Years Spanning a Moment, page 1

Last stop for awhile there, at least 'til daybreak. Then again, hell, the way the sky looks about now makes me think I might have to stop sooner than I'd like.
See, there's a certain look to a night sky that's gonna open up all over you. The clouds are three-dimensional, white and puffy like the underbelly of a sheep. If you look closer, in the distance the sky below the clouds shimmers in something more than a haze but not quite a fog. Most telling, though, is the way it seems eerily day-lit at three in the morning.
You see these skies an awful lot in the Allegheny Mountains, and I've driven through 'em enough to recognize the impending snowstorm.

I #ing hate snow. Funny thing to hear from a Northerner, ain't it? Well, it's true; I do hate snow and cold weather and I guess just about everything else that comes from life too close to Canada. Needless to say, I ain't too happy about it when the first flakes of the night appear in the glare of my headlights. This one's gonna be a real pisser; I'm guessing it'll drop a foot or two before it's all said and done. The sharp, bitter under-scent in the night air when I roll down the window only further seals my weather forecast. Even if you can't see the clouds, anyone who knows what they're doing can smell a snowstorm hours before the brunt of it hits.
Hey, I know my snow. I hate it, but I know all its tricks.

And it's really a constant battle I wage with winter weather. I'm stronger than anything Mother Nature can throw at me, and I'll believe that until I'm proven wrong. This is exactly why my foot finds its way to the accelerator, the muscles in my calf contracting as the speedometer pushes past 80. The proverbial angel on my shoulder whispers, as she always does, that this might not be the best idea. I turn the music up to drown her out.

I broke a thousand hearts before I met you
I'll break a thousand more before I am through
I wanna be yours, pretty baby
Yours and yours alone
I'm here to tell ya, honey, that I'm bad to the bone

The needle approaches 90 as the snow starts to fall harder. At this hour there's little more traffic than the occasional rig and I blow past each one almost carelessly. It doesn't surprise me to see dirty ridges of grey slush building around the tire tracks of vehicles that just came through moments ago, the same vehicles I'll come upon and pass in an even shorter amount of time. Don't fail me now, I mutter under my breath, speaking to the car as though it can hear me, like it'll respond accordingly. I'm driving into the heart of this storm at ninety miles per hour, seatbelt hanging limply in its moorings, with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching my millionth cigarette of the trip.

"They" say an animal's response to a dangerous or stressful situation is either fight or flight. I say sometimes it's both. You can still throw stones when you're backing away, and in some circumstances flight is the best way to fight. And sometimes a fighter realizes there's no use in beating a dead horse, so the fighter tucks tail and runs -- without their horse, obviously.

Three-thirty and I feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie. When it's snowing hard and you're driving real fast in the middle of the night with no other cars around, and when you throw your high beams on suddenly, nothing looks real. The world ceases to exist outside the scope of the lights in front of you. All that exists is the snow rushing at you as fast as you're rushing at it.

The road is almost completely covered now. You're going to die, my angel whispers, and from some corner of my mind I wonder if I even care.

My reaction to the skid is purely habitual, born of years behind the wheel through blizzards and ice. The wheels start to slip and the ass-end of the car swings gently from one side to the other. My hands adjust automatically, foot coming off the accelerator without thought, and with three gentle movements of the shoulders the car returns to its correct path.

I win, I mutter through teeth clenched around a still-burning cigarette.

___________________________________________

It took me six hours � or more than twenty years � to get this far. And here I am. Hope lit my bitter face when I first drove into the city; my dreams soared higher than the Washington Monument and sprawled wider than the Pentagon.

Of course I'm stuck in grid-locked traffic. Have been for almost an hour now and I've taken to looking for roadkill on the shoulder of the highway to amuse myself. Possum. 'coon. Possum. Eww, that's a deer or a dog, I can't tell which. Now all we need are some tumbleweeds rolling about to complete the picture and really drive home how desolate this #hole city really is. Hundreds of thousands of people here, and it still somehow makes you feel like you're the last person on Earth.

Skunk. Possum. �boots?
Ballsy move, hitchhiking down the side of a packed interstate. As the cars creep past, he doesn't look at anyone, just stares into space with a thumb held out from his side almost lazily. My brain hosts a sudden inner debate as I near, Common Sense and Intuition battling it out over whether I stop or not.
And as the battle in my head wages, our eyes meet from no more than ten yards, and I see something I don't understand.
And I allow the car to continue onward.

Another sea of brake-lights looms in front of me. Any regrets I'd already had about coming here only multiply tenfold as I search for a lull in the traffic, and it occurs to me that I may want to start thinking about getting off this damned interstate. I light another cigarette when I realize there's a Jersey wall to my left and a solid wall of cars three lanes to my right.
There's no escape, not now.

'coon. Deer. Cat. Possum, possum. One unidentifiable smear of blood and entrails.
And boots. Again.
I let Intuition choose for me this time. Somehow he's made his way a mile up the road and into my field of vision, standing as though he hadn't moved with one lazy thumb pointing at the traffic I'm battling. When our eyes meet now, I jerk my head towards the passenger seat.

"Thanks," he greets me, slamming the door behind him.
I don't quite know what to say in response. We're silent for a moment.
"Where you headed?" I finally ask. He glances at me from the corner of his eye.
"Wherever life takes me," the hitchhiker replies. "You?"
Not needing to be asked, I hand him my pack of cigarettes. He takes one, lights it, and waits for my answer.
"I'm trying to find myself," I mutter around the smoke clamped between my teeth. "But I can't seem to get off this #ing highway to start looking."
My eyes are on the road, but I can feel him smirk at me. His retort is so quick and delivered so evenly that it almost seems like a thought he'd pulled right from my head.
"Just go," he says, quite matter-of-factly and as though I should've already known this, indicating a gap in traffic I hadn't seen before.

Like the parting of the Red Sea, the cars move just enough to allow me through, and I'm on surface streets almost before I can take a full breath.
"So now," he begins. "Where are you going?"
The answer is obvious.
"Somewhere without snow and without traffic," I tell him. He nods.
"There are places in this world without snow and with minimal traffic. You just have to know where to look."
I take my eyes off the road for a moment and glance over at him.
He winks.
"Besides, you already know there's nothing for you here," the hitchhiker-prophet intones.