Jed Wolf

Though hardy vegetation was typical heading north, by late June Lake Michigan disguised the nearness of Canada with soft silvers and muted greens – colors April would have known the names for. I told myself the hues were from steady wind or the reflective moody sky, but like everything else in my life, I had no idea.

I’d been okay making headway on I-80 until stuck amid uniformly planted windbreaks and meandering cottonwood-framed rivers until gunned engines and dirty looks from drivers began to make me nervous. Instead of faking a smile when given the finger, I closed my eyes, leaned into the stiff wind, and willed better people to stop. If anyone rolled down their window and shouted they were only going an exit or two, at first I’d gratefully wind up in places with no traffic. Listening for meadowlarks and reading roadside debris quickly lost its charm, and I began smiling coyly at long-distance truckers.

“I’m gonna puke,” I told the beefy driver with the chihuahua between his legs. “Heard Stuckey’s started mixing peanuts with their coffee to save money,” he said, braking to pull over like it was no trouble. Opening the door into the breathing blackness, I forgot how far up I was and landed one knee on the asphalt. “That first step’s a doozy,” he chuckled, as I limped over clumps of sage brush which turned out to be alfalfa. Scanning the ocean-like horizon after emptying my stomach then bladder, I considered becoming a trucker myself.

The vastness reminded me of April’s California ranch, where I’d spent a spring watching her train horses, learning to feel safe in open spaces. But now, unable to identify the source of fragrances and looming dark shapes, chemical agricultural, idling diesel exhaust, and traces of vomit threatened to make me heave again. I wiped my sweaty face with hay and tried to compose myself. Looking up at the enormous rig for something to grip onto to climb back in, I gasped at the nearness of the Milky Way.

Chills ran up my spine as blood trickled from my knee and something wiggling at my feet made me jump. “Y’all right?” the driver asked, bringing Nietzsche out to pee. “Yeah, thanks,” I said, as he handed me a soda. “I never get tired of this,” he exhaled, slipping his pal beneath his sweater like they both knew heaven well. “Wait ‘till you see it in another hour.”

After telling him about April, about how she’d saved me during those brutal boarding school years with her letters and long-distance friendship, about my plans for building a cabin near her ranch, and anything else to ward off paranoia, the driver yawned, pulled into a pancake house and said, “Look, I’m gonna need to grab some sleep. I’ll be heading to Sioux Falls in Omaha, so you’d better catch a ride with someone else.”

“You wouldn’t believe the stars, Dad,” I said, inspecting the genitalia and phone numbers etched in the grungy phone booth. “Are you there mom,” I asked.” “Yes I’m here,” she said, clearing her throat the familiar way she always did as if awakened from hibernation. “What are you doing?” I asked. “What do you mean what am I doing?” she growled. “What are you doing?” “Okay guys,” my father interrupted, “We’re gonna’ hang up now.” 

“After my parents hung up, I found myself studying the graffiti in the phone booth, then the bathroom – I’d been fascinated by these hidden messages since first grade. Hiding from classroom pressure and classmates themselves like a calf evading slaughter.

Safe among swastikas, cheap toilet paper and the mothball smell of urinal cakes, I was washing my face in the Pancake House men’s room when a stranger offered to clean my bloody knee . Despite the adrenalin I waved him away and entered a stall exhausted to tend my wounds like an adult might.

My days of singing morning hymns and listening to other boys whimpering in boys school bathrooms were over. I hadn’t let the driver in Des Moines undo my fly and except for receiving regular blowjobs from a math teacher at boarding school, I’d never even kissed anyone. My slate was still relatively clean compared to other sixteen-year-olds, I hoped, so vowing to keep it that way, I returned to I-80 aimed straight for the Rockies.

April’s letters, filled with cartoon horses, kitties, owls, and descriptions of wide-open spaces, had intensified my shame but had also kept me going during my darkest boarding school days. Now I was heading toward her to find something lost in me.

She’d always suspected who I really was, even before I did. Now as I was heading back to her to be loved, I vowed to be reborn before I arrived – to be the best I could be to fill the glaring void left by her departure.

“But April’s latest letters had grown strange – her cartoon horses now had sharp teeth, and her descriptions of wide-open space illustrations had shifted from freedom to emptiness. Still, I pressed on through the dark, an oblivious hero, chasing something that may have never existed.