Bent Highway: Chapter Thirteen

Fire-Water

I didn’t know what day it was, nor the time, or even month - for damn sure, not the year. The heat had been building since I was dropped off in front of the mobile home. Dropped off, right - more like kicked out on my ass. It had to be summer, but I couldn’t tell if it was just starting or ending. A wave of black birds swooped and crested into a boomerang shape, shifted into long line, and then dissipated across the wide expanse. I pictured her at the wheel of the truck. Waiting.

I’d sat here before, I knew that, though I couldn’t remember when. She knew I remembered, I saw it in her face before she drove away. Gaps in my memory filled in, my time in the white room had helped. Walt had been trying to show me what I’d forgotten.

I looked at the mobile home. I saw where the flames would bust out of the windows. A hawk soared high above, screeched, moved in for the kill. 

A sense of time filled me - I now understood that I’d been on the highway much longer than I thought. That day when I left the hardware store, the crappy little town, and the one who I thought was my friend, was a long time ago. I didn’t even want to think about how long. 

Again, I saw her white face in the truck. Waiting. Hoping that somehow something would change this time. She must have brought me back farther and farther each time – when she finally understood that being there when the fire had already started didn’t work. It wasn’t from lack of trying. I clenched both hands, feeling the heat of the metal door as I pulled it open, shirt up to my mouth and ducking low. It was no use, I was too late. Her screams, a long keening wail, filled the walls of my mind, and I shook my head to let them go.

How old am I?

Visiting myself – I don’t think I’d done that before. Maybe that’s why Walt picked me up all those years ago. He knew my memories were distant by choice. I didn’t think a lot about my growing up. He must have guessed that I would be hard to break into.

I travelled farther back into my memory, doorways that were closed opened up to me. That’s how I'd remembered it was Walt I’d met first, not the girl with blood stained lips.

“You need a ride?”

“What do you think?”

“Get in.”

“What about the dog?”

“You got a problem with animals?”

“Nope, just wondering.”

Even when I see myself on the side of the highway hitching, and then getting into the car with Walt and the wolf-dog, I question if that was the first time we met. For now, I had to believe it was – to contemplate further would strain my mind, possibly to the point of breaking.

In the car, Walt started to talk to me about how time was like a highway. There were straightaways, bends, exits, and parts that just seem to disappear into the horizon. I thought it was all pretty damn trippy. I didn’t care if the giant-like driver wanted to spout off about his weird view of the universe. I just wanted the ride.

“Where did you say you were headed?”

“Anywhere.”

“That seems a bit pointless.”

“Yeah, well it’s a pattern with me.”

That first drive with Walt lasted a long time, days turned into several months, maybe longer. We stopped in small towns, usually avoided the cities, ate in diners that started to look the same, in motels that were so alike that they could have been the same place, it was all the same, all of it. 

Then we hit a rip.

More like, Walt drove us right into one. I blacked out and came to in a bar, with an empty shotglass in front of me and a coffee can full of cigarette butts. Now, it wasn’t the first time this had happened - the difference here being the dirt floor, the long oak bar, the swinging doors - and oh yeah, the horses outside. There was a time in my life when I dropped acid, and I considered this was one of the longest, and oddest trips of my life. Walt pulled up a chair next to me. He wore a huge black Stetson, making him look even more like a giant, a cowboy giant.

“Now do you see what I mean?”

“Am I dreaming?”

“What do you think?”

A sharply dressed man with a bowtie came and refilled my shot glass with a dark liquid. He put down another for Walt and poured.

“Two bits.”

Walt flipped him a coin.

“I don’t usually go this far back, but I needed to know he wouldn’t follow.”

I sipped at the edge of my drink. It wasn’t quite as good as gasoline.

“Someone is following you?”

“Is this making sense?”

“As much as any of my life does. Or has.”

“Drink up.”

He slid his shotglass in front of me. I spent the next hour or so getting plastered. Damned if I didn’t start actually liking the fire-water. Walt kept talking. At one point, the dog wandered into the bar. Nobody said anything. Walt talked about needing my help. He had been trying to maintain some sort of control, but this other guy, the one he said was following him, kept pushing.

“So what’s this other guy want?” I slurred.

“Nothing but complete and utter chaos.”

“Sounds like my kinda guy.”

“Trust me. He is not.”

The look on Walt’s face told me things had just moved from serious into deadly, worth your life, serious.

“I need to tell you - you are going to forget a lot over the next while. You’ll forget this place, how we got here, you’ll forget the last few months, and you’ll forget me.”

“Well, I'm probably gonna have one mother of a hangover – but you’re kinda hard guy to forget.” The room started a slow spin under my feet.

“You are going to need to straddle a line. To be in different places, at the same time. I know he’ll find you, but if you keep moving you’ll be okay. I have someone that can help you.”

“Is she cute?”

Walt gave a rare smile. “How do you know it’s a she?”

“Sounds like I will—”

I stopped in mid sentence – too much in shock to scream out – and stared at the blade stuck deep into my leg. Walt released his grip on the handle.

“Night.”

 * * *

Under the poplar, I rubbed my leg where the knife had gone in. It wasn’t bleeding now, but I knew it would be again soon.

The long green nose of a sedan emerged from a dust cloud on the road. A line of blood appeared on my leg. Tires crunched and stones hit the metal underbelly, and everything got louder and louder. A cloud of blue followed the car, reminding of those first shot glasses Walt poured for me. The Pontiac pulled up beside the mobile home and shut off the engine. It backfired and chugged to a stop.

The guy who stepped out was a lot thinner than I remembered. He had a five o’clock shadow, a bolo tie over a crisp white shirt tucked into a pair of skinny black Levi’s. His body was divided into white and black. Somehow that made sense. His skin had also cleared up. If not for the goofy grin he gave while walking toward me, I might have mistaken him for someone else. But I knew it was him. I’d been waiting.

“Do I know you?”

“Yeah. I think you do. Harold.”