The
Night Traveler
Lately, I travel “the road” when I
can’t sleep. When I can’t find the money to pay the Visa bill, when the
granddaughter who lives with us screams that she hates my guts, or when my wife
coughs too much and the bleeding in her lungs starts up—those are the times
when insomnia strikes and I hit the road. I draw the blankets up close around
me as I lie wide awake in my solitary bed, climb into the driver’s seat and off
I go. Alone.
I have done this since I was a
little kid. I’ll come across an isolated place that appeals to me and I study
it to memorize all the details. I tuck away its landscape like a roadmap in my
head. One of my first getaways was in western Nebraska at Scotts Bluff National
Monument, a squarish butte that juts up unexpectedly from the surrounding
plains. It was a beacon for pioneers heading west on the Oregon Trail,
indicating that they were on the right track. When I was a boy, seven or eight
years old, it sent a clear signal to me. Sanctuary. Refuge. My mother had
re-married and our new stepdad was taking my two sisters, Mom and me to live in
Utah. He pulled us all up by the roots, leaving friends and family behind in
the Missouri dust. Traveling at a snail’s pace in a beat-up station wagon
dragging a U-Haul, we stopped at Scotts Bluff during the three-day trip. Even
before the car was fully stopped, us kids clambered out the rear doors,
scattering like bugs released from a jar. After a lunch of pickle loaf and
white-bread sandwiches inhaled with warm Mountain Dew, we had one hour to
explore. And explore I did, like a scout from the Lewis and Clark expedition,
taking mental notes on flora and fauna, curves and forks in the path, degree of
incline, areas that presented challenges (blocked line of sight, crumbling
edges on the path, loose rocks along the overhead ridges). Thereafter, whenever
trouble erupted in my childhood home (as it did, time and again), on sleepless
nights in my dank and cool basement room, I scaled the narrow switchbacks to
the top and scurried to the short tunnel carved high in the Bluff. I burrowed
down in my bedroll (as I pictured a cowboy would), safely anchored between
layers of sandstone, limestone, volcanic ash and whatnot. I had a fire blazing
at one end of the cave, protected from the wind that swept down from the
distant mountains and across the stark prairie like a bone-dry hurricane.
For more than fifty years I have
logged thousands of miles in secret wanderings. I wish I had the money to
travel to Europe and study a castle’s ruins, scout out a less-visited Egyptian
pyramid, or explore a Mesoamerican temple, but I content myself with forgotten
treasures nearby. The abandoned steelworks north of town is a good one. It sits
like a fortress out near the alluvial plain with inaccessible marshlands on one
side. The gated entrance was locked but it was easy to scale the fence and walk
the property before security cameras were installed. I investigated an old
hotel and its grounds before it was demolished, fancying a respite in one of
its many rooms. Abandoned train depots are good, too. I have committed to
memory lots of those. Sometimes I catch a train ride from a station and let
someone else do the driving while I survey the changing landscape from my
decrepit Pullman car.
But…back to the road. Right around
the time my wife got diagnosed with lung cancer, we ventured upon it during one
of our Sunday drives. It’s a paved, narrow industrial road that bisects an oil
refinery shuttered for two decades, and it meanders along a major river for
several miles. There are no houses nearby—the surrounding acres of land are now
held by a cement company and the railroad has a right-of-way that runs parallel
to it. It’s rare to encounter anyone else on the road, even in daytime. There
are no intersections, just one turn-off into a gated access to the river
spanned by an elaborately twisted rusty pipe structure. It’s the only place
where one can see the river from the road.
When
my wife and I discovered the road, I felt like I had stumbled across Xanadu. I
never expressed to her how satisfying this experience was, but I believe in
some fashion she understood. She seldom talked when I took her for drives on
the road before chemotherapy took its toll. Even when I slowed down to 20 miles
an hour, she just looked out the window, resting her head back against the
seat, her wispy, fine strawberry blonde hair fanned out around her pale
freckled face like a dandelion gone to seed. Back then, we traveled the road in
all seasons. In the summer, the surrounding forest is overgrown, a little too
wild for my taste, with vines snaking around the trees, the ground choked with
a swampy, pungent undergrowth. One time we drove it in winter—about three dozen
starlings perched on the railroad signal like a horror movie omen, their
deafening cacophony warning us of something lying in wait.
I
prefer late spring, a few weeks after tender, fresh leaves bud out from the
trees, before the insects and weeds take over. In my nocturnal joy rides, this
is the season I choose; there is a warm breeze and the moon is always full. It
beams overhead and its cast shadows are short, illuminating the pavement below.
My dream car glides along, windows down, radio off, motor quiet. Peaceful.
Like a lot of my “safe zones,” this
road isn’t far from where I live. In fact, if I wanted to, I could throw on a
sweater and jeans and drive to it within minutes. And I did that—once. I got up
one summer near dawn, snuck out of the house and jumped into my car. Once
there, my imagination began to run wild. The thought of a flat tire or a long
wait at the train crossing brought visions of violent vagrants emerging from
the woods or a sicko pulling up behind me with no headlights, wielding a
weapon, forcing me into a ditch. The whole time I felt panicked, even though
the ride was uneventful. I choose to travel the road by memory and imagination.
It’s perfect then.
It’s almost always after midnight
when I start my drive. Before I reach the end of the road I fall asleep. I know
I dream but can’t remember anything when I wake up. I hope I had a pleasant
dream but there’s no
way to tell.
Desiree
Ultican
I started out as a bright young thing and had some short stories published in my 20s. One was picked up by the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project. One won a Missouri Fiction prize and I recorded it for National Public Radio. That was years ago. I continued to write, but my life took a lot of turns and frankly, I became extremely self-critical and never felt like my 'voice' was ready to publish. A couple of years ago I finally girded my loins, wrote a novel, wrote more short stories, steeled myself for tons of rejection, and have started sending out my stuff again. I did have a short short story, "Be Here Now," accepted by the online ezine, Prometheus Unbound earlier in 2019.
Tags:
Short Fiction