#onehourstories

Doug was taking forever to get back from his piss,

so eventually Randal just got out of the truck to wait. It was cold outside, but he'd be in that cab for the hour and a half drive to the city, so he might as well give his lungs a change of pace.

The white Ford flatbed was piled high with Christmas trees netted up tight. Randal pulled at the straps holding the bulging load in and wished he had a smoke to pass the time. He hadn't smoked since that bitch Cara had dumped him over it.

He beat an impatient rhythm on the side of the truck. "Doug!" he yelled, thoughts of Cara making him more aggro than usual. "C'mon!"

He'd quit after the breakup, told his buddies it had to do with his grandpa getting the big C, though a bigger part of it was that it was getting more expensive every day now that his source on the rez had been busted.

In the distance he saw Doug's big frame ambling out of the forest, winter breaths trailing behind him. Randal got back into the truck to wait.

He'd had fantasies of rubbing it in her face, showing it her how easy it was to quit, but realized after he ran into her at the Legion one night that it was pretty hard to demonstrate something you weren't doing. She was with Leon that night and that had blindsided him, they guiltily split from there in a way that Randal realized that she'd just preferred smoking Leon's pole, nothing to do with his habit.

Doug opened the door and lumbered back into the truck. "Sorry, bro."

"The fuck, guy?" Randal said, slamming the truck back onto the road in a grind of stony slush. "You get lost in there? Thought you were just taking a leak on the side of the road."

Doug chuckled. "It was a bit of a production. Looked like a crime scene by the end of it on all that white snow. Geez louise."

"Cleanup on aisle 4?" Randal said, a callback to a short stint they'd had together at the grocery store as teenagers.

"Oh man, can you imagine?" Doug said, pulling off his hat and mopping his brow with the pom pom. "Clear the motherfucking store and get the guys in the radiation suits in here. Code 666."

Randal laughed, glad to have Cara off his mind. "So you know where to go, once we get into the city, right?"

"Oh yeah man," Doug said. "I'm better than any GPS."

But he wasn't, it turned out. After an hour of driving around in circles, all Doug was good for was farting the cab up. They had hit pocket after pocket of rushhour traffic, and increasingly irritated calls from Jake.

"We're down to charlie brown trees here man, I've had like 3 customers just walk out," Randal's cousin barked at him.

Randal glared at Doug, and then the damnable device that had led him astray. The last trip to the city had felt like some kind of circle of hell with it leading him in loops, never getting him any closer. The patronizing look on the face of the hipster who'd given him directions made him feel a fucking hick in his dirty truck. Which was why, when Doug had bragged to him at the bar about how often he'd made pot drops into the city, Randal had hired him. But it turned out he had worked mostly in another area of the city... blah blah blah... and was as lost as Randal. In desperation, he turned on the GPS, wincing at the grating sound of the lady's commands.

But this time, the GPS worked, and before long he spotted his cousin's Christmas tree lot, tucked beside a grocery store.

"Nice location," said Doug, who'd been silent most of the last hour. Randal parked and they started bombing the trees in.

"These ones look nice and fresh," said a lady with a little girl.

"They are indeed," boomed Doug, as if he'd picked them himself.

After they'd finished dumping the load, and sent Doug for some coffees, Randal apologized to Jake. Jake said he'd take the three lost sales out of his fee, and Randal nodded, said he'd take it out of Doug's. It was dark now. He looked up at the sky, big flakes coming down hard through the street lamp's glare.

"Fuck," he looked at his cousin. "You think I could crash on the floor, like before?" He motioned at the trailer that was the lot's temporary office.

They watched as Doug approached with the coffees.

"Sure," Jake said. "Not enough room for two, though."

Doug, a good-natured smile on his face, gave them their coffees. "Not enough room for what?"

"For you. I'm staying the night here, too late to head out," Doug said, sipping his coffee. "You want a ride back, meet me at my truck at 8am."

Jake wandered off and made himself busy.

Before Doug could say anything else, Randal turned away from his kicked-dog face. "You know this city like the back of your hand, right? Should be easy to find a place to sleep!"

Randal forced himself to take another sip of coffee and waited it out, looking studiously elsewhere. Eventually Doug turned and walked away.

Randal was mad at himself for trusting a fuck-up, but already felt sadness melting through.

"Eight sharp!" he said to Doug's back and big shoulders, covered in snow, as he passed through the circle of streetlight and into the black.