama, all we got is the kindness of strangers lately,” said Charlotte, and then, to me, “I’m so sorry. She lives with me. Is there anyway you could give her a ride also?”

“Of course,” I said.

“I see you din’t sell that boy now did you,” said Charlotte’s mother.

“Mama, get in the car, and this nice gentlemen’ll take us both home,” said Charlotte.

The old woman inched over to the back door and spent a good minute trying to grasp the handle with her miniature claw of a hand. She would have kept trying until she got it had I not snapped to my senses and hopped out of the car to help her. Once I had her inside, I got back behind the wheel and pulled back out on the highway.

“It’s just about five miles more,” said Charlotte.

“Wha happen with the boy? Why you still got him?” croaked her mother from the backseat.

“They din’t wanna give me more than forty dollars, mama,” said her daughter in return.

“Forty dollars! Why’n you take it, girl? That’s forty more dollars than we got right now between’t us!” she shrieked.

“He’s worth more than that, mama, and you know it!” Charlotte yelled back.

I looked over at her briefly. Whatever she had cradled in her lap was delicate, to her at least, judging by the way she held it, and I had a feeling in my gut that that was what the argument was about. Her eye caught my glance.

“I’m sorry, mister,” she said. “Me and mama have’n a disagreement over what happened at the roadshow.”

“The roadshow?” I inquired.

“YOU A FOOLISH CHILD!” yelled a hollow mouth a few inches from my ear.

“GOOD LORD!” I said, doing my best to keep the car on the road.

“Mama, you knock it off,” hissed Charlotte.

She turned to me. “The Roadshow, from the television, was at the Best Western. I went to see about selling the boy here, but it din’t work out too well.”

My brow furrowed while I tried to absorb what I was hearing. I had to ask it, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer: “Who...umm...who’s the boy?”

“This the boy. Right here.” said Charlotte, gently rocking the duffle on her lap.

“You shoulda sold the dang boy, Charlotte girl. We gots ta eat!” cried her mother from behind us.

“They said he was a spice bearer,” beamed Charlotte. “I just know he’s worth more than forty dollars.”

The old woman leaned forward from the backseat. “Girl. What in the hell is a SPICE BEAR?” she said.

“Not a spice BEAR, mama. A spice bear-er,” said Charlotte, and then she went on to describe to both of us what the expert at the antique roadshow had told her on camera after inspecting the boy.

It went something like this:

ROADSHOW HOST: Your name is Charlotte, correct?

CHARLOTTE: Yes’sir. That’s correct.

ROADSHOW HOST: (INTO CAMERA) What Charlotte has brought to the Roadshow today, is an authentic mummified corpse of a Civil War soldier. He was a Union soldier; we can tell that much from the snatches of blue wool still adhering to the body. Also, he was a young man, a boy really, probably twelve to thirteen, judging by the size of his bones. (POINTING) It looks like he had the lower portion of his jaw shattered by the lead ball of a musket. But the really miraculous thing about this little fella is that bodily he is almost completely still intact. (BACK TO CAMERA) Now this had me and my colleagues almost completely baffled at around three this afternoon, because we couldn’t figure out how, even in a soil rich with clay, a body could stay reasonably intact for well over one hundred years. Well, that’s when it hit me, not here (POINTS TO HIS HEAD) but here (POINTS TO HIS NOSE) I smelled spices! This little guy smells like spice! Of course! One of the duties given to younger men drafted into the Civil War was that of, Spice Bearer! These soldier boys were trained in the art of spicing and made to carry small bags of spice all over their body, ready at a moment’s notice for the company cook. So, naturally when this Spice Bearer was buried in the ground, the various spices sewed into his uniform preserved him until you stumbled upon him while, ironically, digging a grave for your deceased cat, whose name was… (GESTURING TO CHARLOTTE)

CHARLOTTE: Spice.

ROADSHOW HOST: Wow. You know, I just can’t get over the smell of this dead boy! It’s going to stay with me for a very long time. It’s like a sweet beef jerky. Mesmerizing, repellant… What fascinates me is that it’s not just a dead boy I’m smelling, but history. This is the smell of history. You may not be aware of it, but Locust Grove is named after a Civil War battle that happened on July 3, 1862. Do you see?! History is all around us. Now, as far as dollar value, well, since there are no real historical artifacts intact other than a few snatches of uniform, and of course the corpse itself, there is really nothing of monetary value here. But, but, since I personally find this mummified soldier boy so wondrously delightful, I will estimate his value, to me personally, at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty dollars. What do you think of that Charlotte?

CHARLOTTE: Aw, forgit it.

“You’re gonna wanna take the next left,” Charlotte told me, breaking the spell of her story.

I swung the car hard into a left turn and heard the old woman in the backseat emit a small audible grunt as she slid across the seat and into the door. Then I pulled on to the shoulder for what seemed like the ninetieth time that night.

“There’s a dead body in that bag on your lap?” I asked.

Charlotte looked at me. She didn’t say anything. Just nodded.

“Good God,” I said.

“You can have him for thirty-five dollars,” whispered mama near my ear.

“I DO NOT WANT TO BUY A DEAD BODY,” I responded.

“Uh-oh. Now him cranky,” said mama.

“He’s wrapped in plastic,” said Charlotte.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I said.

“I just mean he ain’t gonna crumble on yer seats or anything,” said Charlotte.

“That’s what that smell is. Isn’t it,” I said as a silent retch worked up through me.

Charlotte shrugged, “Prolly. I can’t say I much smell him anymore. Just used to it I guess.”

“How much farther to your house?” I said.

“HAW HAW!” barked mama. “He thinks we live in a house!”

“We can get out right here,” said Charlotte.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“There,” she said, pointing to an old billboard set back from the road in a grove of trees.

“You live in a billboard?” I said.

“There’s space up on top,” she said.

I looked at the billboard. It loomed in the dark, unlit, and from what I could tell, unused. In the moonlight I could just make out the remains of half a giant hamburger, and possibly the word “PRAY” in large black letters. What must it be like to live in the crawl space at the top of a huge sign? I hadn’t the heart to ask.

“IT’S TERRIBLE LIVIN’ UP THERE,” said mama as if she was inside my brain. “IF I HAD THE PAINT I’D PAINT ‘TERRIBLE’ ON IT IN HUGE LETTERS SO EVERYONE’D KNOW.”

I sighed.

“C’mon, mama, let’s leave this gentleman alone,” said Charlotte opening her door. “Thanks very much for the ride.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?” said Charlotte. “Us bein’ poor? Homeless? Ain’t your fault. Lotta folks poor these days. Maybe when I sell this boy proper, we’ll get a roof back over our heads. Who knows?”

“Hope is more addictive than alcohol,” cackled mama from the back.

Charlotte shook her head, chuckled, and stepped out of the car. I got out, went around to the other side, and helped mama from the car. Her grip was solid on my arm, and I thought about her climbing the steel rungs on the billboard ladder to get to the living space on top. How much longer could that last?

I quickly fished in my pocket and pulled out what cash I had on me: $40 dollars.

“Hey, listen,” I said. “In case you don’t sell him right away. Consider this a down payment towards the price you’re asking.”

I held out the money. Charlotte’s eyes met mine with mixture of relief and loathing. Then the bills were gone, as the old woman snatched them, muttering “thank you, Jesus,” and started a slow shuffle through the underbrush towards the billboard in the distance.

Charlotte gave me a small smile. “Thank you,” she said, and turned, still holding the dusty old duffle bag in her arms. I watched the two of them disappear into the trees, and from the warmth of my car I thought I could just barely make out a dark shape advancing up the billboard’s narrow ladder as I pulled out on to the blacktop, and into the night.