home - K

The road curves away in the dark.

Sometimes, on nights like this, I think it really does. Curves away into nothing, and if I keep driving, I'll go right off into it. No squealing tires, no skid marks, no crunch of metal against a tree trunk. Just nothing. Just dark.

They stand along the road. Trees. They lean and arch their limbs over the car, clattering, sheltering from the black in their dead, clinging way. I think I appreciate it. I think I feel safe. We don't see the stars this way.

There is a cross stuck in the dirt by the side of the road.  I wouldn't have seen it, but the reflective tape smoulders like coal in the flash of my high beams. Someone died here. A quick turn, a steep hill, too much speed, too many drinks, rain, ice, fog, deer. Then would come the squealing, the marks, the crunch. A heavy head and heavy eyelids, the cut across the brow, the blood the warmth trickling down the pain the heat the blood the blood.

It makes us shudder. Seeing it. Even now, even thinking about it, our hands tighten on the wheel, force that little squeak from the rubber. It's bad. I don't know when it got so bad. The pressure behind my eyes and the rasping whisper at my ear. I know where we're going. Into the woods. Strange things happen in the woods.

There's a turn up ahead, another farm road, like this one. The dirt kicks up around the tires and makes clouds in the dark. Rocks ping against the undercarriage. Sometimes the line of trees breaks and we can see the fields, the land belonging to the local farmers. Acres of snap beans and tomatoes and the skeletal frames of dormant irrigation systems. Pastures. Hollow-eyed barns. A gravel driveway.  We pull off the road beside it and kill the engine. Get out. Hop the fence.

It's quiet here--one of those pastures. The owner doesn't stable his horses at night. They run through the dark grass like they think they're free. There's one close by. She saw the car pull up, stop. She watches us with lava glass eyes, stamping. We make her nervous, don't we? Animals know. She holds her head up. Snorts and stares and shies away. She's tense. We don't blame her.

The trees grow thick and close again behind the barn and the sleeping farm house. We break into a run. The horse kicks up and turns the other way, eager to put distance between us. The grass is soft and slick and cool and the wind stings our face and our hair flies like a flag as we leap another fence.

The hard, dry whiteness of birch bark and aspens. The underbrush that claws at our ankles like tiny, eager hands. The rustle of dead paper leaves in the dark. We breathe deep the wet earth and the promise of rain.

Welcome home, we whisper. Welcome home.