Broken Lines

Running the highway north, home to home.  Weather gray behind me and nothing but storms ahead.  You can practically count the sky as one black cloud this afternoon with lightning breaking against the trees.  Dog curled up in the front seat like another small black cloud.

I’ve left the land of  café au lait 300 miles behind me, drinking a rougher brew from a gas station paper cup.  Blowing through Mississippi like an eager, evil wind.  Georgia on my mind, or at least Flannery O’Connor.  Every hitchhiker in this downpour is The Misfit.  Every service stop clerk a grotesque.

Kris Delmhorst on the iPod.  There’s the comfort.  Her voice sweet and steady as the red car leans into the curves at Jackson.  I’m swerving around commuters and she’s singing “Mean Old Wind” as the banjo clips the tempo.  I ease off the accelerator as the radar detector pipes a warning and Delmhorst downshifts to “Lullaby 101.”

Now both of us are talking about the broken white lines.  Kris to a lost love, me to comfort the miserable lab pup.  How many thousand more until we cross to Illinois?  Dashing around Memphis, racing away from Blytheville, setting our far scope on Sikeston.  GPS ticking away the miles to the next rest area, next snap of leash in wind.

We’re cresting hills now in rain so heavy we seem to be cresting waves.  Wipers frantic.  Brakes a little mushy on the slopes.  That need for speed as we cross arbitrary borders between cities, counties, states.  Stiching those broken bars together.  Blowing home.

Dave/LA-IL

Listen To A Little Of Broken White Line

~ by oldmanhawk on March 9, 2009.