The Obstacle Course Read Online Free

night and all that other motherly shit. I’d make up some story for them, whatever popped into my head. It was usually a good one. One time this woman started crying, I laid such a load of pathetic shit on her.
    Finally I got a ride from some guy driving this raggedy-ass milk tanker heading into D.C. from the Eastern Shore. It was an old Mack in serious need of a ring job, the smoke was coming out the exhaust so black you couldn’t hardly see out the little back window of the cab. Not only that but the guy had a serious case of the farts—I had to crack my window, the fart smell was so putrid. The funny thing was, I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. He was a real farmer, this guy.
    “Ravensburg,” he said when I told him where I was going, “I can drop you there, night like this rides’re gonna be hard to come by.” He had one of those super-thick Eastern Shore accents, the kind even people from other parts of Maryland can’t hardly understand. The only reason I can is because my mother’s people came from Tilghman Island originally, which is this real neat little island over on the Eastern Shore where they do oyster fishing in these old sailboats called skipjacks. Her people weren’t oyster fishers, though; my mom gets seasick just looking at a boat.
    Anyway, big fucking deal, he can drop me there. Defense Highway, the road we were on, which is the only road between Annapolis and Washington, goes through Ravensburg. Splits it right down the center, in fact. The way he put it, it was like he was doing me a big favor, going out of his way for me. I hate it when people act like they’re doing you a big favor when they aren’t doing jack-shit. Beggars can’t be choosers, though, not when you’re out there thumbing in a snowstorm.
    “Bum one of your smokes?” I asked. He had a pack of Chesterfields sitting up on the dash. I personally can’t stand Chesterfields, but I needed a smoke to calm my nerves and to cut the fart odor.
    He gave me a funny look, like he didn’t want to, but he did. It’s funny how people are, they won’t want to do something like let you bum one of their cigs but they won’t come out and say no, they’ll just give you one of these looks that’s supposed to do it for them. And then you’re supposed to know that the look means “I don’t want to” and not bum one, or whatever it is you asked for they didn’t want to give you. But I don’t go for that, not if I really wanted it, and I really wanted that Chesterfield, although normally I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot pole, so I just pretended like I didn’t understand the “look” routine, and slid one out of his pack.
    “Where you been?” he asked after I fired it up and blew a smoke ring. I blow the best smoke rings of any kid in my class, it’s one of my specialties.
    “Annapolis,” I told him. “The Naval Academy.”
    “Uh huh,” he said, like the Naval Academy was no big deal.
    “My brother’s a midshipman,” I elaborated.
    “Oh, yeah?” That impressed him—kind of. Like I said, he was a real farmer, having a midshipman for a brother had to impress someone like him.
    “He’s a middie second-class,” I continued, “he graduates next year.”
    He didn’t comment on that. Probably still worrying about that one pathetic Chesterfield.
    “He’s captain of his company. Actually of his whole brigade. He’s on the football team, too. Halfback.”
    That got his attention. The funny thing was, if he’d known anything at all about the Naval Academy he’d have busted me there and then, because you don’t get to be a brigade commander until your senior year. But he was so stupid he didn’t even know that.
    “I must’ve seen him play last year,” he said. “I went to the Maryland game.”
    “Right,” I answered, getting into it, “that was him. He had a real good game, even though he was only a sophomore.”
    “Maryland creamed ’em,” the driver said, real pissed-off, “nobody from