middle of a blinding dust storm

The hitchhiker stopped to massage his feet in peanut oil. His feet, blistered and brown and smelling of peanuts, would cause him to give up his travels for at least the next month. He looked around. He was standing in the middle of a blinding dust storm. A tumbleweed blew past and slammed into a chain link fence. There it would stay for the next four and a half years. The hitchhiker yawned. He scratched his elbow. He thought about chicken soup. Ten years ago his mother told him he could grow up to be President of the United States. That was a silly thing to say since he was a Canadian and atheist. The hitchhiker's mother would say "there is no god, eh, and the void that occupies the space god would if she were real don't make no junk, ya hoser." This made the hitchhiker feel better about himself. He rubbed peanut oil between his toes. A car drove by and a freckled boy in the back seat, perhaps ten years old, flipped off the hitchhiker. Where am I, wondered the hitchhiker.