Copyright © 2008 Jaime Samms
All rights reserved, Freya's Bower.
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Wind dashed Miles’ hair across his face and raked a fine layer of grit through his already dusty locks. Radio static drowned out the music but for a faint thumping rhythm that kept his thumb tapping sporadically against the steering wheel. Outside the truck window a parade of variegated fields rolled by, their endless rhythm broken up by the rounded silhouettes of silos or dotted with bored-looking cattle.
In the ten years he’d been gone, this interminable stretch of highway still rambled into nowhere, and his home town, now less than sixty miles away, still didn’t rate inclusion on the road signs. He turned off the main artery onto a smaller patch-work highway. Within a few miles down this road, not even radio waves could reach him. Static drowned out the last vestiges of music, and he stabbed the power button in irritation. The sound fizzled into silence. Just ahead, he’d find the turn-off to the smallest town on earth. Dirt roads with washboard surfaces that made his teeth rattle soon replaced even the poor, battered pavement.
Gravel clanged up under the fenders. Ditches, deep under the tangle of long grass, fell away to either side of the road, and powder-blue flowers of chicory waved at him from their long stems lined up along the soft shoulders. Every turn and dip on this road lived in his memory. With the way his hands and feet played the wheel and the gas without his having to think too hard about it, he might have driven it just yesterday. Fence posts and mailboxes flashed by. Soon he’d pass the farm where he’d spent so much of his childhood. He should have grown up there, but when his father fell into the bottle, his grandfather passed the land and business to Miles’ uncle Allen instead. He pressed the gas pedal a little closer to the floor boards.
The drive came into view and almost whizzed past in a blur that suddenly became a tangle of legs and tail and hooves. He swerved, jerking the wheel to the right. The front tires skidded sideways and off the narrow mouth of the drive. He’d missed what he could only assume had been a horse, but managed to plough into a mailbox with enough force to snap the post and drive his small truck up onto the stump where it hung, front wheels spinning, motor roaring. The now-loose mailbox skidded across his hood and crashed against the windshield. For a minute, he stared through the crack-riddled glass at the bright blue letters painted across gleaming stainless steel.
A few seconds passed with ringing in his ears underscored by the erratic jittering from his heart. It took time to sort out what had happened, to recognize the ragged sound of his breathing and the grinding hum of noise coming from under the hood of his devastated vehicle. He reached over and twisted the key, silencing the tortured sound. Setting both hands on the wheel, he hunched forward, leaning his forehead against the steering wheel and feeling the uncomfortable pull of thick scar tissue across his shoulder blades. He endured the discomfort a moment before settling back against the seat. They still hurt, and he was still alive.