Where's it gonna be

“Can you believe this shit? I’ve never driven a station wagon in my life.” We are in between spots for good radio. The cliché of off interstate radio, you know, all gospel and Spanish, the eerie lack of reflection of values or ideas or anything really that you tell yourself is you, in another person, you know, so you don’t feel so alone, it’s not a cliché. I bet if you listened to it long enough, like I have, you’d have no other choice but to think the world you knew just up and flew into the clouds, all of them together, without you.

Everything about this car is dirty but it’s the smell of smoke that’s the worst. I wanted to start smoking again, smelled a pack of Marlborough Reds before I took this wagon, had planned on getting a pack after some long and lonely deliberation and all this god damn radio. Now that shit smell of smoke in the bruised plush bench seat, well, I won’t be starting again today.

“I believe in the soul.” But he knows I do. The radio is off now and the abrupt noise of wind through the window I have lowered is like a flag in a gale. I fold the wing every which way until it takes some of the noise out of it and I leave it there. Through the rear view I can see the sheets moving like that flag in my mind, only much slower. I shouldn’t have broken the rear window. It was the right thing then but now, driving the interstate? “Yeah well don’t you worry, I do not give a fuck about what they think.”

The drive into the mountains came as a surprise even to me. It’s like this sometimes, sometimes I bet it’s like that for all of us. You don’t know where you were headed til ya got ther? Yeah, you know. He never believed in that shit. “Did ya? You never believed in any of that huh?” it was like waking up and swingin yer feet out and sittin there for a minute before getting up and then, well, and then you’re just not sick anymore. I was wearing boots. I looked at em in the dirt. They were made for it. I had a shovel and everything.

“It’s kind of stupid now. Bet I’ll tell the story different later. Yeah, you know.” It still haunts me how close I put him to the road. How you could do a thing like that, cars and what not everywhere as they are. Couple times I waved, not insidiously, I waved, I really cared. “I didn’t have time for a plan buddy. I just thought, shit, there has to be a place, someone, that can help. Well, probably there isn’t.” I laugh thinking about where we might have gone. Na, there isn’t a place.

I thought I was some big outlaw, you know, takin him, thought the cops would have followed me for miles like a funeral. Not pullin me over for it bein dangerous and all. Yeah, heds a laughed at that too. Wouldn’t a said nuthin though. Yeah, he was alright.

“Where you at? I know yer here.” but it’s just me. Still got the wagon, can you believe that? No one ever reported it. How’s it a car can not belong to someone? “I left the keys in it, gas too. Hasn’t run in a while, it’s not broke, I just haven’t been able to get out and start it. Anyways, should be easier for you. Look I wrapped myself all up too, ha! Nope, it should be real easy for you.”