I didn’t intend to get accidentally whiskey-ginger drunk. On that claustrophobic Tuesday night. In the strip mall heart of fucking Dewitt, Michigan.
But, it happened.
I tripped into those triples shortly after kicking a virginal 767 off the ramp. The one loaded with critical healthcare medicines and ridiculous consumer madness. Ten tons of overflow Amazons and random online acquisitions—not my best flight. But we still made it work.
It was a weird drunk, too. Not the actual inebriation aspect. Because let’s be honest, that’s a familiar fading, here amongst the shuffling Q.D. Zombies. But I still learned some important lessons, teetering precariously on the edges of a barstool disaster.
I discovered it is better to avoid anything passed the upside of West State Road. Because the geographical implications there are weird. Mostly because I rarely venture that far north anymore.
It is a self-imposed demarcation running east-west. A cauterizing seam cutting between the before times, and wherever the hell it is I am supposed to go next.
I learned early on that things on that other side tend to get emotionally messy. And are never quite what they seem. Foxes aren’t really complicated creatures. And they often fail to thrive when trapped amongst the hypothetical. Because those disparities fail to align properly inside a feral brain.
And that makes knowing what was true impossible.
The threatening possibilities triggered from braving those entrapments made me nervous. So I knew it was best to pour on an 80 proof armour to better protect myself. Because everyone knows that most ghosts despise the flavour of that particular burn.
At least Dylan was with me on the drive out. Riding along and rolling his stones. I cranked up his warbled insights to an unreasonable level. Playing that classic for the not-quite-ready for harvest corn. Gekkering along, raggedly out of tune, as the hot punch of a Michigan summer night simmered against the aging grain of a scruffy face.
The stink of that freshly manufactured 767 was there, too. The one clinging to a sweaty blue collar; the inanimate beast tagged with the mark of a fox. Because I like to violate procedures. And sign my work on a greasy main landing gear door. Branding every flight that crosses my path in anticipation of its spooling journey up out of this godforsaken Mitten.
Because, yeah. I’m just a little superstitious. And maybe just a little bit jealous of the ease with which they blast out of this festering purgatory of a Capital City.
As a brain mildly inebriated anticipated, things did end up messy in that early August haze. Right when I was ripping around Dewitt road. At that dangerous part. Where the end of runway 28 Left pokes rudely out. And makes the road bend unnaturally.
Just ignoring the posted limits. And delighting in the slivered hook of a low hanging moon. Daring all the late summer deer to take a break from fattening themselves ahead of the coming winter long enough to charge the road. And maybe take me out. Because that would be fucking hilarious.
The last time we collided, they only dislodged a passenger side mirror. Inconveniently left clumps of bloody pelt under that door handle. And a dented imprint I have yet to fully repair.
Just running wild under a naked Clinton Country sky. Feeling like a familiar stranger. The one responsible for collecting all the hitchhiking ghosts still out on the road. Endlessly searching for an end to the story. When once, I had been helplessly hoping that things would turn out differently.
It was on that drive I finally realized that those who cry out the loudest about needing to heal are too often the ones who caused most of the hurt. And that those left wounded in the grip of abandonment are too often left to wither in stoic silence.
In that unsustainable equation I found my truth. There amongst the unbroken corn I discovered my resilience. And down that empty road, running hot under that slivered hook of a low hanging moon, I found my escape.
But I still had no answers when Bobby asked me:
“How does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home?”
