To the end of the world to the back of beyond beyond the edge of reality where am I going and why doesn’t the radio work?
Drive, he said. The last words I heard out of his mouth.
I’m driving. But there is nowhere left to go. Each gas station I stop at is empty and I leave a payment at the pump but no attendant will ever pick it up, and I’ve taken to stealing the leftover Snickers and Ho-Ho’s and Diet Cokes because no one else will ever eat them.
I’m driving.
See America from a bug-splattered windshield, because baby, there isn’t any better way to see it, the windows rolled down to let the breeze in, and the windshield stained and splattered with yellow and white. I wonder why bugs have yellow blood and then I realize it’s okay because would I want my view of America ruined by little crimson flecks like tears of blood and I decide that’s okay, no.
I have driven so far so fast but I cry at how beautiful the land of the free is. The amber waves of grain and the purple mountains majesty and all that nonsense. It was good while it lasted. I try not to think what’s going on in the clapboard farmhouses and pre-manufactured suburban homes and beautiful city brownstones.
I try not to think of home. Drive, he said. Those were his last words to me. It was I love you and I’m sorry and I love you and I don’t want to go and I wish I’d dared love you during life and I wish things hadn’t worked out this way. He told me to drive and I’m driving.
The radio hasn’t worked for eternity and I wish I could hear one more inane deejay chattering on about the commute or the good time oldies or the news today but I don’t want to hear the news. The news is all bad.
Where am I? What dying corner of this dying world have I stumbled upon? I could be anywhere, driving the ribbons of highway that crisscross America like veins. I swore to myself I’d make it to the coast. I look for a road sign.
Route 101 South. Holy shit, I’m going home. San Diego, California, where my mother and my brother and my sister-in-law and my nephew and my daughter are all dead. We can’t forget my daughter’s buried there, but I doubt the others were so lucky.
I should be grieving for them. For my family, for my country, for my world. But my mind is full of one face and my ears are full of one word.
Drive.
The weeds are growing along the sides of the road. They’re not affected. Why would they be? They’re flourishing like the green bay tree. Like the wicked, but the wicked weren’t so lucky. I saw my enemies die before my eyes but the vengeance of God was not my own solace.
Without him along, it doesn’t matter if I’m here or there. It doesn’t matter if it’s high noon or the witching hour. I’m alone and the radio doesn’t work!
I’m tired and my head throbs to the bass of my heart. I pull to the side of the road and my eyes are too sore and dry to shed tears. I sob nonetheless, dry sobs that tear the silent air.
Immunity is a poor gift when everyone else dies. Why it happened, I’ll never know. But it happened. A plague. The plague. The end of the world.
The dying were dead before they had time to turn around twice. An ugly death, too: blood and blood and boils and blisters, as if all the plagues of Egypt were concentrated into one illness. Fast-moving, universally deadly, excruciatingly painful. Death has a Field Day. If there were anyone left to write for, I’d call my account of it that.
A grasshopper jumps on to the windshield. Without the car moving at seventy miles an hour, it remains a grasshopper instead of becoming a dirty yellow smudge. We regard each other, strangers in the emptiness. Summer is slowly ending and the air is too thick and hot and still.
“Welcome to Planet Earth,” I tell the little alien on my glass. Then I send him flying with one flick of the windshield wipers.
He had no immunity. Therefore, he had no chance. But I wanted to believe in the impossible that time. I kept us sewed up tight in my apartment. I got the food. I made the food. I kept the world away.
I turn the car off and step out on the side of the road. I look down and try to survey myself from the feet up.
Black Doc Marten boots, laced up to mid-calf. Bare legs that haven’t been washed or shaved in weeks. Legs that were ivory pale but now seem to have the faintest tan sheen. Tiny denim shorts, the sort they’d call Daisy Dukes– it’s too hot for anything else. Pale stomach, T-shirt tied underneath my breasts. Sleeves rolled up so that my pale arms show. Big black sunglasses that hide my bloodshot and weary eyes. Hair afrizz and amuck.
Our luck ran out. Our love and our knowledge and everything were useless when the tool of Gentleman Death decided to work its magic on him slowly. Inside out. My sick rose, beautiful to look upon even to the last, even when worms were eating their way out.
Death. Death between us, in those last stolen and dreadful moments. In our embrace, in our kisses, like a fever that ran through us both. The hidden wellspring of hot and intended words, gestures, and love seared us both, and when it was all over, he would die and I would be left alone.
Hot. It’s so damn hot. I can’t stand out here or I’ll– be very uncomfortable. All the old cliches certainly sound hollow when you’ve actually reached the end of the world, the fat lady singing, and you’re a walking dead woman. I get back into the car and contemplate the myriad stains on my windshield and dashboard and then I start up the car again.
Down the road we go not merrily but on a mission but I don’t know where I’m going or who’ll be waiting for me when I get there because there’s no one not a soul left to wait for me.
He died. This, to me, was unthinkable. He was like one of the great heroes; he COULDN’T die, not him, not the great Don Quixote of the Post-Everything World. I was willing to be Sancho Panza and Dulcinea if he would only fight valiantly against windmills forever–
Route 101 South to the end of the world, where there will be no more windmills or all the windmills, depending on your view of things. It’s so hot, I think it’s getting to me. Laughter. Weeks on the road with barely any sleep or food, the end of the world, the death of the man you adored, and it’s the heat getting to me?
I’m looking for towns with any sign of life. I don’t care if it’s a community of intelligent gophers, I can’t be alone any more. I can’t drive into one more gas station with no clerk. I can’t pass one more empty playground or grass-tangled skeleton.
You’ve come back from the dead so many times. Pull off the miracle one more time.
That last night. Fever. He died of a fever, and nobody could save him, and that’s how I lost him. I held his hand to the very last, listening to the sounds of encroaching anarchy and chaos. Eliot was wrong– it ends with a bang, not a whimper.
He said my name when he could finally speak. He stared at the ceiling, glowing with sweat.
“I’m here.”
“Go.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“No.”
“You can’t make me go!” I told him vehemently.
“Drive,” he said. Those were the last words I ever heard from him.
I’m driving. I’m driving down the last highway to the end of the world and it’s August and I’m looking for a dead man and I’m dying of heatstroke and I’m thirsty and hot and sleepy and sick and damned if I’m not out of gas.
Thank God, the next exit is only three-fourths a mile away. I pull off and turn right. I see it; another abandoned gas station. But there is something different as I get out and take the gas. Something in the air is different and that’s when I see it.
The bar. Ghostriders. A thousand motorcycles outside and music pumping from it like manna from heaven. Ghostriders. I can’t believe my luck. I’ve driven to the end of the world and I’ve found it.
Hypnotized, I finish pumping gas. Mechanically, I screw on the cap and then I walk from his red Ford to the bar. I saunter in, the air thick with smoke and music and life. The biker bar at the end of the world.
They’ve all been waiting for me, I realize as the next song comes up on the jukebox. It’s the Platters. It’s Twilight Time. The sea of people look at me expectantly, and then they part and there he is.
“You did it again,” I say in my best slightly-pissed-off voice.
“I’ve been waiting. It’s time to go,” he replies.
“Where are we going?”
“I think you know already,” he answers, almost smug. But I do know. “Are you ready?”
“No,” I reply nonchalantly. “But I think that’s the point.”
He nods. I realize I know the crowd already. I smile at my daughter as we all start moving to leave. She smiles back and hugs my hip.
“Have you all been waiting?”
“Some longer than others,” he replies, handing me a helmet. “Let’s go.”
Route One oh One to the end of the world to the back of beyond beyond the sea beyond the shore beyond the stars where am I going and why doesn’t the radio work?
[ END ]
Well, this was fun to write. This idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. I appreciate feedback.
Topic: Drive, He Said (Read 1128 times)