don't feel so alone if I keep moving. The freeway stretches ahead
under leaden sky, pregnant with the promise of elsewhere. The wind kicks up,
sending flurries of autumn leaves across six lanes, reminding me of childhood
in a way that I'm not completely in touch with. I have a sudden desire to see
what things would look like if people stopped clearing away those leaves and
cutting back vegetation - the aesthetic pleasure of the uncared for. Would I
feel more of a connection with my surroundings then? No, that's not quite it -
it's more like a hidden glee in seeing human works brought low; slowly obscured
by the wilderness our kind tries so hard to bury and deny. I leave the suburbs behind, passing a lone hitchhiker by on an on-ramp, dejectedly sitting on his bulging backpack with a cardboard sign thrust out. There is one word scrawled on it in black magic marker: You. What kind of sign is that? A tumbleweed rolls slowly across the freeway in front of me, like it has all the time in the world. I swerve slightly to miss it.
Foothills rise up around me, covered in brown summer grass not yet kissed by the first rain. Cows huddle under gnarled oak trees. I can see new housing developments sprouting in the distance. It's getting so you have to drive further and further to truly get away from it all.
Another hitchhiker appears up ahead on the right. Again he holds a sign with one word: Will. His grey beard flutters in the wind as I pass. What the hell? I sense a conspiracy.
The first drops of rain spatter against my windshield, bursting into oblivion with each impact. I can smell the déja vu scent of first rain, like balm for the soul. The more cynical part of me remembers that the first rain of the season is the one that scours a summer's worth of toxins out of the air and into the upturned faces of the unwary. And into the ground. How long will the hills be covered with grass? I'm waiting for the winter things fail to turn green.
I'm jolted out of this sour reverie by the fast approaching form of another hitchhiker, with a soggy sign in his hand. The word upon it fills me with dread: Never.
I speed up, despite the increasing slickness of the road. My windshield wipers smear the rain-drenched dust across my windshield. Not quite mud, but still hard to see through.
The hills, dim now behind curtains of rain, rise higher and begin to boast more trees. The road becomes windier as it wraps around the hills. I keep waiting for another hitchhiker to appear, feeling that the next sign could be important.
Time passes in a blur of rain and wind, and eventually I find myself pulling into the parking lot of a roadside diner. Inside it is warm and inviting, and nearly empty. My eyes brush by a withered old guy at the counter drinking coffee with a strange fastidiousness, and a young couple in a corner booth talking in low tones.
I order a coffee and a slice of cherry pie from the hollow-eyed woman at the counter, and retreat to a booth by the window. I chase steaming forkfuls of pie with my warm black beverage, taking a couple of minutes to notice a man sitting at a table near the restrooms. He is shabby and shares his seat with a large backpack. He is, like myself, eating pie. What really interests me though, is the soiled bit of cardboard resting on the table. I suddenly have to go to the bathroom. It turns out the cardboard is lying face down. I ask the man straight out: "What does your sign say?"
He smiles a pie-flecked smile and pulls the cardboard towards himself.
"You will never know, my friend. You will never know."
J6b(5)
Video of a reading from An Evening of Sinister Narratives on 25 July 2007 here.