The Highway

One man's perception of reality.

I am walking along the highway.

I don’t remember how I got to be here. The first thing I can recall is blinking. Or maybe waking up. I’m not sure. I just opened my eyes and took a step. Then another, then another.

I know I must be dreaming. I’ve been walking for hours. The sun hasn’t moved at all. There is no wind. No clouds. No cars on the road. The only sound I hear is the soles of my boots thumping lightly on the pavement. Occasionally, I hear a small piece of gravel crunch underfoot. It is the middle of summer, July 9th, as a matter of fact. At least, that was the date before I went to sleep.

I don’t understand the significance of this dream. It doesn’t make any sense to me. What could it possibly mean? Perhaps it represents the road of every man’s life. A journey of one’s soul?

I find the idea laughable.

The only journey my soul has ever taken has been the hard road of life. A smoker, in my youth. The occasional drink. Perhaps more than occasional. But I left that all behind before I turned twenty-five. Alright, I’ll be honest. I smoked a pack and a half a day, and I never let the sun go down without polishing off a six-pack. Or three.

But, as I said, I left that all behind. It was hard, but I dropped all of it when I met her. Never lit up again, never cracked open another cold one. And that is the truth.

Evelyn Boroughs. What a woman. Hair like fire, eyes like emeralds. The day I met her, she slapped me for public intoxication. Okay, she didn’t slap me. She slugged me across the jaw. One hit, knocked me to the ground. She woke me up by dumping a bucket of water on my face, then cuffed me and stuffed me in a patrol car.

Yeah, that’s right. She was a cop.

With a nasty hangover and a cellmate that liked to yell at the top of his lungs, I sat in a cell. She brought the two of us our food that evening, and I got my first alcohol-free look at her.

I realize that some idiotic romantics would call it “love at first sight”. I don’t believe in that crap. I just knew I would do whatever it took to be with her.

She was one of those old-fashioned types. You know the sort. Didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, never did drugs, saved herself for marriage, the whole bit.

Took me three years to prove I’d changed my ways. Another two years to get her to fall in love in me. Then one more before we got married.

I stayed true. Not a drop to drink, not a single cigarette.

When we got the news, she told me she wished she’d married me four years earlier. We only had a year and a half before she was diagnosed. Yeah, you guessed it. The big C.

Another year and she was gone.

Do you see the irony in it? Here I was, smoked most of my life, drank like a fish, and I was perfectly healthy. Then there was my Evie. She lived clean every day she was alive, and cancer somehow found her number. Ain’t that a kick in the head?

I can tell you, I wanted to get drunk. I wanted to drown it all. But I couldn’t. She wouldn’t have wanted me to.

See? No ground-breaking, soul-searching journey. Just the same bullcrap everyone goes through. We fall in love, we suffer heartbreak, we live, we die. Almost seems none nothing in life was ever meant to make sense.

So, yeah, how does this dream have anything to do with my life’s “journey”? Fact is, it doesn’t. Must be something I ate.

Hm. Exit 23 is just up ahead. Leads to the overpass. Weird thing is, the overpass is sheered off, stopping in mid-air. No rubble below, no broken concrete or twisted reinforcement bar. It looks like they built it to end like that. Now I know for certain I’m dreaming. I drive on that overpass every day on the way to work, and it wasn’t like that yesterday.

I know I’ve been walking for what seems like forever, but I haven’t even broken a sweat. Even on my way up the exit ramp, I don’t feel tired in the least.

I kinda wish Evie was here in my dream. She’d have loved it. Taking long walks was her big thing. It was how she relaxed. Didn’t matter much where, just so long as it was on foot. She was always able to con me into walking with her. Didn’t seem to matter that re-runs of the Dukes of Hazard were on. She could tear me away from my favorite show without hardly any effort. Next thing you know, I’d be taking walking beside her, through the park, along old trails in the woods, along the busy streets of the city. Wherever the mood took her, I was dragged along for the trip.

I’m not complaining, though. I wasn’t much for walking myself, but I was all for spending time with her. A lot of men only have one thing on their minds when it comes to women. Not saying that sort of thing never passed through mine, but Evie wasn’t just a warm body to me. She was . . . Well, now that I think about it, it really sounds cliche, even cheesy. But she was my world. She was everything.

Good grief, how long is this ramp? Seems like it’s taking me forever to get to the end of it. Not sure why, but I kind of want to see what it looks like up there.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yeah. Evie.

You know, we only took one vacation together. It was the week after she was diagnosed. I guess we both just needed to get away from it all. We went to the Grand Canyon. She wanted me to see what it was like, and she knew I’d never make the trip without her. Traveling just wasn’t something I care a great deal for. But I’m glad she talked me into it. If you’ve never been there, you should go, provided you ever get the chance.

I don’t have the words to describe what it was like. I wasn’t born a poet. The best I can come up with is an un-inspiring “Wow”. Sometimes I’ll add an appreciative whistle to it, but that’s about it.

Of course, she wanted to walk every bit of it. And we did walk quite a bit. But she was already starting to tire easy. Really tore the heart out of my chest. By the time our vacation was over, I was glad to be back home. Made me feel a little more in control.

But it’s all an illusion, really. I mean, who among us is ever really in control? You? Me? The government? Ha! That’s a laugh. None of us control a single thing. Not now, not ever. That’s what I’ve learned in my life.

Almost there. I sure am curious about how this overpass is staying up like that, even if it’s not real. I’m like that. I like to know how things work. Maybe I’ll read up on how dreams work when I wake up. Assuming I can even remember the dream. I usually can’t.

Kinda funny, that. You go to sleep, you imagine these things that seem so utterly, absolutely profound, then you wake up and you can’t even recall the smallest detail in the dream. I think Evie would’ve gotten a kick outta that. Then again, maybe not. She had an unpredictable sense of humor. It was an adventure every day to try to figure out what she would laugh at. There was one day, I kid you not, she told me this joke about a pirate with a pet carrot. Yeah, you heard right. Not parrot. Carrot. As in, the orange-colored root that Bug Bunny eats. A pirate with a pet carrot. It was the dumbest joke I’d ever heard, but it had her in stitches. I memorized the thing, word for word. When I repeated it to her the next day, (perfectly, I might add), she just shrugged like it was boring. I tell you, I’ll never understand women.

God, Evie, I miss you.

Okay, now this dream is just getting weird. The end of the overpass is cut smooth, like a giant razor blade sliced through it. Huh. That’s cool. When I tap my foot on the edge, it still feels solid, like the rest of the overpass is there, I just can’t see it. I wonder what would happen if . . .

Whoa . . .

Never dreamed anything like this before. I’m not on the pavement at all anymore. I’m walking on the air. And I’m still climbing upward. I wonder how far up this will take me before I wake up?

The view is outstanding. I can see the highway stretching out for miles and miles. In fact, I can see so far out that I can see the curve of the horizon. The visible part of the overpass is getting farther and farther away. Almost feels like I’m rushing away from it, but I’m not moving my feet any faster.

I’d heard of people having dreams of being able to fly, but this doesn’t feel like what they’d described. This is something else entirely. And it feels so real in a lot of ways.

I’m really moving now. Seems like each step is taking up more distance than the last one. Feels like I’m taking steps nearly fifty feet at a time now.

You know that thing you hear folks say in movies? About people on the ground looking like ants? I know what they mean now. The highway is barely more than dark lines way down there. Weird thing is, I’m kind of acrophobic. But I’m not afraid in the least. I’ll bet no one with a hang glider ever reached this altitude.

That’s something Evie never got to do. She always talked a lot about going hang gliding someday, but she wouldn’t go alone and she knew about my fear of heights. Sometimes I think I held her back too much. She was pretty out-going and athletic, always trying something new. She even talked me into going to one of those indoor rock-climbing places. That’s how she found out about my acrophobia. She joked about finding a cure fore it someday, but she never teased me about it.

I know it’s just a dream, but it feels like the air is getting thin up here. Heh. I wonder if I’ll be able to walk straight out into space? Guess I’ll find out, assuming I don’t wake up first.

Whoa! Looks like I found the end of the ramp. The wind is rushing by on my way down, roaring in my ears. Won’t be walking into space this way. This must be what skydiving feels like. Well, except for not having the helmet. Or the goggles. Or the parachute. Mostly the parachute.

Man, I thought I was making good time climbing.

That’s not right. The sun was high in the sky just a few seconds ago. Now it’s dipping toward the horizon. Symbolism, maybe? Moving toward the end of the dream?

What was that? A bird? And I think I see something . . . Wait, that’s the highway there, and those streaks of light . . . Those are cars moving along it. The ground is coming at me fast. Too fast.

Oh, God. It’s not a dream. It’s not a . . .

.oO*Oo.

“And in our final story this evening, local man Jeffrey Shore jumped from the overpass off of Exit 23. Though we do not yet have confirmation about the details, police believe that his actions were suicide. We were able to learn that today, July 10th, is the one year anniversary of his wife’s death, the late Officer Evelyn Boroughs Shore, who lost her short battle with cancer.

Police found no evidence of drug or alcohol use in relation to Mr. Shore’s death. No suicide note has been recovered at this time, but we do know that Mr. Shore had been seeing Dr. Charles Boden, a local psychiatrist, in relation to depression. Mr. Shore is survived by his brother, James Shore, and by his sister, Katherine Wade.

Thank you for tuning in to Channel 9 News at 10. We’ll be back at 6:30 tomorrow morning. We hope to see you then. Good night.

Reviews

[Marie]

I don't ordinarily care for long stories, but this held my interest. I can't say it had plot or closure, but he was a good descriptive piece.