Twenty-Six Ounce Road Trip

By Jody Padumachitta Goch

We drove my pick-up truck, Brown Dog, Tom, Charlie, some others, and the best dog in the whole entire universe, Gus, north and slightly east from Vancouver. The trip really started in a town called Hope, where all the old gold diggers had started out from. We weren’t gonna be looking for gold, we were just bored and it was a long Labor Day weekend before Uni began for some and the slog towards the next days off at Xmas began for blue-collar workers like me. The end of summer, the end of drinking peppermint schnapps under Gordon’s orchard trees, of calling in sick with life and hungover from trying to sidestep reality, a break between box lacrosse and ice hockey.

We left Hope to drive through towns with number names, 100 Mile House, followed by 108 Mile Ranch, up to 150 Mile House and then finally Williams Lake and a rodeo—later I found bruises along my thigh from entering the saddle broncs with my androgynous name and too much tequila. British Columbia is a beautiful place, and Tom can tell you all about those towns and how I drove like a mix of an old grandma and Mario Andretti, taking old Brown Dog to the red line and throwing us over mountain passes and double-lined non-passing lanes. Until Charles took the wheel and made me sleep in the back of the pick-up; she didn’t often tackle me over driver status, but this was a mutiny. Oh ya, Charles, that’s her last name, her real name was Debbie, but we had three Debbies on the team so Charles became, well, Charles or Charlie. A no-brainer really when you think about it.

Anyway I curled up with Gus in the bed of the truck and we commiserated about the rough roads and the lack of beverages. The other humans had moved all the fluids to the cab, Gus and myself apparently not to be trusted with the Bourbon or whiskey, Gus being the only alcoholic dog I have ever known—he had a bad thirst, that dog. We had to put all the alcohol on the highest shelf we had, and even then he would try to scale the walls to get a wee dram of Baileys. Cranbrook came and went, possibly over to Penticton, Osoyoos and back to Hope.

I woke up on Tuesday and asked what everyone had been doing. Tom made up a bunch of stories, Charlie joined him, and they said we had toured the interior of our province. And if it wasn’t for those damn bruises and a belt buckle from some cowboy, and a thick head the size of Texas, I would have called them all liars.
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It was the best trip I never remembered.

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Jody Padumachitta Goch is non-binary, neuro-diverse, slightly dyslexic and Canadian. None of these things get in the way of drinking coffee and wondering how they ended up living in the German Black Forest. They write, chop wood, and ride other people’s horses. Jody’s jeans and shirt pockets are full of stories. It’s hell on the washing machine. They enjoy lighting the wood stove and rescuing words from the lint catcher.
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Jody has been published in Does It Have Pockets, Wild Word, Rise Up Review, Comlit, Poetically Yours and Third Street Review.