40
The cold has come.
September mornings.
Gone are the days of birds on the ground, sifting through dew for their worms.
I walk out to my Saturn with a packed bag in my right hand.
Breath leaves my lips and hovers like mist before departing for good.
There’s something invigorating about these dim mornings before the sun in early fall.
My father used to say things about that, way back.
“Cash, you have to beat the sun up, do you understand? Be there to see it rise.
Make you a man.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I open the car door, toss my faded black duffle inside, and get in.
I turn the key over and wait, looking at my home.
It seems mournful in departure.
The air grows warmer from the vents.
I close my eyes and pull it all together, mind wide and growing wider.
It’s time.
I put my hands on the wheel and drive.
I’m spinning it fast out to Cambridge, Minnesota and I haven’t told anybody my plans other than a scribbled note I left with Mo for Prince and Leon.
Heading out for a bit.
No worries.
See you soon.
Mo gave me a long hug and didn’t ask me any questions.
My grandpa and grandma used to live in a small log home out in the Minnesota wilderness.
They never sold it, and nobody has taken any care of it for years, but it was still standing out there, waiting for someone to come back.
I would greet it with love no matter what state it was in.
I know a few folks in the town from spending summer months there as a kid, and I figure I can find some kind of work and get busy.
Maybe I’ll fix the place up a bit and see if there is any life to be had out there for the winter months.
Who knows.
Maybe I’ll figure it all out and stay for good.
All I’m sure of is I need to go.
So I am.
And I haven’t told a soul where or why.
I feel a bit bad about Prince and Leon and leaving them behind.
I wonder what they’ll think or if they’ll have any inclination to come find me.
It’s been weeks anyway, the longest period of time we’ve gone without hanging out in years.
None of us moved against it, but why? Why had we all taken this agreed upon hiatus? I wonder what they’ve been scheming and moving toward, or if they were going through it like me, head rattled and heart searching for something hidden.
We are all in the midst of our own winding path, I know that.
A month or two on our own would be good for us in the end.
Still, I miss my brothers, even though I’m trailing away from them both and saying nothing.
Nothing! On it goes.
I imagine briefly how one late fall morning Prince would drop by and see my place still abandoned and think enough is enough .
He’d call up Leon who’d say he still hadn’t heard from me and that he didn’t have a damn clue where I was.
Only the note I left with Mo, and one brief conversation with Saul.
I told him I was heading out, that’s all, that I was alright and if anyone came looking then he should tell them only that I was going.
I’d be back for a beer and my bar before long, though I didn’t know that for sure.
I know nothing for sure.
I’m keeping Leon and Prince in the dark a bit, but I figure it’s best this way.
Did we or did we not need one another as we thought? Time will tell.
First, a little mystery and breath of adventure and change.
So long, Johnston.
You house of all past, good and bad.
We will see.
I am no longer attached.
I am tethered to absolutely nothing on God’s whole blue and green Earth.
The old house will be there, waiting for me in Cambridge, dusty and lonely from abandonment.
I will greet it with open arms, truly ready and alone, free at last to travel and drive and take root somewhere new.
Four fucking weeks since Rose ditched town. The thought alone makes me race down the freeway. Not a call, not a word to her brother, nothing.
“Saul, man, c’mon. Where’d she go?”
“I dunno, Cash.”
“I know you do.”
“I dunno, really.”
“What, she just fucking left?”
“Seems so.”
“Didn’t say a word to you?”
“She said she was going, yeah.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Cash, I told ya I dunno.”
I nearly pulled my hair from the scalp.
I dragged my knuckles against the wood of the pool table and somehow didn’t strike it.
I stormed out of the place and slammed the door behind me.
It didn’t make any sense.
I picked up the nearest rock in the gravel and hurled it towards the lamppost.
I missed and the stone bounced down the road straight out of town.
Not a soul in sight.
I got in my car and tried to breathe, frustrated anger and confusion welling up like a torrent inside of me.
“What, the fuck, man!” I yelled.
My chest heaved. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. Ten, twenty minutes. That’s that. I put the key into the ignition and left.
One week later.
I’m not saying I’m driving all the way out to Cambridge because of lovely, green-eyed Rose, but her departing like that, disappearing from the town like a phantom, set me off on a wild set of thoughts about leaving.
She cracked something in me I didn’t know could be cracked.
God, why had I opened myself up like that? Left in the fucking dust, man, like all of it never happened.
At least my grandparent’s house will know something about that.
All of the thoughts tumble down.
All the near misses and losses.
Rose and Saul.
Not getting Jimmy’s Place.
Prince nowhere to be seen.
Leon busy.
Tommy.
All the thoughts about Mom and Dad that wouldn’t leave me the hell alone.
The wandering.
Kassy and almost crying.
God and moving.
Pat and the road, and the painting the painting the painting, every damn thing, every damn day.
I’m not in the pocket anymore, that much is clear.
Goodbye Johnston.
Rather Cambridge.
Rather a colder Midwest and the grounds of my mother’s parents, where she always cherished going to sit out in the yard to talk about life with her gatekeepers.
I remember long walks through the woods, finding stones and forgotten forts.
I remember her there, happy and alive, and my heart rate settles.
I’m reminded, this is why I’m going.
I left something in those woods.
Perhaps my mother is there, in Cambridge, patiently waiting for me.
Ma, I’m on my way.
I know there are centuries of bones in the backyard, stories written on the bark that need reading, secrets and truths being carried on the wings of the wind.
All my ancestors and their souls, cold, lonely, and waiting for my journey to conclude.
Waiting for me to line up the sight for a second or two and see it all clearly.
The sun is starting to float over the horizon, and I place a cigarette on my lips.
I light it.
The leaves on trees are beginning to die in their wondrous display of color.
Ready to bid me farewell.
And to the horses released from their stables I share solitudes.
For another day, and another.
The gray calming smoke lets itself out through the window.
It too, whispers goodbye.
And all my endearing and eternal thoughts about Johnston disappear.
Cambridge! Here I come.
Let the ghosts run up through the roots and take form.
Wait for me, out there.
Wait for me in the woods.
We’ll reminisce in the Minnesota sun.
We’ll talk it out at last.
When I get there, when I stay.