Road Romeo

“Where?” Dwayne asked, moving his eyes to where Stan was motioning, out beyond the dirty glass in the front wall of the truck stop café in the complex where all the guys stopped to gas and feed up when they were driving through Cheyenne, Wyoming, on a long haul.

“Him? He’s the guy with that fancy rig out there?” Dwayne asked, his voice incredulous. And his judgment not all that suspect. Walking toward them from the big, shiny burgundy rig with the extra-deep sleeper behind the cab was a rangy-looking cowboy. And not a new one either—probably no younger than his early forties. He wasn’t too tall and certainly wasn’t too fat. In fact he looked a little gaunt, all angles, and leathery tan, and wrinkles. Much like most of the rig drivers up here in the badlands of the upper West—well-worn jeans, a faded plaid flannel shirt, tooled-leather boots, a weather-beaten black ten-gallon hat, and a red bandana around his neck. But he walked tall, and his step was jaunty.

“Yep, him,” Stan answered.

“And you say you can always tell when he’s goin’ through?” Dwayne continued.

“Yep. It’s them young guys over there, just as I told yer.”