I woke up to my roommate Gary shouting, “Fire in the hole!” I opened my eyes just as he tossed  one of last night’s Busch Light cans like a hand grenade. The empty can ricocheted off the window above my bed before smacking me in the forehead. Gary retrieved another crumpled can from his sweatpants pocket and cocked his arm back like a pitcher mid-windup. “We’re going to Pair-A-Dice,” he said. 

I thought, Why not? I was unemployed, had nothing going on that day. So I got dressed, and we piled into Gary’s rusted Buick.

We backed out of our driveway, the sun just a fingernail on the horizon. I hadn’t been awake this early since getting up to watch Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Stretching my legs, I splayed my feet outward, and the low light made the trash littering the footwell look like a mini snow angel. Once we’d gone a few blocks and the sun had climbed a bit higher, the trash transformed back into candy bar wrappers and cigarette butts. 

We stopped at a red light, and a semi pulled alongside us. My brothers and I used to try to get them to honk their horns, would flip off the truckers who didn’t. Maybe it was because I was still slightly hungover from last night, but I stared up at the trucker and pumped my fist. The light turned green. The semi crept forward. Then: Hooooonnkkkkkk, hooonnnnkkk! Gary tilted his head back, cackled like a comic book villain. “Let’s find another one,” he said, hitting the gas.

He figured the highway was the best place to spot semis, so we pulled onto 71, the opposite direction of the bar we were going to. A few minutes later, I was hanging out the passenger window like a dog and pumping my fist at a semi going at least eighty. Hooooooonnkkkkk, hoooonkkkk! Laughing, Gary slapped his dash and sped toward our next target. This one didn’t honk. 

“What do we do now?”

“If they don’t honk, we flip them off,” I said, flashing Gary the bird. I extended my middle finger out the window, and we zoomed past the no-fun trucker, the Buick vibrating like a massage chair. Even in Gary’s piece of shit car, the trucker couldn’t catch us. This was my favorite part, the speed. It felt like we were going somewhere important without having to go anywhere at all. 

We looped the same few miles of 71 for hours, pumping our fists at semis. Most honked. Hoooonkkkkkk! Some didn’t. Fuck you!  Whenever Gary brought up Pair-A-Dice, I’d point out an un-honked semi, and we’d repeat everything. I was having too much fun. I didn’t want to get to the bar, have a few drinks, and feel like another day had passed. I even loaned Gary one of my last twenties for gas.

“Let’s call it,” Gary finally said. I could tell the joke was wearing thin. As we drove, I watched smoke float out of a factory along the highway. The smoke looked like a giant foot pressing down on its chimney and holding the factory together. I thought about the workers inside, covered in dust or particles of whatever they manufactured, and took a few deep breaths. Then I blew, hoping to dissipate the smoke, hoping the place would shake apart a little. Instead, I just fogged up the glass.

Eventually everyone working at the factory would punch out and head home. On their way, they’d get stuck at red lights or behind slow-moving traffic, and for a moment we’d be the same. Farther down the road, I glanced in the passenger side mirror to see if the smoke appeared differently at another angle, but it had gotten too dark.

We never made it to Pair-A-Dice. When we got home, Gary cracked a Busch Light and fell asleep in his La-Z-Boy. He sank into the pleather, and I worried the recliner might swallow him whole. I went to my room, where Gary’s hand grenade sat on my bed, right where I’d left it. It hadn’t exploded. “I still have time, I still have time,” I told myself again and again, even though I knew I didn’t. 

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Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Florida Review, Wigleaf, the Pinch, The Cincinnati Review, The Forge, Passages North, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or at williammusgrove.com.