Tires scrub, leaving curved marks like artists' charcoal on the truck stop lot. There is the beeping of a truck backing, the bark of straight stacks, the death rattle of an engine as another rattles to life into high idle spewing forth its' exhaustive speech. Two drivers stand out- side the restaurant caterwauling about women while tire dust swirls and fills in the grooves under their boots. The carpet is heavily worn in some areas, untouched in others. I pick a seat by the window and watch the buffet being marauded by road warriors and townsfolk who bellow about highschool football and bumper stickers. A waitress speaks in foreclosure words "I gave my ethics homework to my boyfriend to do." Every corner of the room shouts its' flash in the pan history lesson as the scroll reads: Ground chuck steak baked potato french cut green beans root beer dinner roll 9.95. News comes faster than my food. Evangelists beg for our attention, to give all we can-- these trucks only go as far as the ports. We're addicted to rushing in before the dust has settled-- we don't want peace we won't give it to ourselves. I recall sitting in an older truckstop. One that wasn't picked up in a merger. An old western was playing. Even with the volume turned low you could tell what was going down by the way they turned their horses, the pitch of a rifle or wether they looked into the wind or across it. The police have beaten a man into hamburger, my steak sauce looks like dried blood as my mouth parches like ink drying on a litho- graph of trucks lined side by side, disappearing one at a time.