A Speck of Rust in the Blue

Blue. It wasn't a sad blue, not always. It was just... blue. Like the inside of an old tin can, or the exhaust fumes curling off the back of a refrigerated truck on a cold morning. That's how Arthur tasted it, felt it, lived it. A dull, metallic tang on his tongue, a low hum behind his eyes. He’d been driving rigs for twenty-seven years, every mile blurring into the next, every diner coffee tasting roughly the same, every conversation with a fuel stop cashier a recycled script. That taste, that relentless blue, had become the only flavor he knew.

His current route was a long haul from Bakersfield up to Portland, a solid three days if he pushed it. Sun rose, sun set. Miles piled on. The air conditioning in the cab hummed a monotonous tune, a steady companion to the road noise. He’d tried everything to shake the blue. Different radio stations, talk radio, old rock and roll. Chewing tobacco, then quitting chewing tobacco. Switching from instant coffee to actual brewed stuff at truck stops. Nothing. The blue stuck, coating his teeth, seeping into the worn fabric of his seat, tinting the very air he breathed.

He remembered once, years ago, trying to describe it to his ex-wife, Brenda. She'd just stared at him, bewildered, probably thinking he’d finally lost it. 'It’s like… everything’s just a muted shade, Brenda. Like someone turned down the color knob on the TV, but it’s stuck on blue. And it tastes… it just tastes like that. No zest, no bite.' She’d just patted his hand, called him tired, and offered to make him a sandwich. He hadn't bothered to explain again.

Driving through northern California, the endless fields of something or other, brown and dry. Sky a washed-out denim. The blue was thick today, a syrupy, heavy kind of blue that made his eyelids feel weighted. He adjusted his grip on the wheel, knuckles white. Another two hours to Reno, then another eight before he’d even think about pulling over for a few hours of sleep. Just one foot in front of the other, one mile after the other.

He passed a crumpled billboard on the side of the road, advertising some forgotten roadside attraction, paint peeling like old skin. Most of it was faded, sun-bleached. But in one corner, a tiny sliver of bright, defiant orange remained. Just a chip, really, where the ad's main character, a cartoon cowboy, had once held a lasso. It was a stupid, insignificant detail. He drove past it, the image already receding in his rearview mirror.

But then, for a split second, something shifted. That orange. It wasn’t a splash. More like a pinprick, a tiny burn on the canvas of the blue. He thought about it for another fifty miles, the idea scratching at the back of his mind. Why’d *that* stick? He never noticed billboards. Never cared. But that orange. That unexpected, stubborn orange.

He started looking for them. Not the grand, sweeping reds of a sunset – those were too obvious, too fleeting. He looked for the accidental ones. The flash of a red tail light on a beat-up pickup ahead. The vibrant yellow of a road worker’s vest against a backdrop of gray asphalt. A tiny, almost imperceptible splash of graffiti on a concrete underpass, a streak of hot pink. He even found himself slowing down a touch, just enough to let his eyes linger, to truly register it.

The blue was still there, of course. Still tasted like old metal, still hummed in his bones. But it wasn’t total anymore. It had… texture. Depth. Sometimes, the blue felt deeper because of the contrast, and other times, the tiny specks of color felt brighter, sharper, *more* real, because they were punching through all that blue. He saw a rusted-out farm truck in a field, a deep, earthy rust color clinging stubbornly to its frame. Not a bright, cheerful red. A weary, enduring red-brown. He found himself almost smiling.

It wasn’t about getting rid of the blue. That was a fool's errand. The blue was part of him now, part of the road, part of the quiet life he'd chosen. The hack, he realized, was to stop fighting the blue, to stop trying to scrub it away. It was to lean into it, to look *through* it, and to actively, stubbornly, hunt for the little bits of something else that proved it wasn't the only color in the world. He pressed the accelerator, a faint trace of rust on his tongue.