47
The next morning, I hit the road.
I awoke in the late hours of night, sopping, freezing and trembling, still coming down from the trip. Turns out I had made it about a quarter mile from the house and in the earliest a.m. hours, I stumbled the rest of the way back. It felt like a miracle I was alive. I was shaking so severely from the cold I thought I’d permanently damaged myself. When I dragged my legs the last steps home, I threw the front door open, stripped off my clothes, and collapsed on the couch with a few thick blankets wrapped tightly around me.
A few hours later, I came to life in a daze and forced myself to the shower. As the warmth gently fell against my skin, I recounted all the things I had seen and vowed to never take Alice again. God, I thought I had died out there in my grandparents’ woods. Clearly, I had taken too much. I would be sorting my way through those visions for months to come. My body was all scraped up and bruised from my struggles, and I still couldn’t breathe calmly.
After the shower, I gathered my few belongings and said my final goodbyes. I blessed the place, promising my grandparents that I’d be back. I was still fogged from the shrooms, but one thing was clear—it was time to go home.
The damage from the storm moves outside my car windows. As God would have it, the only homes that seemed to be spared were my own and Nancy’s. I stopped by on my way out of town to say goodbye.
“It’s a miracle, Cash, I can’t believe the whole house didn’t fall.” We shared one more hug and I couldn’t help but feel she knew something inside me had shifted.
“Bless you, Cash. Bless you.”
“Bless you too, Nancy. I hope I see you soon.”
On it goes. There are broken trees in the yards of almost every house I pass. Big oaks are split and fractured. There are power lines down and leaves scattered everywhere. Broken recycling and garbage bins have been tossed through the streets. The people of Cambridge will be cleaning this up for weeks. And so, the storm really was that bad. It was a warning of some kind. A cleansing. I am reminded, more than ever, that mother nature will always show the people where things stood. There is no denying the everlasting power she possesses. She is the one that shakes the planet and takes the structures down if she pleases. It is a privilege to walk on her surface, and perhaps the reminders are necessary. I rub my eyes and try to focus on the road as the events of the prior evening play out in my mind like the remnants of a dream.
An hour later, I’m driving my Saturn with a strange calmness. A serenity settles inside me. Whatever the truth was, I had learned a small piece of it. In the midst of what I would later find out to be the worst storm of Cambridge’s past fifty years, I had found a few answers. I had seen my mother and father, and all the rest. They had passed along some surety to me. Some blessing. I had been broken, gathered up, and released again. I know that whatever is waiting for me in Johnston, it is finally mine and mine alone. I will start anew. I am no longer shackled. Maybe I’ll return home forever, or maybe I’ll leave again someday soon. I don’t know. I’m not attached either way, but the dawn is coming.
In the dimming haze of the mushrooms, I have a proverbial peacefulness. It’s been over a month since I left Johnston. What had happened in my absence? The midwestern countryside begins to open up as I hop on the highway and drive straight as an arrow can fly. All around me it feels as if the day is in lazy mourning. It is recovering, regrouping. You and I both. I roll the windows down and feel the cold fall wind on my body, swirling like always.
Something has changed.