Charles

Our first ride was from a highly unmemorable individual of unmemorable age and gender. He or she faded out of our memories as fast as his car faded out of eyesight after he dropped us off at a cute rest stop in the middle of Butt-Fuck, QC. We spent an hour or so milling around, checking out the dumpsters (which contained some exquisite loaves of bread and cookies) asking the odd passerby if they were heading east. Either today was a horrible day to travel east, or everyone was lying and didn't want to deal with their cars being infested by crusty homeless nomads. Either way, our wait was well rewarded.

Watching the sun begin its nightly journey beyond the horizon left me pondering whether we should sleep out front or behind the truck-stop. The back would probably be safer; the odds that a passerby would wake us up to offer us a ride was slim, the odds that they would try to steal our stuff seemed a bit higher. Our debate was distracted by the most colourful individual we'd seen since leaving the lurid atmosphere of Montreal (aside from ourselves, painted by the dirt of the half-dozen provinces we'd seen.)

He strode from the door of his vehicle like a prophet; light rays shone through his grizzled orange hair. He was garbed not in the blue jeans and flannel that the patrons of the rest stop adored, nay, he donned a blazing orange pair of trousers and a luminescent, emerald green jacket. He knew. Oh, he knew. Before we'd even waved him over to pop the question, he'd cleared the distance between us.

"You need a ride?"

Not quite as divine of a statement as I'd expected, but it was as good as I could've hoped for. This, and his LCD-bright eyes and the fact that he'd offered to help instead of waiting for us to ask, labeled him as a saint. Me and him both realized the benefits of taking a piss before a long drive, and our first conversation was shared over a backdrop of urinals.

I took an instant liking to Charles. His demeanour epitomized everything I aspired to be at the time - wise and learned, good-humoured and deeply spiritual. I'd only met a few people in the 20 years of my life who could permeate divine energies with the mere sound of their voice, and he was certainly one. Each carefully chosen sentence hung in the air like an angelic rope, tethering Charles to a deity of unparalleled benevolence.

Any judgements and negatives were unpacked and left at the truck stop as we sped away from the setting sun. We shared conversations of spirits, senses and civilization (and one particularly awesome conversation about his friend's chill pepper garden that resulted in me trading a handful of my ghost peppers for a bag of fresh habaneros and thai chills. Further resultant effects from this conversation included me shutting fire for a week.)

As we reached Charles' destination, he offered to shelter us for the night as his communal(isn) house (more about that in a bit.) Me and Squanch, both crippled by social anxiety on a normal day, had declined into something of an antisocial stupor after being together for the last few days. Having no outlet for our stress, we'd only been able to bounce our anxieties off of each other. Despite that, with the skies staining themselves a darker hue, we realized that our only options were to accept his offer or sleep on the side of the highway. Charles smiled and pulled off the highway; we veered further into uncharted territories. St. Germain, Quebec. Population: too insignificant to even mention.