Stranded

A phone call at two in the morning.
A grumbled voice, a stern voice.
An angry voice.

“Yeah.”

“Hey. Pops…”

The old man’s pissed.

“Hey shit. What happened? I told you there was a storm coming.”

“Yeah.

“Yeah you did.

“You sure did.”

You can hear him wipe the crust from his eyes.

“Alright. Where?”

“Little north of Big White. Just before the second bridge. Slid into the ditch. West side of the road.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Pops came to my rescue a lot. Most of the times this shit’d happen while he was sober. Luck and all that. He wasn’t a mechanic but he could fix a car to a certain degree. The big things involving specialized tools, not so much. Pops was old school like that. His last real job was as a janitor at the old folks home, but he was basically the maintenance man too.

I’m very apprehensive about going hunting these days because I ain’t half the driver my old man or my uncles were. We used to go out in blizzards, in little four door cars, with nothing but tire chains and eventually a winch. Yet we could go almost anywhere. Could go into the lowest creek beds and make it out with little incidence.

My old man called up a fella nicknamed “Seaman”. I don’t know what the hell that was about. I knew this guy since I was young, and he was always “Seamen” or “Semen”. Cool dude. Metalhead but getting older. Lifted pickup trucks and gun owner type. Basically what my pops was if we had more cash flow.

Called up my buddy’s girl too. She lived about six miles away on a little plot of land. Ranch family. You know. She said her old man would try to come out if he could.

I had me two rides coming and that was it man. I had to make a choice. I had to make a choice and my flip phone was breaking down. Battery couldn’t hold a charge longer than five minutes if it was unplugged.

Maybe it was a low key death wish.

I’ve had a few run ins, a few bad days, tried to off myself more than a few times and I regret not going through with it. Man. Really don’t get the hype around living. Maybe some day I will. Maybe I’m remembering these words somewhere far off into the future, as an old man, who’s earned something good for himself, for his community.

Or maybe I fall of the wagon and never get back on. Maybe I look back with anger, and still long for a quick death.

Maybe.

“Shit.”

Cigarillos. Orange packet. Light it up. Feel the smoke rest at the bottom of my lungs. Listen as radio station cuts in and out.

Step out the car. Wind at my back. All dark. The clouds glowing red above the two towns. Both some twenty miles apart. The northern one ain’t too far away. Maybe seven miles. But it’s facing the wind. And I ain’t one for a red face and chapped lips. The southern town is at least seventeen miles away if not longer. But. There are houses a few miles down the road and there’s a few people who know the situation.

Voice is scratchy. I almost never use the damn thing.

Check my phone, see what time it is. The thing goes flying from my hand and into the snow.

“Shit.”

Deep snow. Break it up a little bit. Fumble my unprotected hand around in the dark. Feeling cold needlegrass. No phone. Nothing.

“Well…

“FUCK!”

My clothing ain’t really up to snuff man. My pants got rips in ’em and I ain’t wearing boots. I ain’t ready for this walk at all. No winter coat either. Just a hoodie. But I feel confident. Man. I’ve been out in worse. I’ve walked in worse. I know about the cold. I’ve been there and I can make it through. I’m a big guy. I got this. I think.

We can do this. Our ancestors were nomads. They traveled the god damn Bering Straight. Primitives. Savages. We got this.

We also have two people headed our way.

We’ll survive on luck and luck alone if we have to.

Plus we have a few people headed our way. This could take five hours and it wouldn’t matter. Someone will drive down that highway eventually. Or drive passed us. And we’ll make it back. We’ll make it back.

I sat in the car for a few. Fresh pack of smokes. No more booze. Fingers already cold. Rev the motor and check the heat. Cranked already. This is the warmest it’s going to get. Fuck.

Lets go.

I step out and away from the car door — and slam that fucker, cause the wind’s strong as hell tonight.

Barbwire fence. Crawl over the thing. Look at the car for a solid second. “How the fuck did I drive UNDER the fence? How the fuck does that even work?” The wind picks up and pushes me off balance. Lean backwards into it to keep my balance.

I hate my bank. Well, mostly hate myself but the bank’s partially at fault. Fuckers even charge you three bucks every time you withdraw cash, and an additional three if you withdraw from a competing ATM. Fuck my bank. But also fuck me too. But fuck my bank. But fuck me for finding out about their payday loans. Cause all it meant was I’d go broke faster.

Fuckin’… tanked my credit from the jump.

Also started doing all my shopping at night. Used to drive into the city at night. Still ain’t a big fan of crowds. Don’t think I ever will be. So I started shopping at night. Clear roads man. Clear fuckin’ roads.

Wasn’t thinkin’ clearly though. Had a bit of the Joose in my system. Loved me some Joose. It went Tilt, Blast, then Joose — that’s the development. Not preferred taste, but what was popular in my little circle. I’m sober now, ten years later, but god damn I miss that Joose. Green apple Joose to be specific.

Shit tastes fuckin’ rank. All sugar and it’d kick your ass if you drank it fast enough.

Don’t remember the particulars of that day but I do know me and my bro caught a heavy buzz. Caught a heavy buzz in the evening, came home, and then something in me suggested going for a drive, so we went for a fuckin’ drive. Man.

Pops wasn’t on a bender at the time. He had a mean look to him if he knew you were drinking and he was on the wagon. Used to wear these tinted glasses. All the men in my family wore those tinted glasses. He stopped me before I left, told me to stay the fuck home, that there was a winter storm comin’ and I didn’t listen.

Told him I was just going for a drive around town.

Freewill’s a mother fucker.

Got my paycheck early and it was burning a big fuckin’ hole in my pocket.

Our town’s small as fuck. Man. Population of five hundred. We did all our bigger purchases at the state capital. Pierre South Dakota. To most people it’s a fuckin’ town, but compared to home it was a city. A city with straight forward directions. Drive north til the interstate. Drive east til Vivian. Drive North til you get to the city.

Straightforward as all hell.

The snow wasn’t bad either — the fuck do meterologists know? That’s right, they don’t know jack shit. Fuck ‘em.

Yeah right.

Those clouds looked a little intimidating though, the closer you got to the interstate. The were silent and lit orange by the street lights. Could’ve fuckin’ turned around right there if we knew better.

But then we wouldn’t have this story — and I ain’t all that good at making stories from scratch.

Make it to the interstate and put fifteen in gas.

The snow started.

It wasn’t anything too awful at first. The cold was the main issue but I shrugged that off. Gas station. Truck stop. Triple-something-or-another. Woman in a jean over shirt. Name tag blurred by my bad eyesight. She was leaned over the counter as if she were reading a magazine, as if she had a cigarette in her two fingers.

“Cigars and gas. Fifteen.”

Blue gray eyes. She looks up at me.

“That all?”

“Yeah. That’ll be it.”

“Where you from?”

“Out south twenty minutes. I’m going for a drive.”

“You hear there’s a storm coming right?”

Nod my head.

“Couldn’t help yourself, huh?”

“I guess not.”

Pick up my shit and go back to the car. “The fuck’s her problem?”

“Dumb idea, sure, but come the fuck on.

“Give me my shit and fuck off, lady”.

Black ice on the bridges. No traffic. Enormous sign on the side of the interstate. All a lit with yellow. “Winter weather advisory.”

“Well. Shit.”

Twenty minutes between exits. We made it but there’s no way I’d make it to Pierre. Couldn’t outrun that shit if I tried. Man. Fucked.

Fucked.

A memory comes up from the old days. Small two door car. Red car. Brand new for the time. Bought on credit. Family tucked into it. Three in the back, two in the front. Coming back from the city. Had to camp out in the car at the junction. At the gas station. Small car overtaken by the wind. Blinded by white. Spent an hour or so there before ma and pa decided to roll the dice.

Stuck in a blizzard.

Ma was at the wheel. Chugging along at thirty miles an hour. Sticking my head out the window looking down at the road. Making sure we were still in the lane. Cold. Cold. Cold. Took an hour to drive twenty miles. Too bad out to make it home. Too bad to try so we stayed at a cheap motel. Cold in there too.

I remember looking out the peep hole seeing a shirtless white person sleeping in front of our hotel room door. Lost drunk, or maybe it was a ghost.

I was at the junction. Same gas station we camped at back then.

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I turned around, man.

Didn’t even look like it was snowing anymore. Black contrasting pure white. There were no tracks. Nothing. By the time I got back to my highway there was at least nine inches of snow built up, if not an entire foot.

By then all my drunk confidence was gone and my hands were shaking. The first few miles weren’t an issue. There weren’t really any hills yet. Just a flat lands.

I don’t know what happened.

I really don’t.

I must’ve lost sight of the mile markers. I heard the tires against the rumble strips. Before you knew it I was off the road.

I cranked the steering wheel back towards it, to my left and tried to get back on but there was a snow bank already formed. After a brief struggle I was going parallel to the highway. And in an instant the asphalt jutted away from me. I was driving in a straight line in the ditch.

Then I heard the sound of crunching metal.

I put that fucker in park and turned the car off for a while. Didn’t want it to be real, man. Didn’t want it to be real. So I sat there in the middle of nowhere.

The only sound was the howling wind.

Collected my thoughts. Or maybe my mind was a blank state. Who gives a shit, man. I was fucked. That’s all it came down to, I was fucked. So I sat there for a long, long time.

Long time and then I zipped up my hoodie and got out the car. Looked around. Thought I ran into something.

I drove under the fuckin’ fence.

It’s been years since this happened and I still have no fuckin’ clue what happened, no idea how the car wasn’t totaled.

Been nearly a decade and I still don’t get it.

They redid the highway though. Pulled up all the asphalt and widened that bitch by another lane. I wonder if any of the workers found my old flip phone…

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Long flowing hills. Rolling prairie. Winds rushing like flowing water.

We used to bundle up. Bundle up and throw on a blanket or two. Fought for a spot on a van seat in the back of a two door pickup. Usually five or six of us heading out. Old days. Cold days. Very cold days. Used to go hunting in below zero weather with my cousins.

We were assholes to each other.

Cold red skin.

Used to slap each other because it hurt that much more in that kind of weather.

A cousin and I walked this whole stretch of creek with snow up to the knees. Compound bow and a .22. Rabbit hunting.

That’s how it was for a few years. Hunting in the fall and winter. Sometimes we had a pickup. Other times we drove out in a car.

My family was from a different time, a different world. Back when hunting meant something more than sport. Meant pride. Meant food. All that time out there — it got in my head, got in my head thinking I could walk in a white-out.

So I had two rides on the way, possibly. And if I was lucky I’d catch a ride home or at least to the next town over.

Things were in order and I headed out. No devils in the head. No more beliefs in the supernatural. It all been killed, thoroughly by time. Only us and the grand silence.

Us.

Myself in the moment and us in the future looking back at it. Wind loud as a rushing river. Wind carrying the sound of the dead. Wind singing siren songs. Wind calling us back to the eternal quiet.

The clouds were thick. The snow was falling. You think it’d be pitch black out but you’d be wrong. The lights from both towns, though separated by twenty miles, reflected an orange hue on the whole world. It may have been faint at times but there was enough light to keep you moving forward.

Legs were heavy. Breaking freshly fallen snow can get tiring after awhile but we keep them thoughts in our mind. We’re savages, our ancestors crossed the Bering Straight. It’s in our D.N.A. Nothing can take us down.

Well, alcohol certainly can, but the weather ain’t got shit on us. March onward. March.

I remember hearing some fella say that nature doesn’t care about your ego. God damn, talk about a gut punch. Nature don’t care about your ego.

This weather is indifferent to us. And that’s the toughest pill to swallow.

Third man syndrome.

Sometimes lost explorers will hallucinate. Will think there’s another person there. Could be one person seeing another, or the whole group knowing that there’s another person there.

I remember a story of a young girl, instructed by her mother to get her father. The girl comes back crying saying the angel won’t let her in. The mother gets angry and tells her to get her father. Same thing happens. The girl says the angel won’t let her in. The ma gets up and goes to the man’s study to find the father dead from a massive heart attack.

Was there ever really an angel there? Was there ever a third man?

Be obvious to say it’s nothin’ but a coping mechanism.

And that’s probably as good an explanation as we’re going to get.

I think of another story. Inuit tale of a man who falls to sleep out on a cold path. He’s invited inside a camp by some locals. And they’re all wearing these masks. And they invite him in their warm tipis or huts. And then they talk to the fella. They wear these strange animal masks.

And apparently they teach him a new dance, a new lesson that he’s supposed to take back to his people.

Don’t remember where I got that one from. Probably from Joseph Campbell.

Once my brother calls us up in the middle of the night. Guy was out drinking at a party. One thing led to another and he finds himself out in bum fuck nowhere. Summer night. I was a young buck back then. However old I was in ’05. Anyway I go out with my parents. He gave us some shit directions but we still managed to find him. Guy got a long way from the river. Long way.

Guy tells us in time, that he wasn’t alone out there.

He says he was walking with someone else. Says he got a look at this fella’s face every once and awhile. And it scared the shit out of him. Said this stranger’s face was mauled, like it got dragged along the road.

Kept him company though. Kept him company — and they made it pretty close to our grandpa’s old house. Maybe a mile away, he would’ve gotten there if they kept pushing forward.

Man.

Think about my brother sometimes — he was always this damn close to having an inner journey. So fuckin’ close, man. There’s something redemptive in suffering. There’s something redemptive in horror, in abject misery. You just gotta cook in it for long enough. But if you don’t then you come out a monster, if you keep that experience away with your addictions then it will never come through man.

All you need is a bit of faith. Bit of trust.

My bro wrestled with the big questions, just like we all do. Gifted hurt by the Christians.

He never found the answers he was lookin’ for. The few glimpses he got of the unseen mover, of the unseen other, were those of horror, were brought on by the booze, were brought on my huffing keyboard cleaner.

If only he could take the time and listen.

He’d come out fucked up like me, he’d come out with his sins, with his wounds, but he’d be able to heal for awhile.

He’d invite devils into his head, and he’d wrestle with those next, probably until the day he died, and it would always be a struggle, but he wouldn’t be making his life worse.

He’d be like us, like Christ, forever attached to this fuckin’ cross.

But we’d stop making it worse. And maybe we’d be gifted help from the other side.

Only the wounded healer heals.

Instead he became a warrior. A shadow warrior. Strength. Brute strength. Boozer. Alcohol. Meth. Opiates. Intoxication. Shared visions of a native couple living in a parallel universe to his life. He saw antlered cloaked figures under the spell of D.T.’s. Was guided through the country by a dead man.

This life is rough. Man. This life is rough.

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The hills never end and the snow keeps falling. You make it to the top of one and wait for the silence. Go on on your descent, and walk down those long long hills. Listen to the snowflakes landing on your hair, in your ears, listen to them melt. Listen to your hair freeze.

Ignore the voice of panic in your heart.

Push onward.

A vision.

An old native.

Going into a trance.

Warmth from a fire.

He speaks, “And the white man pays to undo all he’s done to the earth. Modern man pays to undo what he’s done to the earth. And man takes apart the highways. Takes apart the buildings, apart the concrete, apart everything we’ve made throughout the last few hundred years.

“Man dismantles man. And retreats to the temples.

“Barren land in between. Barren land.

“He builds monolithic cities. Monolithic. Biblical. The workers dismantle all. Dismantle creation. The cities take flight. Heavy beasts. Heavy fortresses. Man advances. Lives for a thousand years. His cities take flight. Float off of the ground.

“After a thousand years of peace a final war breaks out. A war breaks out in the skies while those who stay behind revert to a more primitive form.

“And man evolves into something closer to a deity. Closer to a god.”

“A city is shot from the sky. It burns as it crash lands into the earth. Nature reclaims the earth and a rogue faction escapes. Returns to the earth. Gods among primitive man. Teaches man to navigate by the stars. Teaches man language again. Teaches the neo-primitives math and the cycle returns. All of life returns to what it used to be.

“And while this happens the God-men merge with technology. In floating castles. In orbit. In bliss. In Buddha Consciousness. And after a millennium, the burn up and fall back to the earth like meteors.”

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Balls of ice forming in my hands. Hair turned to ice. Eyelashes turned to ice. Keep moving. Keep walking.

No cars. Not a single fuckin’ car. Not a single fuckin’ car. No tracks on the road for two fuckin’ hours.

Body on autopilot. Eyes darting back and forth. The brain becomes a monkey. A monkey getting electrocuted. A monkey caged. Fear. The great silence and it’s bride.

Fear.

We used to play in the junked out cars outside my grandparents house. Grandpa had a little salvage yard going. Camaro. Blue one. Didn’t open up from the inside. A cousin and I played in it. The door closed by accident. Hot as fuck in there. And we were stuck and sweating.

Before life got bad.

Before life turned to shit.

No one escaped that life in one piece. No one from that family made it out alright.

Maybe good-enough.

My cousin’s pops was a monster. Her mother did time. Her brother would become a life long criminal. Her sister… actually turned out alright.

Not long after that they’d get in a car wreck. They all got fucked up. She got her face cut open and her arm broken. The whole family got fucked up in that shit.

Lost their youngest.

Everything depends on one thing. A flip of a coin. Everything. Broken bones or death. Making it home or dying. Whether you black out or stay sober enough. All depends on the flip of a coin. You either live or you die.

I remember the terror.

The possibility of us being cooked alive in that car.

Would it have been for the best?

Sometimes I think so, man. Sometimes I think so.

All depends on a coin flip.

Fear.

Terror.

No one’s coming.

It’s been hours and no one’s coming.

No tracks.

No headlights.

I should have stayed in the car.

No one’s coming.

No one’s…

I used to smoke spice there for a hot minute. Lasted a few months. Shit wasn’t as weird as it is now. I imagine the compound was closer to THC than it is now, what with all the changes that’s happened since.

I’ve had two anxiety attacks like this before — one happened while driving, my eyes started to flutter and shake, the shaking of the steering wheel moved to my hands, and that moved up through my arms, and then through my whole body, then I pulled over along the highway and had to walk around for about twenty minutes. Then it passed. Ugly, ugly feeling right there.

The second one was with the K2. Shit used to come in multiple baggies. Cheap as dirt too. I didn’t mind it but it felt pretty superficial when compared to the real deal. Like surface level, like the real shit is a full body, full mind thing, and this shit was a pale imitation.

But after about a month of smoking this shit I got fucked up, real fuckin’ good. Real good.

I sat in my room and, Jesus fuck it was rough. It was just terror. Just fear. Just an ugly fuckin’ feeling and I had too much fuckin’ pride to ask for help. I just sat there on my ass, on the floor, feeling miserable. I told myself, or something in me told me — this is what you wanted, this is what you asked for so feel it, feel all of it.

And I did.

I had this clock on my wall that had died a few years before, that I never got around to fixin’. And in that state of mind I thought this — that clock is dead because you died, and you died because you were being stupid. You were being a dumbass and this is what you fuckin’ get.

And out there in that blizzard I felt the same.

I felt the same for a long long time…

And then…

Peace.

Whatever comes will come.

Whatever happens, happens, man.

Whatever happens, happens.

And there ain’t nothin’ we can do but push forward.

Peace.

All depends on the flip of a coin.

Peace.

The wind dies down.

The crooked plough and the pilot star.

My pilot star.

I see you now.

Floating out there in the distance.

Pale light in the storm.

You are all I focus on.

And there’s no more thought.

No more fear.

My pilot star.

The fourth syllable of Aum is silence.

The great silence that all returns to.

That all is born out of.

Peace.

A darkness in the periphery.

I’ve stepped into the river bottom.

All surrounded by barren trees.

Made it to the river, to the county line.

Walk across the bridge.

Balls of ice in my hands.

We move onward.

There’s a few houses near the bridge but my buddy lives close too. Instead of waking up some strangers I say fuck it and head out to her place. It’s about another mile east. Down a gravel road.

I’m tired but I’ve made it most of the way.

Legs breaking snow.

Make it a football field or three.

Turn around.

A single car drives by out there. I wave my hands and I know they can’t see me. I’m tired. So very fuckin’ tired.

A wandering bison. A punk who needed to be taught a lesson. A disgrace. A drunk just starting his journey. A guest. A half mile, maybe a mile, maybe two on a gravel road. Snow passed my knees. Lady’s yard. Trailer houses. A ranch.

Knock on the door. Cold. Ice in my hands. Ice in my hair.

We sit in a back room with the wood stove burning.

I put salt in my coffee.