The Road to Promise

I decided to take my writer’s notebook onto the beach, intending to make some time for words before our friends arrived but the sun had other ideas for my afternoon hours. It quickly warmed me into submission, turning the pristinely blank page I was poised to sully into a blinding white sheen. As I stared at the great expanse of water that petered out at the extremity of the sky, my pen seemed remarkably heavy. Before long, I gave in to the ocean’s whispering and dropped into a dizzy sleep. 

I startled awake when the nettling of palm fronds entered my consciousness a few hours later. The light had changed and the wind had picked up, making the sea oats sway resolutely as they caressed my skin. The beach was deserted, the only thing marring the stretch of sand as far as I could see a beaten-down Adirondack chair slumping at the ocean’s edge. Its posture was giving away the fact that it was dreading the incoming tide that was lapping thirstily at its splintered feet. Its brokenness was such a poignant sight and it struck a deep chord of loneliness in me. As I studied its bereft pose, I spotted several dolphins rolling in the waves just offshore, the flashes of light on their skin, which gleamed like patent leather, tipping me off that they were there. 

As I squinted into the ocean’s glow, I realized there was an entire school of them frolicking in the water and it overjoyed me. I decided to watch for a bit, crouching along the highest point of the beach where ragged plants formed a fuzzy outline at the cusp of dune after dune—the growth as stubbly and sporadic as a teen boy’s new beard. Buried in the spritzing grasses, I felt one with the chattering world. I could have easily been plant matter as I felt my hair being swept around by the brisk currents of air, one with the spiky green tendrils of plant life surrounding me. My hair dancing wildly, I stayed anchored in the cool sand, watching as the pod of dolphins disappeared into the deeper blue of the choppy Gulf of Mexico. It was one of those days when I had to force myself to go inside.

That night, I left the doors to the bedroom open so I could let the sweet, sticky darkness wash over me as I slept. The dampness complemented the ocean’s murmuring, and I fell asleep remembering how the night had ridden in on the coattails of a giant molten sun heaving itself behind the clouds. It disappeared without a shred of remorse, and had I longed to call it back, it would have scoffed at me—its schedule of traversing the heavens much more important than my piddling desires to stay steeped in light.

The next morning, the world dawned misty and gray, a scene wrapped in moisture from the ocean’s pull. As I went out for an early run, I noticed it was one of those special mornings when both spheres were holding their own in the sky—the sun waxing and the moon waning, as delicate as sugar lace being slowly melted away by the intense heat of the dominant star. The gang descended that afternoon and the hoopla commenced, leaving scant time for reflection, reading or writing. The long weekend passed quickly, and Jim flew off to some business meeting, leaving me to drive home in his oldest son’s car. It overheated every eighty or so miles, the six-and-a-half-hour trip turning into a ten-hour nightmare of hitting one small town after another to see if anyone had a water pump for a Jeep Woody. Time after time, the answer was, “No dice!”

The first place the SUV acted up was Troy, Alabama. I sat on the curb at Mike’s Downtown Gulf in a foul mood as I observed the Piggly Wiggly across the street. I let my impishness reign as I perused the signs in the window, which seemed awfully suggestive for some reason. “Breast and Roll 99 cents” sounded like a cheap version of kinky foreplay. Another declared, “Thigh Box 99 cents”—a new-fangled ritual, perhaps? Where were the whips and chains? I wondered. No deal on handcuffs today?

The owner of the station, Mike, would have been the perfect fit if someone had decided to form a contemporary version of the Beach Boys. He sauntered up to me and blurted out, “Just three months ago I was cutting meat at the Winn Dixie.” Great! I thought. A butcher had disassembled my transportation in bay number 2! Undeterred by my look of dismay, he continued proudly, “I cashed in my stocks and bonds when they tried to transfer me to Birmingham, and bought the station.” I congratulated him as he flitted off to pump gas for an elderly gentleman in a van with a faded Tom’s logo slowly disappearing from the peeling paint. 

After two hours of lolling on the curb, Mike and his mechanic announced the car was fixed and ready to go. I drove away feeling hopeful but guarded—the anxiety of watching the gauge wearing me down. I was just about to relax when I reached the interstate at Montgomery and the hulk of a car overheated again. I decided I’d have to marshal all of my mental resources in order to make the best of the trip, which relegated me to the apron of the highway time after time while the car cooled down. 

I sat fuming as heartily as the Jeep, deciding to make a list of the southern-style oddities I’d seen during the drive in order to keep from going insane. There was the sign at the Ebro Dog Track proclaiming “Over a Million Dollars Won Each Year.” I wondered if there shouldn’t have been fine print that read “$10 at a time.” On the outskirts of one tiny town, I had watched big-haired women flow into and out of Pretty Please Beauty Shop—a name that couldn’t have been more southern if it had tried. I declared that if I ever made it home, I’d gather all my things and move to Random Road, a dirt lane that meandered into the woods in the middle of nowhere. Wouldn’t that be the perfect address for the frustrated writer? I thought. I’d disappear into the woods and never come out. Three decades later, they’d find me dead, my little cabin filled to the brim with manuscripts that would be touted as some of the most lauded writing of all time. My oeuvre would be exalted and I’d take my place in the pantheon of literary superstars à la Ernest Hemmingway and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Ah, what a legacy that would be!

Back on the road, I made it to eighty-two in my game of counting ragged tire treads that had been flipped from careening tractor trailers before the temperature gauge started its climb to the red line once again. My anger trumping caution, I decided I was close enough to home to push the Woody past its limits. When I pulled into the driveway and parked the beast of a car, I let the evening envelope me with its lush air overrun with fireflies. I stood and watched them winking in the dark, imagining that they were celebrating my odyssey’s end. Though the day had been hellacious, I did my best to let it go and celebrate the small miracle of a sliver of peace before the next day dawned hectic and frenetic. The weather had bloomed with high humidity seemingly overnight—a sign that spring had decided it would give itself over to summer with vigor. I looked forward to tomato sandwiches and fresh vegetables from my uncle’s garden but not the storms that would roll in during the afternoons, making the lake posture like the ocean as the tumults brought their forces to bear on its surface. 

The tempests would grow so menacing at times that I couldn’t pull myself from the window as I marveled at how darkly they scowled. There was one particular tree beside the condo that always seemed to have the most difficult time—the savage pushing and pulling of the wind aiming to take it to its knees. I thought about how life could certainly feel that way from time to time, especially on days as frustrating as the one I had just found myself enduring. I turned out the lights and let the images from my drive north sift through my mind. The experiences did seem so random in some respects, but wasn’t there possibly a pattern to them that would make sense in my life someday, somehow? What would it all mean as I continued to navigate the road running along the spine of my life—in vehicles dependable and not so trustworthy, and during days when the universe would buoy me along or during those when I was challenged to my very core?

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This post was a participating entry in the current Let's Blog Off skirmish. To see a host of other talented writers telling their views on the subject of defining a legacy, click here.