Mr. Potato Head was on his way to the home of an old friend of the family, an ex-colleague of Pastor Potato Head, who was still very active in community services in this city. She was a nonprofit sector management counselor. She lived in a suburb outside of the city where Mr. Potato Head had been raised until the age of ten. The pupils of the pair of eyes he was wearing were very small.
He had just dropped off Chips and Spud at the farm half-an-hour out of the small university town where Mr. Potato Head had lived for three years. Popcorn, his pet ferret, was inside of a portable cage for cats on the passenger seat. Mr. Potato Head was still a little high from the mixture of cocaine and water-soluble opiates he had injected into one of the veins of his thin rubber arms earlier this morning, at Nolan and Elise's home, in the city. But to continue on forward he'd need to feel better. He had no more hard drugs. He was motivated to make it up north. Holiday could help him cop more hard drugs when Mr. Potato Head arrived to that city. Holiday, an old friend of Mr. Potato Head, a potato head he had met while he worked in a theatre-bar in the historic city of the Caribbean country in which Mama Potato Head resided. Holiday was hip-hop artist involved with subterranean music-scenes. He had rapped in a famous hip-hop band of the Caribbean country where Mama Potato Head lived in. The hip-hop group had broken up and he was now living in a city of the northeast with a reputation of never sleeping.The truck had nothing to listen to music through other than the radio. If Mr. Potato Head spent a long time driving without some sound to focus on while driving, because he was wearing his pair of ears, the small pupils of the pair of eyes he was wearing would lower and he'd feel as if he were asleep, but he wasn't. He was just on the nod.
Mr. Potato Head felt that music on the radio sucked. Fuck, Mr. Potato Head thought. I have so much good music but can't do anything with it. He was thinking about all of the music he had of bands that friends of his played in. He couldn't listen to any of it in this truck he was driving.
He was driving through the state roads. He saw many churches along both sides of the road. Many churches in between sad-seeming homes. There were abandoned commercial spaces as well.
He listened to public radio. He drove for hours listening to public radio. The palms of his small white plastic hands hurt from his gripping of the steering wheel. The pair of teeth he wore was in a clenched state and his jaw hurt.
He drove and stopped a few times for gasoline. When he'd stop for gasoline he'd clean Popcorn's cage. Popcorn in the portable cage for cats. Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head had bought the cat-cage together at a thrift store. Mrs. Potato Head was gone and Popcorn remained.
To clean Popcorn's cage, Mr. Potato Head would hold him in one hand, Popcorn moving around, trying to get out of Mr. Potato Head's small white hand. Mr. Potato Head would put him into his butt. Popcorn would scratch the inside of Mr. Potato Head's plastic interior. He could feel Popcorn rolling around trying to use his limber body to somehow get himself out. Popcorn would be okay. Mr. Potato Head was of plastic. It was possible for Popcorn to breathe from within Mr. Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head giggled because of the feelings originating from within himself.
Mr. Potato Head emptied out the dirtied toilet paper from the cage. He had many rolls of toilet paper to use to replenish the toilet paper in the cage.
He got back into the truck and drove. He was listening to public radio. He heard a debate about whether a religious building not dedicated to the country where Mr. Potato Head was living in's god should be built on a location considered sacred due to a terrible catastrophe. He wanted to remove his ears but he knew he needed to be able to listen to the sounds of the road. He changed the station in search of a pop song catchy enough to cause him to leave it on a mainstream music station.
He was driving through the state roads. He drove through the downtown areas of small towns. In between these small towns he saw more churches. He didn't really notice people around these places, the churches, the homes, the businesses, the small towns. People weren't hanging around outside of these buildings.
He drove for more hours. He drove onto the interstate highway. After getting onto the interstate highway there were trees and hills around the road and other cars driving around him. The sky was dark. He listened to public radio. He got off the interstate highway into a service station. His eyelashes were sinking over his eyes. He was having trouble keeping the pair of eyes he was wearing, the pair of eyes whose pupils were very small, open. He cleaned out Popcorn's cage. He sat back into the driver's seat. He lit pieces of marijuana in the bowl of his small pipe and inhaled puffs of marijuana smoke.
He had been using the directions he had printed out from the internet to help him drive up north. On the public radio he heard angry citizens of the country in which he was living in saying negative things about other religions.
Why? Mr. Potato Head wondered. They were all fooled.
The timer of the truck read it was past twelve AM. He was driving on the interstate highway. He was still in the south of the country he was living in. He continued driving and began to nod off slightly while driving. His pair of eyes he was wearing fell while he was driving. He could not keep the pair of eyes open so they fell off. He was awoken by the sound the left wheels of the truck made when they went over the edge of the lane. He realized he wasn't wearing eyes.
The sound was a burning-scratching sound. Sounds Mr. Potato Head remembered the buses he waited for around the southeast side of the town in which he had lived in for three years making. The sound the bus would make when it would pick him up after he had waited for an hour-and-a-half, maybe with one or more of the other members of the Vegetables. Times like when they had eaten fried okra together at a small business food vendor and then gone to sit on a bench in a public park to drink 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor. One of these times they had copped crack cocaine: the night they had recorded the drum tracks for their first long-play album, their last recordings together as a band.
He had to search for his pair of eyes on the ground. The truck's wheels were making a lot of noise as he steered the truck without removing all the pressure he had placed on the gas with his small plastic right foot. He found his pair of eyes and put them on. He could see again.
He drove into a service station and parked the truck in a parking spot close enough to the station to receive illumination but far enough to not be seen. He opened Popcorn's cage, and Popcorn began jumping around inside it trying to get out. Mr. Potato Head held him back with his hand and removed some dirtied paper. He reached into his butt and pulled out a handful of food for Popcorn and dropped it into the cage. He found Popcorn's water on the ground of the truck. He gave Popcorn some water. He closed the cage. He wished he had some more water-soluble opiates to inject into the veins of his plastic body.
Mr. Potato Head set up thick sheets he had brought along into the space between the driver's and passenger's seats, where, he was thinking of, Spud and Chip had each sat down in during the rides up and down the final night they had spent together in the state where Mr. Potato Head had been living in for more than three years.
Mr. Potato Head sat down on the sheets. He had left the air conditioning on in the truck. It was cooling the space. He pulled out his small pipe and marijuana, inserted pieces of marijuana into the small pipe's bowl and lit the marijuana with a lighter. He inhaled puffs of marijuana smoke and he got high. He turned off the truck, removed the pair of eyes he was wearing, the pair of ears he was wearing, the nose he was wearing, and fell asleep. He woke up because he felt water rolling along his plastic skin. It was hot in the truck driver's space again. He had slept about an hour. He replaced his eyes, his ears, his nose. He sat back into the driver's seat and turned on the truck and drove the truck out of the service station back onto the interstate highway. He drove on until he felt like he couldn't keep his eyes open. He looked for another service area. It was hard to see the entrances into these service stations well in the darkness that surrounded the mountains which surrounded the interstate highway which surrounded the truck in which Mr. Potato Head was driving.
He drove into the first service station he saw. He checked on Popcorn, got high, fell asleep, and woke up when it was hot inside the truck. He drove the truck back onto the interstate highway. The pieces of his that he was wearing were the worn out pieces. Pieces he only wore when his newer ones were no longer functioning. His pair of eyes was red. His ears were upside down and cracked. The nose he wore was his swollen nose. The teeth he wore were tainted yellow.
While he was driving it became daylight in the sky. Mr. Potato Head stopped at a gas station and bought an energy drink using his government-funded food benefits card. He filled the truck's gas tank with gasoline. The fingers of his small plastic hands were hurting and he had trouble holding the gas nozzle to the truck's gas tank. He thought of the young man who had introduced him to the idea of food stamps, the MC of Scum of the Earth. He was of medium height, extremely skinny, walked a bit hunched, and always had a humble smile which represented his willingness to persevere through the struggling existence that was being alive. He was the young man Mr. Potato Head had met the day he almost lost the hat Pastor Potato Head had given him. The last gift Mr. Potato Head had received from his father before his father had died. The gas nozzle reacted to the truck's gas tank being full. Mr. Potato head put the nozzle back, closed the truck's gas tanks, and got back into the driver's seat. He drove back onto the interstate highway.
It was the second day of his drive.
Mr. Potato Head noticed that he was closing in to parts of the country in which he was living where there were cities instead of small towns. The tangled parts of his insides began to loosen and became untied. Things like earphones and computer cables. Sponges that had gone hard softened. This occurred for some reason no stranger than the circumstance that he was a potato head existing in this world.
Gustavo Rivera used to publish under the name "Andy Riverbed."
