First Chapter from Roads and Parking Lots

The Meaning of My Nonexistence

It was the last free ride ever. Hippy dropped me at my parents' door. They came out blinking in the twilight - they were not expecting me. The Old Man stumbled onto the driveway. "I knew you'd be back but not this goddamn fast." I gave Hippy a shake and he slipped me a joint for later; there are still good people in the world but not here. I jumped out and awe shucked my way into the house. The Old Man followed after "Well, where the hell ya been? We thought for sure you'd be dead before you got back." They didn't seem so sad. "Want some dinner Mick?" said the Mom trying to hold back the night with her apron. Christ I was hungry but more than that I needed sleep.

And sleep I did, almost the entire winter, I barely raised an eyelash except to find a drink. Even then I was exhausted - broken - done in. I leaned against fish houses on twenty feet of ice. I didn't know how I got there, it didn't matter, I refused to go one step further. "I'm fine just where I'm at, you fuckers go on without me." My drinking buddies weren't doing much better than I - they could barely tilt their heads in any one direction - they sat on their hands - mostly - with the heat on high and ACDC on low. "Hey Mick, ya stupid son of a bitch, yer gonna freeze yer ass off out here." I was done moving and there was no way they were getting out of the car to fetch me. They cranked em' up and left me behind - even spit a little ice at me as they spun a circle around me and my fish house and got the hell out of there. It was some drunken riot.
I took in the stars with a twisted neck and slanted eyes. How could space be so empty with all that? I found the Big Dipper for the ten thousandth time and still looked forward to ten thousand one. I was alone with the cold empty winter - if you're gonna starve starve in that - every bump in the sky looks almost promising.

I straightened up in the dark and navigated across the lake by the barking of the area dogs. That's how it goes up North; I knew the bark of everyone's dog. I kept the Aamodt's yipper to my right and the Riley's Setter to my left. The Thompson's big mutt howled in the background and the Henderson's Lab was my wandering dog star.

I crawled up the public landing in a snowmobile track. I kept my nose to it it smelled of oil and gas. I felt the frozen patterns crackle and crunch under my feet; the human touch.

I stood at the top and looked back across the lake - it was flat black with a ring of blinking yard lights. I left it at that. I wheeled around and took low abbreviated steps quickly down the middle of the ice packed street and slid on stiff legs and braced feet toward the ditch. I kicked chunks of ice and they slid toward the ditch as well. At least we were going somewhere.

I came to the railroad tracks; the same tracks that passed the back of the Old Man's mini-ranch. I followed them between frozen swamps and cut banks and wire brushes to our dead end road then cut through the thin gray trees - my trees: starving to death in a couple feet of snow. I pushed through and puffed forward to the other side and leaned against the last tree still breathing. I never got tired of seeing my breath, I blew it into my hands, down at my feet, watched it drift on the dead air, waved it with a hand. My shoes were packed tight with snow and ice - I was really there. In fact, I felt like I had always been there. When I was a kid I'd have these overwhelming feelings of my eternity. It just didn't seem possible that I hadn't existed before and that I wouldn't exist after. I'd curl at the edge of my bed and concentrate with all my might; the meaning of my nonexistence. I couldn't do it.

I decided to spend the rest of the night in the cold under the last tree. I wouldn't start a fire either. I would go against the odds believing I would still be there in the morning. Hell is ice. The cold removes everything but it and you. In the cold, you lead with your nose and toes - you are present and accounted for at all times. You know death. You see death. Its right over there beyond a break in the trees. The cold also gives you the hint that it might not be so bad: to be frozen, preserved, forever in ice, through interstellar space. That's where the stars come in - drift toward the brightest one and catch your breath.

Roads and Parking Lots - a novel by Michael McDaeth