During the semester he subsisted on peanuts and Red Bull. After a few weeks the flavor of the peanuts became inscrutable to him. Sometimes they tasted like earth, sometimes like a mouthful of blood. He thought of pregnant women who developed the urge to eat clay for its mineral content. He thought of castaways for whom fish eyeballs and viscera became like candy. The peanuts were pre-shelled and lighted salted. He tipped the can into his mouth as though the nuts were drink, and then he ground them up with his molars like a dragon grinding up the skulls of knights and squires, and the nuts turned into a paste that coated his tongue, and his tongue, baffled, would send strange signals to his brain. Dirt? Blood? He worried that he was becoming slightly allergic, but perhaps it was only the salt desiccating and abrading his throat. Anyway, he washed away the paste with Red Bull, which tasted now–and had always tasted–like fruity gasoline.
He was an adjunct instructor at Winnemac College up in Big Knife. A PhD, he had written his dissertation on the Impact of Enlightenment Thought on the Robinsonade. The dissertation was 258 pages, excluding works cited and notes. He taught five sections of English 110 for $900 per credit hour. It was 115 miles from his home to the campus in Big Knife, and he crossed one state line, and his wife was seven months pregnant, and there were 3,200 calories in a 20 ounce can of peanuts.
He was driving up an hour earlier than usual to get ahead of a rainstorm, but the rain overtook him. The rain struck his windshield like a swarm of flies slapping their angry asses against the glass. An icon on his dashboard lit up: it was a small cartoon version of his car swerving wildly on the road.
He had never been more attuned to the weather forecast–and never more helpful and Joblike in the face of its whimsy– than he had been the last two years, driving up to Big Knife three times per week. All of that time on the road didn’t improve his driving competency; it only jacked up his paranoia. Maybe that was the Red Bull. Caffeine made his thighs sweat.
The rain curdled into dime-sized hail, and he gave in and pulled over and turned on his hazards. He took out his smartphone and checked the weather again. There was now a flash flood warning. There wasn’t one when he had started off that morning, but there was one now.
While he was staring at his phone, he received an email notification from Winnemac. In-person classes were canceled due to severe weather. Instructors were advised to go virtual. He sighed. He was 98 miles from home, and the radar now showed a red-orange cloud over the full distance. The red-orange cloud, as a matter of fact, was over him, too. It was shaped like a peanut, or maybe a fetus sleeping with its back turned.
The hail dissolved back into rain. He decided that the smart move would be to get off the highway, which was built unwisely in the contour of a valley. The nearest exit led to a McDonald’s, a gas station, and Deluxe Motel. The McDonald’s was closed, and a troupe of six or seven locals stood huddled by the gas stations, no doubt comparing the hate crimes they had committed the previous weekend. He steered into the motel parking lot. As he shifted into park, the rain intensified. The windows of his car were filled with TV static. He checked his phone again, saw the advisory to take shelter immediately.
It was a five second jog from his car to the sliding glass doors, but he was dripping by the time he reached the front desk and rang the bell. The receptionist looked like a snowman made of potatoes. He could make out the lumps under his dress shirt and imagined extra eyes growing there. He thought of how Mr. Potato-Heads face was on his torso, like in some 14th century sailor’s story of grotesque natives with their heads embedded in their chests.
“I need a room,” he told the clerk. “I think I’m going to be stuck here for a while.”
“It ain’t so bad out there,” the clerk said. “It’ll rain out here wunst in a while.”
He didn’t have any argument to counter that, so he handed the potato man his driver’s license and credit card. The clerk fiddled on the computer, stopped, coughed, fiddled some more. It was possible that he was playing Minesweeper. He waited. The clerk cleared his throat.
“Alright, Mr. Morgan. Two-oh-six. Secunt floor,” the clerk said, sliding the plastic back to him.
Dr. Morgan, his brain insisted.
“Thank you,” he said.
When he got to his room, he went into the bathroom and peed for two and a half minutes. He washed his hands with the caustic yellow bar of soap, and then got an inch away from the bathroom mirror and examined his sclera. Pink, but not bacterially pink. Not pink like the Serratia marcescens that grew around your shower drain. The caffeine and stress and fatigue had united in arms to constrict the blood vessels in his eyes.
Truth be told, he was a germophobe. Why else would an English teacher know the scientific name for drain bacteria? He lifted up the bedsheets to inspect the mattress for bedbugs. He eyed the TV remote, found grime between the buttons, and opted to turn the TV manually. Every channel had on the same wildlife documentary about baboons.
Somewhere in there, he fell asleep and dreamed that he was still driving. He was always driving in his dream. As a child, he had suffered from vivid night terrors– hands rising from the side of the bed, wasps buzzing on the wall, that sort of thing. Adults mostly dreamt about work. Work and their commutes. Very occasionally, if was lucky, he would dream about driving home.
When he woke up, he slid his tongue across his teeth. He rubbed his eyes. His clothes were still damp. He could feel the band of his underwear digging a red strip into his waist.
He checked his phone, which was dead. An oversight: his charger was in his car. Outside, the static had stopped. Seabirds cawed outside. His mind produced the image of two gulls fighting over an empty french fry sleeve.
He went to the window and pulled back the curtains, which had grease prints right where his fingers naturally wanted to go. The sky was like rainbow sherbet, the land beneath it gone. The hotel was an island. He looked for his car and could not even see its outline under the water. As a matter of fact, the water reached all the way to the horizon. No trees, no highway.
“Their tough, olive-colored fur helps regulate body temperature in the extreme heat,” the television advised. It was still going off about baboons.
He looked across the way and tried to spot the Golden Arches. No dice. Well, maybe it was the angle.
He tried the phone on the bedside table. It made a nose that reminded him of the old internet. He returned the receiver to its cradle.
The television cautioned him: “The mothers can’t afford to let their guard down. The greatest threat to an infant baboon is an adult male.”
He went into the hallway. The buttons for the elevator were unlit and gray. He checked the stairwell. Five steps down the water swallowed everything up. He didn’t know what to do. He wished that the television was there to reassure him.
The vending machines were still in operation, and they even took card. He bought a bag of Planters and another Red Bull and returned to his room. In the documentary, one of the upstart adolescent male baboons had nabbed a baby and torn it open. Its aggression had apparently faded. It was playing with the baby like a dog with a paper towel roll. No sign of the mother.
Thunder cracked across the Savannah. It was getting ready to rain.
He ate his peanuts one at a time, plucking them from the bag like lice. The bag’s expiration date was last October, but they weren’t rancid– just a little stale. He rationed them the best he could. He was afraid, insanely, that they were the last peanuts on earth.
The Red Bull he saved. He didn’t need any extra energy now. He wanted the baboons to lull him to sleep. He rested his head in the crook of his elbow and tried to make himself dream about driving home.