O' THE HIGHWAYS

He had threaded his way half across America by the time he pulled into the empty parking lot, nudged the old Chev up to the curb, and turned off the ignition. Dust trailed him like a lost puppy. It sniffed the back tires, licked the undercarriage of the car and bumped up and over the cement block before it rolled down the bank and into the ditch in front. Then it loped across the field, mingled with a blanket of low-lying mist and finally bedded down in a clump of bushes. Tag alders, he thought, looking at their dark silhouettes fixed to the horizon like buttons holding the Earth to the sky. And the sky behind them soft yellow, washing slowly into pale blue stroked with the pinks and purples of sunset. Then the pale blue melting and blending into deeper shades. And later rich indigo evolving into a velvet black canopy sequined with stars and planets, meteors and missions, and monsters light years away.

Monsters. Monsters and Jimmy Lankoe. Scrawny, brush-cut, sandy-haired, freckle-faced, front-tooth-missing, tattered-clothes, always-busy-with-something, Jimmy from next door. Jimmy, who never missed an episode of Buck Rogers, Captain Marvel, or The Shadow. Jimmy, who just couldn't wait to get his hands on the next issue of Adventure Comics. Jimmy and the XPLRR12E, that ragtag scrap yard wonder that took them to the moon, to Mars, and other mysterious worlds where they battled the frightful and visioned the fantastic.

Jimmy, sitting in front of a pup-tent, holding the flashlight under his chin during backyard sleepovers, telling the kinds of stories that scared them and gave them bad dreams.

Jimmy, with his nose in a book or a pencil in his hand. Jimmy, staring off into space. Astronaut Jimmy. Inventor Jimmy. Writer Jimmy. Master storyteller Jimmy. Jimmy the mind-bender. Jimmy the kid... blood brother in youth... who lay in bed all Winter in 1941 fighting his own monsters... dying of leukemia in late Spring... twelve years old... light years away... space dust... dust dog... star dog... hound dog... barking nearby... in a backyard under a dark canopy where fireflies wink and flirt in the mist as they play tag. A backyard that breathes the laughter of children and lilacs and wild June roses. One that holds a thousand conversations framed in a white picket fence. And a tall tree is a runway for a squirrel, a perch for a bird, a home for a tire swing. A backyard where a family can burrow deep into the rich brown soil and grow strong enough to touch the sky.

The dog barks. Then it howls and barks again at the full moon rising. A startled bird panics and cries out. A twig snaps over to his left. Hollow eyes probe the darkness, searching. The stillness around him grows and deepens.

In the car, he waits and listens, suspended as the minutes tick by. The silence is deafening. It pushes in and against him. Smothers him. Invades him. Alone in the dark. Alone in the middle of nowhere. Alone in the middle of the night. He knows he's being watched. Like a frog in a jar...

But, he has encountered danger before. Read it in the faces of others. Lived with it on the edge for a while. Then, refused it as a companion, and cast it away. Better for the health to be without it - especially at this age.

He forces himself to sit still. Something crawls on the back of his neck. He tells himself that it's just sweat or the bristling of his own hair. He tries to hold his breath or at least slow it down but now his heart is pounding wildly against the inside of his chest. He's also got this loud thumping at his temples which is causing his brain to throb. At any minute, either of them could explode! He looks down to discover his hands are shaking.

The right side of his brain screams hysterically.

“Stop!” commands the left, taking control. “You're overtired,” it says. “There's nothing out there. It's just your imagination. Turn it off!”

“That's it! That's it!” repeats the right, convinced by logic.

In the distance, the bird concludes there is no real danger. Reassured, it talks quietly and soothes itself back to sleep. Above it, a bat wings softly through the branches, another morsel closer to sunrise. An old mother skunk shuffles along on silent pads, pauses a moment beneath the tree, raises her head and sniffs the air. Satisfied, she slowly waddles on. A young fox runs swiftly through the tall grasses, filled with the scent of rabbit. Nearby, crickets add their voices to growing conversations.

He shifts around, looks for a cigarette, finds half a pack, pulls one out, lights it up and drags hard. He holds it in awhile then slowly lets it out. He drags again and it fires red and for a minute he watches as the smoke from the end of it swirls up and around, wisps to the window and into the night. He exhales. Nerves begin to calm... panic replaced by pleasure. He relaxes... takes a few more puffs and then reaches for the ashtray.

“Fucking habit is killing me,” he mutters as he slams the butt down and grinds it out. He's quit at least a hundred times. Once for six months. He even thought he had it licked. But, you know what they say about old habits, they have a short shelf life.

Around him the parking lot births shadows that grow long like the highways that measure the distance of a young man's dreams. He wonders about the path that brought him here to this place and to this time. Was it because of the choices he made, or would all the other paths with their different directions and circumstances also have brought him here... near a backyard... in this empty parking lot... in the dark... alone... with only Jimmy after all these years?