I smoked a lot of weed tonight.

Just a mile outside the city limits of Council, Oklahoma, a man in dirty jeans and a soiled gray sweatshirt stood above Interstate 40 on the Route 81 overpass. It was an early November morning, the sun just becoming visible in the East, and he rubbed his hands together in an attempt to alleviate the chill in his bones. Eighteen wheelers were starting to fly by in both directions. Trucks headed east went on into Oklahoma City, from there who knows. They could meet up with I-35 and travel south to Dallas or Houston. North to Kansas City, Omaha or maybe all the way to the Twin Cities. Possibly keep driving east over to Memphis or Nashville. Might take I-44 and go straight on to St. Louis. Be there by mid-afternoon.

He decided he'd follow the westbound road. There just seemed to be fewer options that way. Trucks heading west had to go all the way to Amarillo for a decent stop. He'd gone that far west with his family once. It was years before at the age of thirteen when an uncle was married in Dumas, Texas. That had been nice. He remembered how when they reached Amarillo they went north up into the panhandle. Even though there weren't any mountains, he could still feel them climbing into higher altitude, but when they rolled into Dumas it was just as flat as western Oklahoma. "High plains," his father said from the front seat. He hadn't thought of there being a higher kind of flat.

Walking with his head down along the interstate, his heartbeat rose whenever he caught sight of a plastic bottle, only to be let down when it didn't contain urine. He knew truck drivers used meth to stay awake on cross country drives. Knew that many of them would rather piss in a bottle and throw it out the window than lose fifteen minutes with a truck stop. Recycled meth wasn't as pure a dose, but a batch of good urine still got him five hours once.

He found himself picking at the scab on his left hand as he continued walking. A nervous tic that had gotten out of control. He shoved his hands into his pockets, but kept thinking about the sores on his body, causing him to bring a hand up to his face and run it over the rough patches on his forehead. He wondered what he looked like. Probably homeless, and at that point, he supposed he kind of was. His girlfriend left the week before, less than a day after they shut off the electricity. Shut the water off a few days after that.