V. H. King's Ink

Back at the box truck, I almost ask Kite if he wants to drive.  He still looks pretty beat though, so instead I hop up into the cab and turn the key.  The wind is nearly nonexistent, and without the radio, there’s just the road noise.  I usually don’t have to think about how to make conversation with people, but I find myself wondering how to make Kite talk.

I want to ask you what you know.

Funny that his words should somehow become my own.  I know I’m getting distracted from the drive.  The third sign creeps up on us without me realizing it.  Red square, white text.  A whisper tickles through the back of my mind.

Do not deprive me of my due.

Solitude has been useful for allowing my rage to simmer until it gets siphoned off along my route.  If Kite becomes my co-pilot, I’m not sure what that will mean for the future.  Boss wouldn’t be eager to put me on a new route—not that I would really want one. 

I have a feeling it will be hard to stay mad around Kite, though.  

“Weirdest drive you’ve ever had,” I say.  “What was it?”

“West Tennessee, April of 1999.  But it wasn’t the route or who I was with.”

“What were you carrying?”

Kite wraps the cord of his earbuds around his fingers instead of answering.  I want to ask Kite which podcast he was listening to earlier.  In most forms, recorded conversations tend to grate on my nerves.  My brain goes fuzzy, trying to keep track of voices that have become brittle in their electronic immortality. 

“Didn’t have any cargo,” Kite finally said.  “Unless you count the weight of the world.  I don’t know if I wanted the world to end, but it certainly felt like it was going to.”

“Can’t say for sure, but I imagine lots of people feel that way when things fall apart and there’s no way to stop it.”

“Is that why you drive this route?”

My hands slide to the bottom of the steering wheel—7 and 8, instead of 10 and 2.  I’ve never been fond of explaining myself to most people, even though I find myself rehearsing it in my head.  I don’t know how many times I’ve drifted through these dashed white and double yellow lines, trying to tease out the words that would somehow convey whatever it is that draws me here, or happens when I’m driving.

“What does this place mean to me?”  I glance at Kite.  “Is that what you’re asking?”

Kite stuffs his earbuds into the pocket of his hoodie, his other hand reaching to scratch at his neck.  His skin doesn’t look as irritated as before.  The antibiotic cream he found in the first aid kit had helped. 

“You don’t have to ans—”

“It feels like home,” I say. 

“Home’s a hard place to be.”  Kite’s got a grim look on his face as he stares out the windshield. “Hard and lonely.”

“All those people you thought were supposed to take care of you.  The ones who know you but still don’t have a clue who you really are.  Makes you wonder why you bother caring about a place to belong, when they make it so obvious you don’t fit.”

“Wow, just like a Hallmark movie.”

I snort, surprised by Kite’s sarcasm as I slouch in the driver’s seat.  I should be paying more attention to the road, but Kite makes the drive easier.  Less tense.  Like I don’t have to punish myself. 

I didn’t tell Boss I didn’t want anyone else with me on the route, but it wasn’t hard for him to guess.  He doesn’t ask me a lot of questions, because he knows I prefer to handle myself.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t trek alone, but it’s not a bad thing, having someone looking out.  I wonder how long he mulled over letting Kite along. 

 “Last sign,” Kite says, nodding out the passenger window.

White rectangle.  Green border.  Black text.

“Fifteen miles is a hell of a plot to call home,” Kite says.

“Better than the 40 acres and a mule I never got.”

“Would’ve been a bad deal in the first place.”

The way Kite says it, the way he sighed afterward—it seemed like there was more he wanted to say.  Wanted to, but couldn’t, because the words weren’t there.  They wouldn’t come. 

We pass the last sign, and night winks down.  The streetlights beam yellow incandescence left over from decades past.  Replacing them with energy-efficient LEDs would save county tax dollars, but not much else.  Sometimes you pay a little extra for peace of mind.

“So what do you think?”

I’m back to the right lane, aiming for an exit that darts out from the highway like a kid escaping a bully.

“Boss doesn’t know you’re scared, does he?”

“Even if he does, he doesn’t know what I’m afraid of,” I say.  “And no point in telling him.  He can’t do anything about it, and I do good work either way.”

“You keep everything to yourself, don’t you?”

I shrug, braking as the off-ramp curves toward a stop sign.  The answer is mostly yes. The other jacks say I like my privacy, but sometimes I wonder if they prefer not getting to know me.  As soon as they knew which route I was on, they kept their distance.  Of course, there were rumors of which route I’d be taking even before I walked in the door. 

“It’s okay if you do.”

Kite’s casual gentleness touches a nerve.  My voice is sharper than I mean for it to be—maybe even demanding—when I ask,

“Are you afraid of anything out here?”

Aren’t you afraid? I want to ask.  Aren’t you afraid that the only place you’re real is when you’re behind the wheel?  I’m still sitting at the stop sign, but no one uses this exit unless they have good reason.  The cross-street is equally quiet.  Traffic doesn’t much exist until you get closer to the township line. 

Every now and then a sheriff will scope out here, but they know my truck.  Sometimes they stop to chat.  Asking if there’s anything to worry about, except not in so many words.  I always tell them the same thing—don’t use the route, direct traffic anywhere else. 

“The roads know the weight we carry,” Kite says, fingertips resting on the glovebox.  “And the routes give us a place to rest.  People think we do this because we can’t stay put, but—”

“If you’re not a jack, you likely won’t get it,” I say.  “And even the ones who do will still look at you sideways, if you’re like me.”

“Does it bother you?”

I check the cross-street for the shape of unlit headlights before pulling away from the stop sign.  Kite follows up with another question before I can figure out an answer to the first.

“Does it ever scare you, feeling safe around someone else?”

“Is that how you feel right now?” I glance at him.  “Because—”

“That West Tennessee route, I drove it because it was the only thing to keep me from dying.  I still think I did die, most days.  But that back there…”

A blinking yellow at County Road 300.  I coast through it after checking for lights in either direction.  The fields are frosted over in the moonlight.  Kite’s face is slack, his eyes half-closed. 

“Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Kite’s voice is hoarse when he says it. I swallow, borrowing words from the same poem to reply:

“I know just how it feels to think of the right thing to say—”

“Too late,” Kite and I say at the same time.

The first mini-mart on my list winks its sign in the distance.  It’s our list of stops, now.  Kite taps the glovebox, sitting up in his seat.  He reaches for the clipboard in his satchel and digs around for a pen.

“Yes, what else but home?”  Kite murmurs.  “Wistful, marvelous home.”

He shakes his head, catching my eye as we pass under a streetlight.  He looks so happy to be sad. 

You did die. 

I wonder if I should tell him.  But the look in his eyes as he says the word home—the only word for the places we pass through and the great wave of weary gratitude that engulfs us, carrying our brittle hearts and heavy bodies to the far shore.

Image Description: A stretch of two-lane highway with a crooked stop sign on the right. In the bottom left, white italic text reads “home is where…”