My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

I came west and ended up here and decided to stay

The truck’s shocks are all shot to hell and it kicks just like a mule heading up the rutted dirt road to Russ’. He’s got loaders and brush hogs and drags and every other kind of implement in the high grass waiting for the right buyer. Dust is flying up and coating the windshield as I round the corner up top and here are the horse people’s trailers parked off to the side, the tongues resting on their own jacks. Owning horses is a good way to lose a lot of money.

Rus comes out of his stall* and we shake hands.

“Have you gotten anything to eat?” he asks.

“I could use a little something,” I answer.

Chicken feed sacks converted over to trash bags are piled up alongside his pride and joy, the 1939 John Deere “D”. A rat trap baited with peanut butter on a cracker is nestled in with the garbage.

If you don’t look too close things always look the same around here. We have this conversation about eating first thing every Saturday I come here. We get in his truck and I set a foot on the pile of mail that collects on the passenger side floor and push a work shirt over to sit down and we ride into town to the breakfast place.

“Gonna go down and see my sister next week before she dies,” he tells me. She has stomach cancer. He’s been putting off going. “While I’m down there gonna make my way t’wards Las Vegas to the Antique Tractor show.”

“So next time I see you I should expect you to have a new baby?”

“Got yer seat belt on? That motorsickle cop’s been settin’ up in these driveways. No, it’s not like that. Just go there to look. No bargains to be had. Kinda like guys with Harley Davissons…they like to stand there and look at ‘em. That’s all.”

Rus has been talking about the motorcycle cop and his speed trap for 15 years. I don’t have to say anything, just look out the window. This stretch of road is famous for bicyclists. Packs of them in matching spandex team jerseys with their feet clipped into the pedals tour up and down the one lane road every Saturday and Sunday. Horses stand in their paddocks and stare. Rus waves to a guy in an oncoming truck.

“Old Pete. You’ve probably seen him settin’ up to the bar.”

We drive a little more. A couple of pretty gals are walking together in tank tops and shorts.

“It was in the beginning of the ’80′s when women began to take it as an insult when you whistled at them,” Rus says.

“How did you know when it changed?” The two women were behind us now.

“Well, it was…the college educated ones…wimmen’s freedom…what do you call it? Rights?”

“Feminists?” I answer, trying to fill in his blank.

“Libberation,” he figures.

“But how could you tell they didn’t like it? What changed?”

He leans down low towards me and says, “They’d return the favor,” as he boomed out his arm and gave me the finger, lifting his fist real slow.

“That’s clear,” I said and we both laughed.

*denotes an inside joke

Rusty Sunshine’s barn has been falling down so slowly I won’t even notice when it’s gone.