The Road Goes On Forever

Hope sat in her car, “Let’s go then,” she said to herself. When her eyes cleared she followed his tracks around the yard. Chris waved from his truck as she blew by and followed right behind her. Dingo, sitting under the old windmill sprinted alongside them as both vehicles mounted the hill. He gave chase for a hundred yards and pulled back watching the cloud of dust drift away. At the black top Hope waved and pulled east toward the new sun. Chris sat at the edge for a short second and waved back. Together they headed out in two totally different directions. Ramone passed Hope a short jog down the highway, she waved as he did. Her free hand laid on the horn of her car in response and flew by not looking back. The old Chevy pulled past the windmill before their dust had even settled. Parking in front of the house for the first time he stepped out, kicked the dirt from his boots and walked up the porch and in the front door. The road stretched out before the Dreamer like a never ending river, a therapeutic scenic by-way to nowhere in particular. Distant, lost, he had no real destination. “Sometimes it’s not the destination,” he could hear Ramone instructing him. Windows down, no radio, just thoughts to pass the time. The man looking back from the rearview mirror seemed to age before his eyes. He was not the young ambitious buck he’s once been. A joke about two bulls sitting atop a hill overlooking a field of heifers came to mind, but he couldn’t remember the punch line. Chris pulled off the gold tinted sunglasses and felt better, felt relieved. His brow may have wrinkled over time with scour and his skin, toned a dark hue by years in the sun, but his ghostly blue eyes still held on to the vivid youth he felt inside again. He drove on reflecting, exploring ideas, searching areas of his own humanity that had never been touched before. For days he followed the road, stopping whenever he needed or wanted. There was no schedule or rules and no speed limit either. He already had five coupons from some of the finest judicial districts across the southwest thus far. On the fifth day he chose to stop and sleep in a real bed for the first time since leaving the studio. Sitting outside a motel near Gila Bend, Arizona his phone rang. It was Rugby. Word had gotten around. “Hey buddy,” he answered. “I hear you’re leaving.” Rugby said. He was standing in his kitchen, a disaster from the dinner rush at the restaurant. Kathy and Neal had stopped through and retold the story they had gotten from Lacey who in turn had heard directly from Hope. “Where you going, man?” “To tell you the truth, I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I get there, how’s that?” Rugby yelled something away from the phone in Spanish, “Look, I gotta go but keep me in the loop; I need to know where to go if I have to bail you out, okay?” “Deal,” Chris replied and the line clicked dead. He stood and turned the phone off watching the screen fade to black. He walked in the setting sun, out into the middle of the highway, traffic was infrequent here, and with everything he could muster Chris threw the phone down the highway. A few seconds later the rattle of plastic came back guaranteeing its destruction. “I mean no disrespect old friend but I don’t want to have to repeat that conversation.” Chris stood watching the heat rise off the blacktop, an old, broken two lane. Many thoughts rattled around his head. On the way back toward his room, he pulled from the old Ford a folder and pen. The small place wasn’t even worth the thirty dollars he had to pay, in advance, cash only. For the first time in years he took a cigarette from a pack he’d bought at his last stop and lit it. To hell with it all, long term health goals were not of a high priority at this particular moment. Taking a long drag, Chris almost forgot why he’d quit. Two more long pulls and everything came flooding back. With a sip of rye whiskey Chris put pen to paper. He wrote his mother, Ramone and several others, those he thought who needed to know where he was. In his last letter the pen stalled, what to write, what to say? One word was all he could force out of the fountain pen and Hope is all it brought. Chris slept little that night; he had a bad case of the traveling jones. The daybreak found him in the Laundromat across the black stream washing his dirty leftovers of the previous week. He had little more than a few pairs of jeans and several shirts, and a coat, though he didn’t need it yet. Everything fit easily in his backpack. The rest of the space was taken up by other necessities of the road. He sat watching the occasional truck drive by outside. He wore nothing but a pair of shorts sitting atop the dryer that worked over his laundry. As the glare of the morning sun shone through front windows of the empty store, he swore he could see Hope walk by. It was an illusion, a dirty trick his mind played on him. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her either. She had been a hitchhiker along the road somewhere near Las Cruces; she was strolling amongst the plateaus just yesterday. The buzzer of the dryer startled him. Chris jumped down and got dressed, trading his shorts for faded jeans; there was no one else in the store to offend. Back on the road again the days began to blur, he made stops throughout southern California, watched the sun set over the Pacific while Hope danced in the surf in front of him. Standing in the middle of Los Angeles he saw her across the corner of Melrose Avenue and Alta Vista Boulevard, she was waving to him. He raced down I-5 south out of LA. At the Port of San Diego Chris left his truck and its title to the young man who checked him in at the gate and signed on to work the container ship, Liberty Phoenix. Still she followed him. Over a week at sea, his journal said it was day ten, but he couldn’t remember if it was accurate or not, in the middle of the South Pacific she showed herself. That afternoon the wind was stale and the waters calm. Chris stood at the stern of the ship enjoying a mug of cheap, stale, instant coffee in the sweltering heat and humidity. His shirt stuck to both his chest and back with sweat. With no land for hundreds of miles he saw her clear as ever. Walking on the water, her steps sending tiny concentric ripples outward to disappear into the abyss below, she silently smiled at him. Hope was wearing the negligee he bought her their first Christmas together. He loved the way she wore it, the fit was just right. One of the strings that kept it from falling slipped over her shoulder, tempting him. She looked up, brushed her hair aside and tucked it behind her left ear the way she always did. When her path neared the wake of the ship, the hem began to flutter in the air that stirred around her, teasing. Hope began to speak but Chris could not hear her over the churn of the water. As she drew closer and closer to the wash, her image faded away.