Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 30: Only The Lonely

30
Only the Lonely

==========DANNY==========

My guitar cases and gym bag slid right in place in the backseat of Dad's Mustang, easy to pack with the top down. A sunken sun shone through the breaks in the clouded sky. With the twist of a key, the lock of the front door fell into place with a thud. With another twist of another key, my car ignited. And as I grabbed the gearshift, I couldn't help but think: Dad was supposed to teach me how to drive.

I was getting tired of having to change the story each time someone went away. It wasn't what I necessarily wanted, but the only way.

In the height of summer, I didn't really need to think twice about running out the door, jumping into my car, and driving off anywhere my heart oh-so-wanted to go. But the cold tinge in the infancy of the evening air reminded me that we were all too subjected to the never-ending pull of the Earth on its axis. Physically, we were further away from the sun than we'd been before. Darkness fell onto the world evidently earlier than it did back in June. And until the depth of winter, each and every day would just get shorter and shorter. Darker and darker. I knew I could catch the sun if I were to run. Because somewhere, the sun wasn't yet setting on people. Somewhere it was bright and beautiful and tanning the bodies of those who bathed in it.

We were Children of the Sun / Take my hand, Mary

We can make it if we run.

I kept my mind preoccupied trying to roll that one lyric into an entire song as I drove down all the familiar streets. The South End swept away when I looked out the side of my car. One after another, the houses stretched into blurred lines that whizzed by and eventually disappeared.

And then, accelerating to merge with the 306, my car crashed against the atmosphere. Forcing the still air into a dashing wind that tousled my hair in a dance above my head. Above, a dark gray cloud hovered through the sky like an abandoned continent adrift at sea, receding eastwards, allowing the golden light from the sinking sun to prevail across the world. The magnificent light, so immaculate and golden that it must have broke from Heaven, stood in deep contrast with that dark cloud wrapping the lower half of the hemisphere.

The division of the globe was a near perfect masterpiece. An excellent telling for the duality of life. The rarity of which such phenomenon occurs undoubtedly would convince anybody that the creator of the world had illustrative intentions in mind.

The wind skimmed the hood of my Mustang, cycling through a flapping sound like a waving flag. That rebel one nailed to my back.

There's not a single stretch of paved road in this country that doesn't connect to every other. Highway, freeway, backstreet, dead-end, a street winding around in a crescent, the Nevadan Interstate; any two lanes will do just fine. They're all connected. Inviting anyone with the will, and an adventurous soul, to chase a rising or setting sun. All you have to do is drive.

Most boys will grow up to be men who will only ever set their sights on the pavement that takes them to school, their mother's house, the rounded driveway of the church hall on their wedding day, through the factory gates, to only U-turn back to the same church and hitch the only free ride life ever gives you to the grave.

So, as my car obeyed the turns of the 306, a vision of my future-self as a Gilmore Park working man filled my eyes. How the rubber of his daddy's car will burn against those same tracks on that same highway until that Mustang's driven into the ground. And on that same highway, the dial will turn up on those same songs he listened to since he was sixteen to get him through the night. To save his spirit from completely breaking. Every beat of his heart, a beat closer to death. The body he'd been blessed with rotting away in the slums of Gilmore Park, New Jersey.