Robert E. Petras graduated from West Liberty University, but had also attended Kent State and Marshall University in his lifelong journey to find himself, often hitchhiking in the process.  His poetry and fiction has recently appeared in The Second Hump, The Rubber Lemon, Howls and Pushycats and State of Imagination.  Often he hangs his poetry on a nail in a tree growing in the alley behind his Toronto, Ohio house.  He is a victim of frequent prank phone calls.

The Blue Car (May-ish, 2011. Issue 28.)

Suddenly I was in Charleston, West Virginia,
still 206 miles from home,
my breath as thick as the exhaust pluming the ramp.
A blue car with Pennsylvania plates pulled over.
Where are you going, the driver asked?
As far as you will take me, I said.
I'm visiting relatives in Wheeling, he said.
That's close, real close, I said.
Soon we were flying up I-77 at 80
but I figured he was around 40
and knew how much he could get away with.
He told me he sold conveyor belts to big industry.
He could sell anything, even rosaries to an atheist.
We blew past Ravenswood, Parkersburg, Marietta,
places I knew only by name.
I'm a student at Marshall, I said,
but he did not hear me;
he was already in Memphis, swinging with whores.
He took me to Lynchburg, to Nashville and Terre Haute,
told me about Cherry, Chastity and Jane.
Then there were the Chinese twins up in Fort Wayne
He took me as far as Kansas, telling me real life jokes about farmers' daughters.
When we turned Cambridge,
he was doing only 50.
You think you know someone,
He said,
but you don't.
Came home one day
to an empty house—
ten years together—gone.
Took the kids,
the dog, everything—
every thing.
He didn't see it coming,
left with whores, his only relatives.
At Bridgeport he pulled off the highway.
Asked me if I needed money.
I shook my head no.
He slipped a 20 in my pocket anyway.
I stepped onto the gravelly verge
and thanked him.
Watched the blue car fade.
I pointed my thumb
in the only direction worth knowing—
toward home.