When Ack and I decided to leave Keri Keri, we were sure to grab a bag of oranges from an honesty box. A small souvenir for our troubles.
We walked past the out-of-town roundabout, sitting on a side-of-the-road bank, peeling oranges and thumbing the pieces into our mouths.
A freight truck came towards us, quite similar to the one that I had seen all those years ago; when I had first tried hitching as a kid.
I stuck my thumb out while still seated, and surprisingly, the truck pulled over. Ack and I ran towards the passenger door and I opened it up, "Where ya headed?"
"I'm going all the way to Hamilton, brother, hop in." said a man wearing dirty-dog sunglasses.
I climbed up and buckled into the middle, while Ack took the window seat.
The truck pulled off from the side of the road and then came the usual chatter about 'what had brought us to where we were' and 'why we were headed where we were going.' Then came the subsequent chatter about our daily weeks and what we do for work.
"I work in creative advertising." I had lied.
"True? Creative advertising, aye? Like the stick man from Pak n Save?" the sunglass'd driver had asked.
"Yeah, well, that's my mentor actually. Funny thing is I actually met him while hitching. His name's Barnabas Christian, we're actually working on a marketing collection for ecostore right now, you know, the vegan cleaning product brand?"
"Vegan cleaning products? I didn't realise they used animal products in the first place." the sunglass'd driver started.
"Oh man, you'd be surprised. They test dish soap on cattle, you know, to see how good it is at getting grime off of their hooves. They even use bleach to whiten a sheep's wool while it's still growing on the damned thing."
The sunglass'd driver frowned, "That's not too good."
"You got that right, they do all sorts of messed up shit. I hear they're gonna start using hand soap to clean the feathers of farm chickens. Some bullshit marketing tactic to make them look more fertile. My friend Ack here will tell you all about that, he actually works for a company that wants to do it."
"Your job is to put hand soap foam on chicken feathers?" asked the sunglassed driver.
Ack clicked his tongue, "I wouldn't buy into what My friend Max here has been feeding you up on. It's not as if ecostore is any better. They buy dead animals from vet's and extract the fat to make their 'eco-friendly' hand soap, it's bullshit."
I felt my belly become weak, but managed to hold it together. So instead I nudged Ack as if to say 'We've got him on the hook now.'
I cleared my throat, "Say what you will, but I think using a dead animal that has no further purpose in this world, and squeezing the minerals needed to create high-quality hand soap is better than squeezing it from some poor farm animal that could go on to lay dozens more eggs, sue me."
The dirty dog driver shuffled in his seat and showed his top row of teeth, "I thought vegans were against the use of animal products in any form. Including eggs?"
I scoffed, "Some vegans think using honey is a sleight against morality."
"I'm just repeating what I heard to the best of my ability." the driver sneered.
Ack nudged me back and said, "If I can interrupt, I think the stance ecostore officially holds is reducatarian. I'm no professional, but I believe what you value Max is the reduction of general waste. So say a cat is going to be chucked in a dumpster, destined to become worm food, ecostore then bypasses that and gives the cat a second lease on life. It's very Buddhist really."
The driver scoffed, "A second lease on life aye? They're being used to wash some hairy old man's ass! That's some life!"
All of a sudden I felt that I had overstepped the line. We were still in the far north, with hours of travel ahead of us.
I didn't foresee a future where this driver would take us the whole way, so I did my best to sit tight and be quiet for a moment, and enjoy the last of my orange.
"And if you two are so against one another's practises, what are you doing hitching together in the first place, or even hitching at all?" The sunglass'd driver rattled off.
Ack grinned, "We were summoned to a farming convention. There was miscommunication and our rides were not to show up until the next working day, we couldn't wait that long."
The driver locked eyes onto me, so there would be no confusion as to who he was addressing, "And what were you gonna say to the farmer? That instead of handing over his chickens feathers he should dig up his dead dog?!"
Ack grinned even wider, "It's kind of like when all these record labels want to sign a musician. I'm more like Cash Money, and he's kinda like Death Row"
"Which is kinda suiting since he's the one doing all the animal killing and my products cost waaaay more money."
The driver gagged, "This is about as far as I'm going, I need to rest." he said as he pulled into a trucking rest zone.
I blinked rapidly, "Rest? But it's still daylight and you've gotta clear Hamilton?"
"Yeah, well, I'm in no rush. Plenty of time, now get out." replied the sunglass'd driver, pulling his keys out of the ignition.
Ack and I sat there a moment longer, unsure of what to do. But all the driver had to do was reveal his blood shot eyes from behind his dirty-dog sunglasses, for us to fully get his message.
And so, Ack and I removed ourselves from the truck and made our way down the rural road.
A loud bang sounded behind us and as I turned around I saw the dirty-dog driver steering his truck back onto the road and carrying on the rest of his journey without us.
"Shit man, you might've over done it." said Ack, watching the truck disappear into a cloud of black diesel.
"I tried to stop but you kept going, I couldn't help myself." I answered, coughing from the smoke.
"Well we're stranded again." said Ack, kicking some rocks.
"It's all good, Ack. We always find a way." I replied, feeling a pain in my stomach, "Shit, we forgot the oranges!"
A car sped past us with lightning speed. It seemed we were on a blind corner, it was a piss poor place to put a rest zone, and an even worse place to hitch.
"C'mon Ack, let's just focus on getting back, c'mon." I said as I began to walk along the side of the road.
The sun was still high, the heat bleating down upon us. I felt my skin begin to burn. Ack didn't have to worry about this problem. One of the benefits of being an islander.
After a few kilometres of walking along the side of the road, on gravel, and uneven ground, round bends, slopes, and hills, I began to feel tired and eventually collapsed into a nest of long grass with just my fluorescent tye-dye shirt and white legs visible from the road beside me.
Ack was wearing a bunch of layers and collapsed beside me. I was once told that It was a bad idea to sleep in the sun, but I was also told it was a bad idea to hitchhike. I never did pay too much attention to cautionary tales.
So we slept on the side of the road under a blistering sun, in a nest of green grass, with no compass of where to go, and no food for energy.