013 - Thirteen

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[TRANSCRIPTS]

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So here’s the thing. This junker I’m driving around isn’t exactly ready for Formula One, but it can get up to a hundred without gasping, and it’s not like there’s highway patrol so…

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Whipping down I-64 at a hundred miles an hour…good idea or terrible idea? I could wrap myself around a telephone pole, but I don’t think I’m going to get pulled over. And it’s not like I’m in a rush anywhere but…come on, it’d be fun, right? 

I guess I should worry about deer though. I hit a deer once when I was sixteen and god, it was awful. The deer was fine, but it was goddamned terrifying and it bent my car up something good. And I loved that car. My dad started fixing it up for me when I was twelve and then I took over after he—

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It wasn’t a fancy car by any stretch, it wasn’t even a particularly good car. But it ran. And it was mine. And even though the paint was dull and one of the side mirrors came from a different model car entirely, I still kept it pristine. And then a stupid deer broke one of the headlights and busted up the hood. I was never able to fix it—the hood that is, I did get a new headlight—but that car still saw me through the rest of my teen years and a good chunk of my twenties. 

I think that’s the last thing I had that my dad had touched. I had to ditch it on a job in Illinois when I was twenty-seven and I told myself I’d go back for it, but by the time I could, I’d forgotten exactly where I’d put it. 

Maybe that’s a way to spend my time—go looking for a car I parked eight years ago. It’d sure keep me busy. 

I think I probably will start heading west again once I’ve gotten to the coast. Go from ocean to ocean. I’m not as familiar with things once you cross over the Mississippi, but it’s not like getting lost is gonna delay me from something. I just know I can’t keep….circling around, never going further than eight hundred miles from Pennsylvania.

Feels too much like I might decide to pack it all in and go back. And I am not going back. 

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