This was the song of my first solo drive to Indiana. I was making such good time. I wasn't tired, I wasn't hungry, and I'd only had to stop maybe twice for gas and bathroom breaks. The roads weren't exceptionally busy, even though it was Labor Day weekend. Maybe because I'd left Wilmington well before sunrise.
Some time early in the afternoon, I dug an apple out of my purse. Just as I was taking my first bite, this song started. Life was good, but suddenly, everything was infinitely better. The day was still young, though I'd been driving for over eight hours, and I'd made it over halfway to my destination. The weather was perfect, I was getting along with myself astoundingly well, I had an entire week ahead with people I loved, and, damn, was that apple good.
I'm one of those people who sing along to my radio until I pull up beside someone at a light and then I play it cool, because other people might be like, "Hey, check out that chick talking to herself." But I just felt too good to care. I was eating my apple with one hand, steering with the other, and dancing around (you know...responsibly) in my seat without a single thought given to the semis I was passing.
It was a good day. It was such a good day.
Until. A couple of hours later, when my car hydroplaned, spun several times into oncoming traffic, and finally came to a crunching halt in the median.
.........................................
But before all that, before the apple and the dancing and the sound of concrete obliterating my car's steering column, there was "Delta."
I left town early that morning, still cloaked in darkness, car heavy with dew. On my way out, I stopped at my ex's old store.
"Are you on your way to work?" the friendly woman behind the counter inquired, sweet enough or bored enough to sound genuinely interested.
"I'm on my way to...Indiana, actually. Road trip."
Even coming out of my mouth, it didn't sound real.
I started my MP3 player as I left their parking lot and "Delta" began, quietly. It was a song for the beginning of a road trip, if I've ever heard one. Driving down Independence Boulevard to meet the highway out of the city, I looked up at the stars, still bright in the night sky. A few minutes later, I crossed the bridge west over the Cape Fear River and left Wilmington behind.
Outside of town, the blackness was complete. There were no streetlights, no home lights, no "closed" signs glowing softly from empty businesses. There was just nothing for a long time.
What will happen to me today? I wondered as the faintest hint of color smudged the sky in the rearview mirror. What am I setting in motion by being in this very spot at this very moment? Where will I be when the sun sets?
I'm secretly an optimist. I'm a worrier, but no matter what I'm saying, no matter how despondent I sound, an unspoken part of me is hoping like crazy and is naively certain that things will all turn out just fine.
I was scared about this drive and no joke. Anything could happen (and did). But up until the moment my tires slammed an unexpected puddle and fell out of my control, until the second my car began to spin, until the very instant that my brain whispered, Something's happening, and my hair whipped across my face in a sudden, torrential downpour of red, I honestly thought I was going to make it without a hitch.
Even after, I was sanguine. No one was hurt. Maybe the car wasn't totaled. Maybe it would be all right.
The tow truck driver dropped me with my luggage at a 24-hour diner in Bowling Green, where I waited a few hours for my sister to make the journey south from Henderson to collect me. The waitress was very sweet, told me I didn't even have to order anything. She brought me some water. My phone was dying and there was nowhere to plug it in, so I passed the time staring into space, watching a fly make rounds among the booths. The restaurant was vaguely '50s-themed and every other oldies tune was about automobiles or love like a car crash. I always did appreciate a good song gag.
I took a Xanax almost as an afterthought, more because I thought I should than anything. It didn't make me feel any different, because I wasn't even upset. I'd call the insurance company and get a rental and everything would be fine. A headache, but fine.
To answer my question from that morning, I was in that diner when the sun set. Rain had settled in for the night, causing a premature dusk.
On the drizzly drive to my mom's house, my sister pretended she was losing control of the car, as a joke. Twice.
........................................................................
A week later, I sat on a plane on the runway of the Evansville airport, waiting to go home. I was feeling pretty low. I'm never happy to leave, but when your car is totaled, your insurance company is giving you loads of crap, you barely got to spend time with your recently divorced mother, and you're leaving behind so much love, it's a special level of Fuck This Shit.
I put my ear buds in during the pre-flight announcements and stared out the window. It felt weird to turn on my MP3-player and find the song that was playing during my crash there, still paused and waiting. I shuffled to another track and a song--that remix of "Diet Mountain Dew"--started as the plane began to move toward the runway. I thought about that golden, late-summer day, the open road, the apple, the pretty countryside. The rare, heady feeling that I was moving through the world exactly where I should be in that moment.
As the bridge of the song built back toward the beat for the final minute, the ground outside began to roll by more and more quickly, became a blur. My arms came out in goosebumps, skin crushing and uncrushing, shivers racing along my spine as the music and the world outside synced into something perfect. And I was back on that highway, eating some fruit and dancing alone and feeling damn fine.
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| I have no other pictures from my trip, so here are some scary mannequins from Eastland Mall. |
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