DarklyEverAfter (2 page)

Smoke poured down my throat into my lungs, rushing passed the reflexes and standing taut against my tightening chest. Rainbow cascades of exhaled gray and white smoke flowed out of my mouth while I studied her flesh. With the final breath, I knew that one more time with her would be too much. I packed up my gear and left, sticking her with the motel bill and no explanation for leaving.

The cold had set in for the night. The black asphalt seemed to run on for hours, a slippery mess hiding trouble in that shiny black ribbon than most people can imagine. The old VW Beetle hummed along the pavement without a care or complaint. Even the cars scattered in the ditch didn’t phase either me or the car. She just kept humming that old tune as I rode the beast into the next adventure, maybe a gentle hearted woman in some deserted dive on the wrong side of town or some slick trick in a slinky dress. Whatever the road held, she would find it.

There was no particular place to go. My parents had died to me years ago. They never understood the strains of my life or the worn out, tired feeling of coping in my own house. I had worn out my stay at Johnny’s. Even old Marine buddies get tired of your troubles after a while. Maybe I shouldn’t have buffed his wife’s backside in a fit of passion. Learning boundaries has always been a problem for me.

Another cigarette helped to ease the pain of leaving another lonely girl in a motel. The cooling led to a rehearing of the moans echoing in my head. In a few miles, she was a memory, a bleary vision I could hardly picture in my mind. Like the dozens of others, that night was one more number that held the calendar together, connecting the last one to the next day when another woman would paste her mark on the day. Memories come and go. The last one had done both. Her job finished, I could start thinking of the next girl. Or maybe the first. Either way, the night was long and the road was narrow, a two-piece puzzle I seemed to love the best.

The first girl I left was the hardest. I picked her up on a southern road outside of Memphis just before the summer ended. In a bar on the outskirts of town, I found her sitting at a table, crying her eyes out. She was cold and alone, with a hint of wandering in her hair. I knew the feelings all too well. When she cried out, we left together, hoping it would last forever, or at least until the hurting stopped.

We made Bristol in time for the rains to cover the roads in sheets of water. I parked the old VW near a tree and we wandered into that motel for the night. The moldy smell covered up most of the stench of tobacco. I fired up the television and searched out an ancient sitcom for some laughs. She had other plans.

Standing in front of the television, she rolled her shirt over her head, letting her breasts flop against her rib cage. Her fingers lingered over her nipples, making them strained and plump. The buttons on her jeans popped open one at a time, leaving the tops of her panties exposed. Mousy brown hair caught my eye when she slid her fingers into her clothes and stripped them away. Just the sight of those curly locks beckoned me to run my fingers through the tufts of hair and delve into her precious garden.

The long, cold search for some tender touches had left me starving for affection. I wanted to touch someone, anyone, and quench this lustful drought in my soul. The feel of a soft woman in my arms was just what I had craved. Saved from a sexual thirst, she saved my life.

We kissed. We drank each other’s spirit. Grappling hands curried every single sensual spot on our bodies until there was only each other in the world and satiation was our intimate secret.

I came. The breadth of my roar deafened the mice and cockroaches in the room. As I leaned against the bed struggling to catch my breath, she tensed her back and moaned into the cool air. I’m never sure if women come or just fake it for my benefit. I caught the shivers in her spine as my hand kept her from falling. Never had I felt such a volatile orgasm come from a woman.

I lit a cigarette from the bug’s lighter. There was a hint of musky taste hanging on the filter of my cigarette, like they’d been stored in the swamp or something. I sucked on it, choking as I tried to take it all deep into my lungs. It wasn’t long before the gray-white fog overtook me in a hacking, choking fit. I decided girls were more my liking.

The sun set as I found the road that led to our town, the small spit of land where my family still lived. There were tiny villages and post offices dotting the way, each a marker of how far I had strayed. Jester’s Landing melted into Harvey’s Farm, then came The Old Mill Pond. I knew that in a few hours, I would come face to face with my past and the things that made me begin this rolling parade of painted women and long stretches of drunken nights.

I don’t know what happened between me and my wife. After our son died, we just couldn’t talk anymore. There was softness to her words as she finally summoned up the courage to ask me to leave. She displayed a strength I had never seen before. It was like those final months together had made her stronger. That revelation brought me to the place where I could feel lucky just for the experience of being with her all those years, but also realizing that she needed a place without me in it. My love was finally moving on, but without me. She was better off.

Her gentle kiss was not reassuring, nor did it heal the hurt pulsating in the depths of the hole in my heart. Even though intellectually, I knew I had to leave, nothing in me ever wanted to stay so badly before.

I spent the night in the den, the place where my son and I had played since his birth. There was something about that room that made missing him a little less painful. The air still carried his scent. The room held that magic only a father could feel.

In the morning, I said goodbye to him and headed down the hall for one last breakfast in the kitchen.

She met me at the counter with a biscuit, some sandwiches, and several hundred dollars in cash. I kissed her, one last time.

I left my house in the woods, packed up my kit in a back pack and headed down the road, a drifter. I needed every little town in all those far off places, just so long as they had a menial job with low pay and a lower expectation of me than any of my family ever allowed.

I stopped at Tom Delaney’s car lot to see what two hundred dollars would buy. Sitting by the curb, the old V.W. looked tired and sad, just like me. I sat in the seat trying to get used to such an old soul. She felt right. The seat needed work. There were bad places all over. The inspection had run out and no one knew how many miles she had traveled. She was me.

Slowly, I made my way onto the street, a fresh, new pink slip in my hand and an old girl with millions of stories to tell while we cruised along the roads. With the gas gauge broken, I thought is best to spend the last few bucks on some gasoline and maybe a pack of cigarettes.

The promise not to smoke while my son was alive had been kept faithfully for those dozen years. He died without ever knowing I smoked, but the day had come when smoking and living made more sense than enduring the world without some crutch to lean on.

With my new life came a renewed venture, a new first girl. When I was with her, it felt like I was killing my son all over again. The cancer that ravaged his body was replaced with all the things I didn’t do, the missed camping trips, the lost time chasing a career, and the hours I could have been playing football in the back yard. I needed to run until I was tired. I needed to know that there was some meaning to his short life other than holding the strings that bound my wife to me.

The months turned to seasons, summer heat to winter cold. I found little to satisfy my desire to love or be loved, but the endless running kept the wolves of pain away from my door. The fleeting moments in the arms of some barfly helped me to maintain.

Finally, the day came when I searched for numbness, the absolute nothingness of the mind. The pain slipped away, slowly. The simple joys of life were gone in a turmoil stirred up by the absolute disregard for life. I became bored with the trinkets of love.

Just so numb, I had a thought that I could go home without pain. The search for nothingness had consumed me to the point I was sure if I couldn’t care about me anymore, neither could anyone else. In the past, I had wondered whether I could go home, but thoughts of rejection flooded my soul with hurt. Now, I felt nothing except the constant desire to again walk the paths my son once traveled. So I went home.

Turning off at the exit, I passed the office where I used to work. The store where I bought my first bottle of beer still looked the same. There was a comfort in the sight of my Dad’s house as I motored into the old neighborhood. A dog chased along the road barking at the spinning hubcaps.

I pulled past the drive where I used to live. She was in the swing with someone new, a fellow who looked just like every other factory worker in town, blue eyes, sandy hair and dirty fingernails, I suppose. The dogwood I planted the spring before I left looked beautiful in a withered sort of way. I was glad she had survived the turmoil. She looked happy.

The two watched as I motored slowly down the street. A glimpse of recognition crossed his face like I was his long, lost enemy coming back to do battle. He gestured to her like he wanted her to react violently to the sight of me. She didn’t move.

I parked in the cul-de-sac down the way just to watch the neighbors moving about, all trying to glimpse her reaction to my car. She knew Old Bessie, even if it was a sore sight. My ponytail and beard didn’t disguise my innocence or the fact I wanted to come home. The orange and blue bug, even with the hard miles and fading colors, stood tall as we became the spectacle and object of gossip for the white picket fences and green colored grasses. Like watching a train wreck, they all wanted the morbid details and the blow-by-blow comments for their own personal revelry.

Smoke from my last cigarette drifted out the window. I crushed the butt in the ashtray before starting the car. The old girl fired up as she always had. It was a sad sound I had often dreaded hearing. She had made her last trip, and even with those sharply tapping valves and stout power from her heart, I knew it was the end. I slipped the clutch and felt her rolling forward again, this time to a place where she would suffer no more pain.

I slipped the beautiful woman a soft smile as I rode out of the neighborhood. The Old Gal and I passed in triumph, having saved the woman all those years of pain and remorse. We had allowed her the dignity to move on. She waved her arms in a gentle, loving goodbye. She looked sad.

Other girls awaited me in bars and dives all over the world. Too much of our lives are spent in saddened worship of the mistakes we made. With the sun setting in the west, I followed the yellow ball into the horizon.

Over the last rise, I found the small bar along the side of the road where it had all started. It was time to begin anew, to find love in the depths of despair and search no more for the life I lost.

I got a friendly smile and a cold beer from the bartender. The cool froth quenched my thirst, leaving me open to another cigarette before heading out.

I couldn’t light it. Even with the cigarette dangling from my lips and the lighter burning, I couldn’t find the will to put flame to tobacco. Tossing the pack on the bar, I finished the beer. The door swung wide as I exited the place, filled with fresh air.

It was a strange smell, fresh and leafy. I tasted the smell of fall, a sensation I hadn’t enjoyed in many years. Before I made my way to the motel down the road, I stopped one last time to say goodbye to my old travel companion. I left a note on her windshield asking whatever tow truck got her to be gentle.

I awoke this morning to the bright sunshine, a new outlook on life and a brand-new Corvette sitting in the parking lot. I will miss the old gal, but the new gal might just mend that hurt.

As luck would have it, a young girl of half my age sat in the car awaiting her father to come back from the bank. With a pocketbook full of credit cards and a willingness to irritate her father, we cruised down the road looking for our next first adventure. What the hell, you live once.

Chapter Three
Slow Tequila Drunk

I
was
working up to a slow tequila drunk, one that started with two fingers of gold liquid in a highball glass soothing my weary heart and ended with all the ice gone and a glass of warm tequila. The hours of ice and refills colored the afternoon sun until all that was visible were shadows on the back wall of the motel room and the sounds of fuzz and snow from the television on the dresser. I sat in the chair, wondering if she would show.

Ann had never missed a meeting in the past. If she called me out, she showed up whether that rich husband of hers wanted her to or not. Frankly, I couldn’t care what he thought, but I didn’t have to live with him. She did. I respected her for the sacrifice, but there were some days when I would have opted for fewer facial beating marks on her face.

Roger was a man who had everything, a fancy car, a nice home in the suburbs, and a trophy wife to replace his high school sweetheart. Once his sweetheart aged too much, the old man threw her out like used furniture. I think an old friend picked her up on the street and uses her for a cash machine and sex.

Ann was never shy in her role as the new show-piece for her husband. Low-cut dresses and high fashion clothes kept the image Roger wanted, if only she had kept her mouth and her desires in check. He hated it when she flaunted her relationships in front of him. The mention of the fact that she couldn’t deep throat me to her husband always followed with the fact that she barely even noticed Roger in her ass. The two comparisons, I was told, always raised a disturbance at the dinner table. Servants can talk too much.