His thumb, a spire in the Washington wind, Alex sauntered up the 101. Cars passed him unapologetically as the sky turned grey and the cold grew, but the scattered showers that had passed over him only sustained the slight grin he’d had on his face for the past 1,150 miles.
His self reflections over the past two months were quiet and serene, sometimes lacking structure, but always purposeful and unflinchingly truthful. The conversations he had with himself in his head would inflict shame upon the righteous and cause hemorrhaging in the souls of the brave. He fought his battles alone and suffered through his pitfalls unaccompanied.
But that was what he asked for. Isolated from fiction and materialism, the time Alex spent on the highways of the West Coast forced him to inhale truth and exhale fire. Breathing words and answers he had previously only conjured when it was too late for relevancy, his mind was crystalline with the clarity of undiscovered lakes when the occasional hitch hiker sympathizer would veer their car in front of him and shower him with dirt and grass and validity.
His seekers would ask him for directions, advice, philosophies, gas money. He would ask if forward, mental strength, existentialism, and dinars were what they were looking for. He would tell them about super tramps, musicians, girlfriends, and apartments; unabashed by consequences and tears, chokes and e-brakes that would follow.
Tourists were most intrigued about his thoughts about the rain though. It all starts from something: precipitation and pools, cumulonimbus and strato-cirrus, Glendale and Palmaire. Although many of his anecdotes were filled with pain and heartache, he never regretted anything they encompassed or the catharses he could only trust to strangers.
“I sat on the couch and stared at rubber worn trainers that lacked the necessity of asphalt while I inhaled breaths that welled tears under my eyelids that couldn’t fall to quench a starving Fichus. Although I remember it as the hardest night of my life, I also know that it was the most liberating.
Her leopard print slippers perched like the predators they were, waiting for me on the leather couch.
‘Your parents didn’t just throw away $65,000 you know. They spent it for a reason and it’s up to you to put it to good use.’
‘The prices we put on things are overrated anyways,’ I reminded her as the rain picked up its pang against the plexi-glass window. ‘I could’ve stolen all of those books and understood them better anyways, except for a few. It’s not even like everything starting working out until recently anyways.’
‘That’s the point, everything is working out,’ she pleaded. ‘And do you have to keep that window open? I’m freezing, keep me warm.’
She pounced as I remained still at the other end of the room, but the cacophony of the breaking storm responded for me. I stared at her hair, pulled back tight as the drops fell from my welled eyes. The door, swollen from previous rain and uneven with the frame opened for me as the wind picked up.”
The more often he told it the less it seemed like a millstone and the more it felt like common sense. People liked hearing it and asking questions, both of which increased the banality of what Alex had once considered his epiphany. But no matter how disinterested he was each time he started recalling that night, Alex always finished and spoke with conviction and magnitude, not by choice but because there was no other tone that his heart allowed him to.
Give Me a Reason
Whenever I wake up, I never open my eyes right away. I let the hint of last nights embers tickle my nose, the crisp desert breeze tug my hair, and the warmth of the depths my sleeping bag rouse me. As my other senses begin to start function accordingly, I wait for my vision to pick up. I have to scrub sleep out of my eyes with my raw, cracked knuckles if I’ve slept over several hours, usually. Light is blurry and always has a halo around it when my eyelids first part. Pools of green become shrubbery along the feet of the Red Rocks. An orange and purple haze is replaced by the majesty of the sunrise bursting over an endless horizon.
As I use the remnants of last night’s fire to ignite some dried ocotillo, definition begins illuminate the openness that has engulfed me. Snow covers frozen grass, inactive during the winter months. The creek that runs about 200 yards off the freeway has been crystal clear from the mountain snow runoff for the past two weeks and overflowing with Apache and Gila trout. Each morning when I walk down the foothills to it I can see the fish darting in and out of shadows as I approach, I need not look for more than a few seconds to find the closest bunch of them. After three or four sub freezing swipes in the water I’m usually able to knock one of the individuals from the dense population and clean it, then reuse the pan I dug around in the river with to cook it.
This, however, was not inherent in me and took more practice and skill than most would care to spend so early in the morning. I know that it is much easier to put on a pot of coffee and watch the morning news. I know it is definitely easier to buy a pastry and a latte at Starbuck’s then sit down to read the day’s paper. In fact, it is not only more comfortable, but actually quite commonly accepted as the way to start your morning in Yavapai County.
“The fuck you say boy?” the fat, greasy man in the cowboy hat asked me.
“I had to leave them, it was time for me to explore,” I stated matter-of-factly as I spun my head to read his face.
One eyebrow rose while the other sunk with the simultaneous frown. “So you got one more year left and you’re tellin’ daddy to fuck off.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” He couldn’t comprehend. The owner of the red, 1989 Dodge Ram scratched his blue button up at the apex of his belly. Faded stains ran down either side of it from chili burgers, or freedom fries, or God knows what. “He knows what autonomy and capricious mean. He understands the complexities behind it.”
The truck slid diagonally as “Jerry” swung and connected with my left brow while veering towards the shoulder stopping the wheels with the e-brake. I burst the door open and grabbed my bag in one swoop as I rolled out of the cab to avoid the onslaught of punches being fired. A sleeping bag roll, frying pan, matches, and two pairs of grey socks rolled and scattered as my backpack hit the dust topside.
“Don’t you never talk down to me you little shit!” Jerry barked as the spit flying out of his mouth connected with his finger that was intended for me. The passenger side door slammed shut as he popped into gear and sped off.
“Give me a reason not to! Give me a reason to not be alone!” I stepped off the shoulder and into the thicket trees that lined the road, leaving the smell of Jerry’s eight miles per gallon. As I approached the stream I dipped a water bottle in and poured it over my left eye. The water
stung as it passed through the split in my brow but numbed with the wind.
As the sun set the fire both warmed and gave me enough light to see and fill the pages of a TV manual with pen. I had picked it up off Jerry’s seat. By the time the fire was nothing but a few red embers the print was illegible. I kept the fire going for a little while longer as I tossed the manual in and listened to it crackle.
