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27 Tumbleweed A day later, we were on the road again. Grody drove us through the French Quarter to the western outskirts of New Orleans to catch a ride on Interstate 10. Like Depty Dawg, the French Quarter was still recovering. Mountain-high mounds of wine bottles towered above workers with push-brooms, bulldozing knee-high piles of confetti into the gutters. We pictured tons of the rainbow-colored slivers washing into the Gulf and settling to the bottom, the faintest wash of polka-dot sediment attesting, millions of years from now, to the city’s brief, phantasmal reign. The prospect of hitchhiking across Louisiana was daunting—to me anyway —but all we had were our thumbs, and Depty thought we’d have more luck if mine was the one out. Standing once more beside a highway, I polished my digit, a ritual inspired by Sissy Hankshaw, hitchhiker extraordinaire of Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. That cracked Dep up; better still, it worked. We got short rides consistently, always from men. Also consistent was some form of the question, do ya’ll like to go skinny-dippin’? Depty took it all in stride, and he could quote Scripture, which helped. By late afternoon we were still hours from the Texas border, and our present ride was only going as far as Lafayette. Depty had hoped to be farther along by dark. “Let us off at the next truck stop,” he directed the driver. “That be fine.” “Honey?” I fretted at his side. “Is this a good idea?” “Trucks go long distance,” he explained, after we’d been dropped off at a desolate café in an empty field. The ramshackle building was circled by a herd of resting freight-haulers. “Think of them as motels on wheels,” he instructed me. “Don’t worry, I can handle truckers. My daddy was one.” 109 110 | Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley In the café he spied a pair of chatty, rough-hewn truckers sitting at the counter. Bonnie and Roy were on their way to Kansas City. They were willing to tuck a small suitcase, one guitar, and two wayfarers behind their front seat, so long as Depty was willing to sing for them sometime before we hit Shreveport . It was only a hundred miles to Dallas from there. The sun was gashing red and purple as we settled in the back of their cab. Outside of town, Roy pulled off onto deserted back roads, the colors of houses and barns indistinguishable in the graying light. “We been livin’ in the truck all the time,” he informed us, Born to Be Free tattooed in cursive on his sizeable forearm. “Ever since I come back from ’Nam.” Bonnie had a tomboy figure and dirty blonde hair; a loose bottom plate clicked like castanets when she talked. “Suits me fine. Ain’t never been able to sit still, not in all my life.” Roy smiled at her. “You’re tumbleweed, babe, same as me.” “That’s right,” Bonnie clicked. “And tumbleweed don’t stick to nothin’ but itself.” The radio kept them company on long hauls. Like Depty Dawg, they knew what music got played where, and they loved it all: gospel, country, Cajun, soul, rhythm-and-blues, and the plain ol’ blues. The landscape was as much composed of airwaves as it was asphalt. Roy patted the dashboard above the radio. “Yep. She’s our constant solace.” After an hour or so of easy conversation, Dep opened his guitar case. That was my cue to plaster myself against the window to make room for his knees. In the black sky above, constellations were winking on one-by-one in patterns more familiar than the white lines dashing below me. The truck rumbled past tattered billboards, closed gas stations, and slumbering trailers, as Depty sang and the dark countryside opened to receive us. At midnight we came out on the highway and Bonnie took the wheel. Roy passed out, snoring, in the passenger seat. Dep put the guitar away and drew me to him. “Get some sleep,” he whispered. Obligingly, I closed my eyes. “We appreciate y’all giving up your boo-door for a night,” he told Bonnie. I opened one eye. She looked like a little kid hunkered over the wheel. “You sure can sing,” she allowed over her shoulder. “That could be you on the radio I swear.” Tumbleweed | 111 I leaned forward. “Ever heard of...

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