I Know Where I'm Going

30... 40... 50 MPH...

The gauge ticked higher. The rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania didn't slow my car's steady acceleration as I inched the pedal closer to the floor.

60... 65... 70...

For a brief second I closed my eyes, and considered the road.

Temporarily lost from view was the farmland, peppered with cattle, the endless split rail fences, old and rotted, upheld by an almost holy commitment housed deep in the fibers of the wood, a power of will hardened by the survivalist theology of rural Appalachia to value nothing save grit, and fortitude, and a preservation of the values that forbid any discernible change from generation to generation.

For a moment, I did not see those with whom I shared the road: other cars, ATVs, an Amish buggy masterfully driven by a barefoot child no older than 12, lightly gripping leather reins that stretched from his farm-tan hands to the bridles of two chocolate Clydesdales, near-mythical creatures with enough power ebbing in their veins to wreak havoc on this quiet stretch of countryside, should they choose to do so, yet all three of them, the boy included, were in a placid temperament.

75... 80... 85...

My eyes remained closed and for just a moment there was nothing keeping the tires of my Honda Civic on the pavement except my own memory, mapping a route via the tiniest of movements in my wrists and forearms as I turned the wheel to the left, to the right, back to equilibrium.

The neurons in my brain spit orders across chasmic synapses with lightning focus, as if they knew our collective life depended on it, which of course it did, but while those neurons adopted a course of panicked precision, further removed areas of my brain were calm, unaffected—everything was fine, after all, we knew this road, and that knowledge was inerrant.

This road, it was both pleasantly and painfully familiar, for it was the road that took me to my place of work, to my best friend’s house, to the nearest shopping mall, to my mom’s oncologist, to the cemetery where they buried Granddad, to everything that was anything at 17, and in that brief moment of darkness I did not see my life flash before me as memory betrayed me, but I saw more clearly what I would have seen had my eyes been stretched wide open.

I saw the road, winding, peaceful. I saw the hills, the trees, the clouds, lilting, shapeless yet defined, spilling into the surrounding blue like paint. I saw everything around me and like the god of the Pentateuch I found it pleasing, and good, flawed, certainly, but not worth abandoning.

Not yet.

I opened my eyes.

80... 70... 60.

Approaching a straightaway bordered by cornstalks on the right and an evergreen farm on the left, a popular spot for Christmas tree shopping come winter, I drifted across the yellow line and pulled up alongside the Amish buggy.

The small boy holding the reins turned his head, and he lifted one tan hand to push back the brim of his hat to better observe me, his passerby, a neighboring foreigner whose way of life was presumably so different from his own, and in turn I took him in, and I thought perhaps we were not so different him and I.

I left him in my wake, and as I did, I wondered if he ever closed his eyes, for just a moment, and considered the road.