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The Drive Part 3

Sorry,  had to remove this...it was in dire need of editing-more than usual

The Drive Part 2

“The west is the best

get here, and we’ll do the rest”

-The Doors

Oooooh-klahoma.  

When I was in the military, they flew us from Camp Pendleton, California to Somalia, Africa.  The flight took over twenty-four hours.  Straight.  With the exception of a couple of interesting stops for refueling, the whole thing was so long and so uneventful that it is just a blur that I don’t really even remember.  

That’s how it is driving through Oklahoma on highway 60.  There are huge expanses of nothingness.  Boring for a drive, however, I tried to take some time to appreciate that. There is a special kind of nobility in that the land is unspoiled.   There are signs posted across the entire state that mark the beginning of the land set aside for specific Native American tribes.  From Choctaw to Osage to Cherokee to Pawnee.  Perhaps the kind of place I might like to settle in a later chapter of life.

A few years ago I went hiking with my daughter’s girl scout troop through a section of a wilderness preserve that marked the path of the trail of tears through Kentucky.  The next few days were miserable thanks to chiggers, but that’s beside the point for now.  Although as I reflect back, it was miserable then, too.  Sections of the trail were just a narrow path on its way to overgrown, but that’s due to the visitors and lack thereof, over the last hundred years.  The original trail had to be much wider.  The natives were moved in groups of up to a thousand people.

At one point, the path curved around a giant boulder cliff, which to the delight of some of the scouts , I simply had to climb.  They all joined me in time after finding a much simpler route.  But before they did I stood at the top and looked down upon the path.  

The light shimmered through leafy branches and I could see them.  Hundreds of them. They were dusty from the road, worn and tattered, and even the children dragged their feet.  Some wore very little clothing, and some wore thick skins and long heavy robes because they had too much else to carry.   Poles stretched between the some of the men where bundles were suspended for transport.  Many were sick with open wounds and all were hungry.   The men tried to stay brave, but not too brave, for the bravest among them had already been shot.  One woman fell.  Her black and grey hair was tied back revealing deep leathery wrinkles.  Her age may have been impossible and she was gaunt.  With her knees busted on the ground she reached up her hands and threw back her head.  Everything went black-and-white except the beads of every color around her neck, a gift made by a great granddaughter.  The cry of anguish she cast to the heavens stopped the entire movement for a mile and even the birds went mute.  The sound of the drawn out cry was melodic yet dying.  Even as the vision wavered and vanished the sound lingered.  It had a sharpness that pierced me so that I gasped, and I hurt inside with a suddenness that launched a bout of shoulder shuddering sobbing.  My eyes were closed.

The top of Texas was even less interesting with one notable exception: some eccentric millionaire had buried a row of Cadillacs  with their backs sticking up out of the sand.  Sadly, they were covered in amateur graffiti.  

Texas marked what was supposed to be the end of this leg of the journey.  With my route mapped out days earlier, hotel reservations were already in place, and I was scheduled to stop my days’ travels and check in at the-hotel-whatever in Amarillo.  The morning had come and gone and the afternoon was waning, but the sun was still bright and hot.  My left arm was noticeably more red and tender than the other thanks to its place along the driver-side window ledge.  

So I weighed my options:  I could check into the hotel in Amarillo, late afternoon, find some food, take the chance that the pool was outside and closed, flick through 40 channels of nothing to watch before ending up staring at “The Princess Bride” on HBO Family, crash early, and head out again in the morning.

Or I keep going.  Next scheduled stop-Flagstaff, Arizona.  If I made decent time, I could be there just after midnight, local time.  That would make it a sixteen hour day, but…with the time I save, I could take a small detour to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.

I knew I had made my choice when that familiar GPS-lady voice, which had been silent for so long, said “Recalculating…”

There goes my exit.  So I kept on riding the highway west.

The Drive, Part 1

I left Kentucky for California in a Volkswagen Beetle with the back seat packed up to the horizon of my rearview.  Belted in the passenger seat was my guitar, and the radio was my highway companion.  It might have been 2015 or 1968.

I wasn’t heading west in search of stardom; in fact I can only play a few songs all the way through.  I wasn’t headed west for the weather, although it doesn’t hurt.  I wasn’t headed west to make any sort of statement.  On the surface it seems I have very little in common with the hippies of yesteryear.  What I do have is a thirteen year old mortgage, close proximity to parents on both sides, an active church home, a loving wife, three kids, one in college in the area, and a secure job.  Deep roots.  What kind of man pulls those deep roots and moves his family across the country?

That question crawls deep under a dozen layers of excitement for now, but the road is long.

Spring in Kentucky is beautiful.  The earth is covered in bright greens speckled with bursts of flower colors.  Tall forests follow the bumps of the hills and knobs along the highway.  The sun lights their tops and reflects reminders of the recent rains.  Only a fool would leave this for the desert.  A fool in search of the promised land.  

Tennessee and Missouri both match Kentucky’s wonder and adds miles of rolling pasture and elevation.  I stop at each state’s welcome sign to take a picture and stretch my legs.  The seats of the modern Volkswagen bug are actually quite comfortable, but even sitting on dandelion fluff must get old eventually.

I mindlessly eat from a paper bag, and at times realize the radio has been scanning through staticky stations for miles while my mind was far away.  I think about important things like why  doesn’t everyone use cruise control, and what life must be like for a semi truck driver.  Occasionally, the speakers would catch my attention with a song I love and I would crank it and sing loud.  Songs on the radio are somehow better than the same song on a cd or playlist.   I suppose its the surprise and spontaneity.

The clouds rolled in somewhere in Arkansas threatening an afternoon shower.  The sun hid then shone then hid again.  It was during the hiding that the question wormed its way to the surface and I had doubt.  The dark said there’s no going back.  The things you love are behind you.  Ahead is the unknown.  It would have been so much easier to stay put.  What the hell were you thinking.  Where are you going?  You’re too old for such nonsense.  The dark said you’re scared and my eyes glassed.  

I slipped away for a moment, then the sun broke the clouds again and with a burst of light pushed the dark.  It said follow me, I’m headed west, too.  Ahead is mystery and the thrill of taking life as it comes.  The bright whites mingled with the dark blues and grays and the clouds made an image.  Driving along that highway in Arkansas, high in the sky outside my car window, I saw a face in the clouds.  You might expect me to say that there was Christ chasing away the darkness and giving me a sign, but that’s not what I saw.   As clear as could be, there was a young Tom Petty with glinting sleepy eyes and a pursing smirk assuring me that everything is alright.  

I never thought to stop for a picture as proof, but you can’t make this stuff up.  I laughed out loud, brushed the single tear away, turn up the radio, and sang along:  Runnin’ down a dream, that never would come to me...

Of "The Walking Dead"

“bow down before the one you serve

you’re going to get what you deserve”

-Nine Inch Nails

As I watch the episodes unfold of the dramatic, horrific, and extremely popular show, The Walking Dead, I am left, more and more, with the feeling that their world is hopeless.  As a recent episode made clear, it has gotten to a point where the people who are still living are worse than the walkers (or zombies if you aren’t in tune).  The heroes of the story are doing horrible things, but the writers have done an amazing job of making us believe that they had no other choice.  In the same circumstances we would do the same- or else we would already be dead.  Yet, I can’t stop watching it.  I still expect a happy ending.  Some how.  I'm ignoring the fact that modern fiction has been revealing more and more often that there are stories without happy endings.  The best storytellers will keep us hoping until the end.

What makes a show like that so popular?  I’m not talking about dissecting the characters, plot and so on.  Further than that.  What makes a culture crave such extreme fiction?  Such a wild escape?  What makes me ask?

It’s been building for years.  The understanding that the world is not right.  We are craving a change, a big change, and its been brought on by a tremendous overall dissatisfaction and disappointment with life.  There is too much control and not enough joy.  Too much money and not enough love.  Its gotten bad enough that secretly we crave the apocalypse.  And it is satisfying to chop away at a zombie, because that zombie represents_______________...

This is Halloween

Richard took a long look at the neighborhood before nailing the last board over the window.  He wasn’t the only wrapping up the preparations for Halloween.  Two doors down, Jeff was stretching cottony webbing between the bannisters of his porch just in front of the life-size plastic coffin that was a Drac-in-a-box when the kids came for the candy.   The Masons had a giant inflatable ghost in the yard with Boo written across its midsection like a misplaced thought-bubble.  From Richard’s partial window view, orange spheres lined up in a neat row at the right hand corner of each home’s porch.  Precisely perched pumpkins- so cute.  Nearly everyone obeyed.  Richard had one, too, though he had carved it in such a hurry that the mismatched eye holes and wavy grin made it look more comical than spooky.  His jack-o-lantern looked like Charlie Brown with an eyepatch.  

But, even that seems kind of creepy when you’re in the place Richard is in.  I didn’t ask for any of this, he assures us, driving in the final nail.  The oak slats divided up the sunbeam into blades that stabbed across the room.  They cut the opposite wall at it’s base spilling light onto the floor.  

Light would not be a problem, though.  Not like last year.  A circle of flood lamps hung from the ceiling, three halogen work-lights stood on steel tripods along one wall, and a homemade circuit of LED spotted lamps made a grid opposite that.  Each plugged into outlets that has been individually wired to its own place on the breaker panel.  An alternate set of plugs runs to an exterior generator that can be started by remote control.  In case all of that fails, the floor under the bed is storage for the batteries.  Six car batteries,   fourteen 12 volts, a case of 24 D cells, a sack of ten flashlights, thirty-six AAA, twelve pen-lights, and a hundred and forty-four glow sticks.  A set of twenty solar lights charges in driveway and Richard plans to bring them in at sundown.  He keeps a careful inventory list, making three circles beside each item so that he can check it thrice.   He didn’t even trust the list to paper, rather it is written in red permanent marker on the wall behind the door and it is as tall as he is.

Matches.  He put a checkmark in the second circle.  Matches had found its way on and off the list a half-a-dozen times.  He still is not sure.  Fire is most certainly a very very, last, last resort.  He knew if it came down to that, then… well, that would be very bad.  He skimmed the life sized list and thought of the months worth of preparation and planning;  If it came down to striking a match, then it was already bad.  But at least it wouldn’t be dark.  Not the kind that of darkness that is so heavy it weighs you to the ground.  Not the kind of darkness were the sound of screams coagulate.  Not the kind that is so thick it fills your lungs and suffocates you.  Because if it came to that after all his preparation, then the only option would be the needle.  

He had considered a gun, but there were two problems.  Would it even fire in a darkness seemingly void of oxygen?  Secondly, he wasn’t sure he could do it.  Even in the darkness, he wasn’t sure he could pull the trigger feeling the cold steel on his temple.  Even in the darkness.  Especially in the darkness.  If he died in the darkness, well then it would be dark forever.

Richard shook his head to clear it until his cheeks flapped.   He thought of the tombstones down the road.  Here lies dear old Uncle Jake, he hit the gas instead of the brake.  Yuk, yuk.  The Millers.  They had a dozen wooden tombstones scattered here and there in the yard.  Some had rubber spiders or glow-in-the-dark bones decorating the graves.  One had a pair of spattered gloves reaching out from the ground.   Yesterday Richard watched Mr. Miller and his grandson making a new one.  Mr. Miller cut the shape from a piece of plywood and the kid slapped at it with a brush full of gray paint.  After it dried and was inscribed, the two giggled.  Richard could tell by the way Mr. Miller’s head lifted up then dropped as he doubled over and slapped at his knee.   The boy fell to the ground and rolled.  Must be a good one.  Richard couldn’t read it, even with the binoculars, because of the angle.  Maybe if he had some time after checking his list, he might take a walk and check it out.   Last year the Millers made two additions:  Here lies Jonathon Yeast, please excuse him for not rising  and another that Richard could not quite remember.  Something about someone whose life was full until they tried to milk a bull.

Yes, that’s the Halloween he used to love and sorely missed.  Halloween is supposed to be fun, isn’t it?  Trick or treating for candy.  Once when he was nine, he had gone with the bigger kids in the neighborhood all night and filled up an entire trash bag.  We’re not talking about apples and crap, either.   Candy and tons of it.   They bigger kids took half of it, but it was still a monster haul for little Ricky, as his mother called him for the first twelve years.    Her eyes were wide as he dumped it onto the kitchen table so that they could check it for pins and razor blades.  That was tradition, too.  The hilarious and sad tradition of checking kids’ candy for the tampering of the evil.  The local hospital used to run it through the x-ray machine for free.  Thats the kind of stuff that opens the gates of Hell.  Just a little at a time, and some don’t even realize when it envelops them.

Richard shook his head again.  Hard.  He turned to the radio for distraction.  Of course the radio would have to go before lock-up time.  It is no secret that the dead can talk through those frequencies, and he has no interest in what they might have to say.  And do they say some bizarre things.  He thought back to the Halloween before last when he heard them.  And what he heard was perfectly clear………………………..

Silverlocks

I'm gonna keep my sheep suit on

Until I'm sure that you've been shown

That I can be trusted walking with you alone

- Wolfman Jack, ”Lil Red Riding Hood”

eventually we all have silver locks because the only alternative is death.

Once upon a time in a place that was more green than anything, there was a road.  Now, in this place, the grass outnumbered the concrete a thousand to one.  This is where the bugs lived.  You rarely saw them, but they sang all of the time.  The sound was incessant and inviting, like the song of the siren.  The bugs weren’t alone, oh no.   The animals scattered their homes about, here and there, willy-nilly and haphazard.   Or so it seemed.   Some wove homes into the vegetation, some burrowed in the earth, some found places up in the trees and down in the rocks.  When it was time, new ones were born and old ones passed on.  Some hunted and some scavenged.   And, left to their own, they grew quite large.  In fact, some of the were as large as their skylines allowed.   The cycle was undisturbed, because one who lived among them had dominion and he was fair and just.  Nevermind terrifying.

But back to the road.  As it left the city, it stretched for unknown miles twisting through the wilderness. The only other concrete made up occasional walkways along the scattered houses.  Sometimes they were simple concrete circles a stride or so apart that connected homes to gravel like a dot-to-dot on an elementary worksheet.  That gravel connected to the road, as several others did here and there, but mostly, the road was alone.  That is why the music man liked it so much.  He liked to look at the trees.  In fact, he liked to look at the trees until he could no longer see the forest.  He would muse that the road brought him from the concrete jungles “back to where I belong”.  And whenever he dwelled on it, the leafy branches that  grew out and over the road would reach down and out as if to  claim him as their own.

He pedalled fast to cover the ground between his apartment and the road, but geared down with a flick of his thumb and let the bike coast when he arrived.  His ride was about the destination as much as the ride.   He sat upright and released the strap at his chin, riding with no hands--a feat that used to amaze him as a kid.

They make you wear these things in the city, he thought to no one but the forest.  In fact he had once been ticketed for not wearing a helmet in city limits.  Seventy-five smackeroos, clams, bucks, greenbacks.

Before taxes.

But not here.  No such rules on the road, no rules at all, save the ones which nature imposes.

And so he relieved himself of the burden of the helmet, and the warm breeze was cool along his forehead and through his hair.  His hair was getting long and on its way to longer, nearing  that length in which he must soon choose:  cut it back to tame, or let it go to time and nature.  He secretly hoped he choose time and nature although he knew he probably would cut it.  Time and Nature, after all, cannot be trusted.  They had already begun to turn steaks of his dark hair gray.   Some liked to call it silver, as though it has value.  Others tried to soften the blow by equating it to wisdom.   Some joked that they earned every single one of those grays.  The Bible calls it a crown of spendor.   Every silver lining has a touch of grey, so says the Grateful Dead.  However you color it, the simple truth is the hair is dying.  A sure-fire, no-two-ways-about-it, fo-shizzle-my-nizzle sign of aging is dying.  Sometimes the hair goes first.

He had one bicycle route and he never strayed from it.  There was no reason to; it had everything.  Once outside the city limits, the road ran past a line of ranch style brick homes on one side, while the other was farmed field all the way to the river.   A thin but leafy tree line grew around on old wire fence and puzzled the view of the field and its giant round hay bales.   This went on until the neighborhoods took back over on both sides.  The road was perfect for morning biking.  It was heavily shaded,  the asphalt was smooth, and traffic was rare.  When a vehicle did pass it left behind a friendly wave and a belching breeze of warm fumes.  Thankfully they, too became as scarce as other signs of human progress further down the road.

He circled a couple of times in the gravel parking lot of the country store waiting for a gap in traffic to cross the highway where the road would disappear down a hill and be swallowed by the trees.

On the other side, he didn’t pedal at all for a while, or sometimes backwards because he liked the sound the chain and gears made- the reverse ticking.  The sound of unwinding, like maybe you could set time back.  Perhaps just a wee bit.  He stretched his arms to the sky to pay homage to the cooler air.  The light dimmed through the leafy filter and on hot days, the temperature drop was drastic.  He coasted down the bowl and up the other side and let himself slow until it was either pedal or topple over.

The trees thinned and homes sprang up again on one side, but it was different.   Occasional newly constructed brick homes neighbored faded single-wide trailers who had claimed the land back when no one else knew about it.   The yards were long enough to support a football game should the need arise.  The opposite side of the road became lined with a white boarded fence that rolled on and on with the bumps and hills of the land.  Sometimes the cows would be grazing near the fence, sometimes off in the distance, and there were days like today, when they were no where in sight.

Where the fence line turned, nature took over once again, and the sound of insects grew.  Grew in fact, to overpower the music from his earbuds.  He tugged them from his ears and Tom Petty sang into his shirt, with no one heeding “you don’t!  have!  to live like a refugee”.  

The sun reappeared, and the descending road dissected an expanse of what could only be described as a swamp.  Green foliage topped with stems of tiny white and pink balls disguised the water as land along the edges.  Tell-tale glints of sunlight gave it away until it opened up.  Near the centers on both sides, wide leaves floated on the water providing islands for dragonflies and frogs.  Wire-legged things skimmed the surface.  Here and there a polished and mossed burl of a stump broke through, making a potential perch for long birds with long beaks.  This section of road would flood every spring, and he would ride right through it.

As abruptly as it started, the swampland ended, and the hill led up to another miniature neighborhood.  The houses were similar to one another, but spread out and a little haphazard in their facings.  Each one distinct.  One had a basketball court, another had a tire swing.  One had a giant silver propane tank, another, a stack of firewood.  One had a pickup truck with a fishing boat in tow, the next, a Buick sedan and a crotch rocket.  The last house on the left before the road became lost in the forest, was farther alone than the others, not quite overgrown,... but well vegitated.  It had four flag poles attached to the house and yard: one Old Glory, one Confederate, one POW MIA, and a  Don’t Tread On Me flapped, advertising the identity of the occupant.  A man in a rocking chair and red cap nodded him a two finger salute, and he fired it right back careful not to look too long.  It was their daily ritual, and usually the point where the music man would increase the volume in his headphones, and and his momentum.  It was his turn-about point.  Time to head back, back toward the other world.

Usually.

But, the gears were clicking today and he had a hard time relaxing in spite of the surrounding serenity.  His bicycle kept going straight.   He had ignored his screaming mind as long as he could, but Bruce Springsteen egged him on, “tramps like us, baby we were born to run!”  He pumped the pedals hard.

We gotta get out before its too late, Bruce sang to him.

Is it already too late?  The oldest is now in college, the youngest in elementary, and the middle one is having an identity crisis.  There’s a stiff mortgage and two cars, one of them upside down.  Fifty plus hours a week at the grind where his bosses’ bosses were millionaires.  His wife loves wine a little too much.  And riding his bike was the best part of his day.

Still, it wasn’t all bad- not by a longshot.  He discovered he minded less and less.  minded less and less, minded less, mindless.

After all, it could be worse.  One neighbor lost his job.  The vacancy sign popped up in the yard of apartment complex he lived in.  A guy at work was going through a divorce and his eyes were always red.  The music man rode a thousand dollar bicycle.

It could be much worse.

There’s the danger.  The trap,   The stuff that makes slavery possible.

because “tramps like us, baby we were born to-”

What the-?

Something just moved back there. Not a rabbit either, something big.

He braked gently and swung the bike around in a u-turn, staring into the forest.  His head and   eyes darted to pierce past the limbs and leaves deeper into the dimmer parts.

Somewhere back there the darkness moved again-this time deftly.

He felt a spidery skitter up his back and neck.  When he decided to pedal, the creature stopped hiding.

There was a crash of snapping twigs and stuttering popping of pulled vines ripped from their roots and for a moment the thing that moved was recognizable as a silhouette.  An inflated frame of muscle and fur. Wolf he thought and he pedaled hard, maxing out the gears in moments,  Wolf! A big f-

He actually felt the thing hit the pavement behind him, it’s nails, claws, clapped like an army drummer drumming.  There were four legs a leaping and only two wheels a spinning.  The music man pedaled the chain right off the gears, but the stab of fear only lasted a second.  The rear tire was bumped hard enough to pick it up and turn the entire bicycle and rider sideways, airborne for a very long split second where the music man was facing the beast.  It was huge and mostly jaw, hot and red inside between two rows of foamy fangs. The black and pink lips curled on themselves like a burned window blind releasing a snarling growl.  The sound was solid matter that touched the man’s entire head and left behind thick warm drool.  Time to face the music, he thought, without knowing why.

The wheel regained contact with the pavement with a flipping jerk that dumped the man skidding on his back.  His head hit and sent merciful stars to blot his vision.  The haircut question was answered for him by concrete clippers snatching out tufts with scalp chunks still attached.  His sliding changed to a roll which ended abruptly in the bottom of the weedy ditch with his legs above him and his lungs burning

He had no time to adjust to a face full of dirt and grass before he was dragged back onto the pavement.  He barely felt it when the jaws clamped his ankle, being preoccupied with the sudden searing headache that deafened him, amplified light,  and locked his mouth in a scream.  He couldn’t tell if he made any sound and it didn’t matter.  Then something matched the pain  and even overpowered it; The animal bit through his thigh and tore out the muscle with a few shakes of its head.  The music man cried, screamed, cursed, and begged all in one long sound that set the birds to flight.  The pain exploded and became all there was until it engulfed itself and sent the man’s mind outside looking in.  

There was disbelief that this could really be happening.  There was disgust at the savage gnashing.  The animal raised its head to chew once or twice before throwing back a wad of flesh.  Bloody strings spattered the immediate area and painted the fur of its chin.  Shock sent him away, but he watched the beast shake the limp body like a ragdoll while ripping out chunks of bloody meat.   There was fear at the realization that this is it.  This is how it ends.  Would you take an effing look at that?  

Just die already so it will be over, he told himself.  

Ghastly and grisly are inadequate adjectives for the show he watched.  His starring role, his five minutes of fame.  His exit stage left.

A shot cracked the air and the animal froze, snarled, then bolted, disappearing back into the forest.

The man from down the road stepped into view holding a rifle.  The veteran.  He looked down at the music man, wrinkled his nose, and gave the familiar two-finger salute.  

The veteran adjusted the brim of his cap while he surveyed the situation.  He pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and pointed it at the music man and spoke like he was scolding.

“Whatchu’ve been doin’,... you cain’t do no more.”

He stuck the toothpick in his mouth and rolled it around before continuing.

“You wanna know why?”

He nodded to the treeline.

“‘Cause he just bit your leg off...

They got a song for that?”