You have gotten off the interstate in order to take the back road, a two-lane county highway marked by double letters, that will allow you to wend your way to town and take in the rustic sights that from the interstate are just a blur of greenery stretching to the horizon. You descend the exit lane to an underpass onto which you turn and begin following the road where it will lead.
I look up from the page after writing these words, the first words in my attempt to revisit the past through the artifice of fiction, to reimagine the past in the present, and look out the window at the two-lane main street on which cars cruise slowly past, a patch of undeveloped woods beyond. They seem to be suitable enough words to the purpose, so I look back down to see where they will take me.
He drove beneath the underpass that marked off the town from the country and prepared to take the sharp S-curve that would draw him farther into the intermingling of woods and farmland he had come to identify as "country." He had just earned his driver's license and today had been allowed to use the family's second car to visit his friend who lived on one of those farms, on a road branching off a road branching off this one. The car came off the last part of the curve and headed down toward the creek and the old, rickety, one-lane bridge that led on to another patch of woods beyond.
She finally picked up the phone and twisted the dial twice before deciding, as she watched it revolve its half-turn back, she couldn't carry her resolve through after all. If her friends should find out what she was about to do, she'd likely never live it down. Girls asking boys to the prom--asking them out on any kind of date--still just wasn't done, and since it was one of her friends who'd told her he wasn't even going to the prom, if they showed up together it would surely get around that she was the one who'd made it happen. She picked up the phone again, and this time she managed to dial in the whole number.
They were all very different, but they really seemed the same. They came from so many different places, even though they all seemed to belong in this place now. They were all doing the same thing--although a few of them were already starting to go off in their own directions--and this made it easy for them to band together through a sense of common purpose. No doubt every one of them was there to set himself, or herself, on a path that would ultimately lead them their separate ways, but when they all looked up expectantly as another of their own came through the doorway they seemed altogether content in their current interlocked fortunes.
It concealed its presence so effectively that for years and years it could be said it did not exist. Even in the most dedicated retrospect it doesn't seem to have played any role in events more than twenty years past. It didn't exactly appear overnight, but "before" and "after" seem tangible enough markers, nonetheless. It is possible to conclude that the very act of retrospection is what confers on it its ultimate reality, as it now promises to lurk behind all future activities.
You expected the uninterrupted scenery of wooded hills and wispy meadows, cut through occasionally by creek or river, over which you would travel on a quaint old bridge that gives you a tranquil look downstream, but you're a mile along the road and you've seen only new-looking ranch-style homes, divided from each other by somewhat larger lawns than you might see in town but otherwise forming an ordinary neighborhood. You drive a little farther and the houses become fewer and more spaced out, until you round a turn and come upon a very large home, brick colonial, not at all what you anticipated you would find in this area, more like the houses in a ritzy suburb back in the city. You pull over to the side of the road and continue to stare at it.
I am hardly aware of my surroundings as I form the sentences that bring those times back, but I am surprised at the shape they are taking, at the way they seem to be moving forward, full steam ahead, only to stop and start again, homing in on some new frequency of thought. Some different voice resolving itself through the static of flagging inspiration. I must concentrate my attention on keeping these sentences flowing in their sideways fashion or will likely just end up floating endlessly down the same old stream.
He drove past the great open sewage lagoon whose pungent stench after rain storms was such a familiar part of life as lived in his hometown. The road wound between the lagoon on the right and the creek on the left, a creek that about half a mile downstream emptied into the Grand River, the main fishing stream in the area, and as he was about to exit the shadow cast by the lagoon's steep bank he saw what appeared to be flowing water emerging from its base and trickling along the side of the road before disappearing into some sort of crevice cut into the ground. He pulled over to the shoulder and prepared to get out of the car.
She decided a telephone call wasn't really the right way to ask such a question--he'd feel more entitled to say no if she didn't offer the courtesy of asking it in his presence--and since he lived just around the block she resolved to walk over there and talk to him. Luckily the thunderstorm that had been passing noisily through while she debated with herself whether to go through with it or not had now rained itself out, but as she turned up the side street that would take her to his house the drainage ditch that ran next to it was roaring with the overflow. She paused to watch the muddy water rush by on its way to the creek.
One of them held a party at his country home outside of town and everyone gathered there for a grand picnic, the food plentiful and the beer flowing freely. "Every Picture Tells a Story" and "Mandolin Wind" floated out from the speakers. Several of them wandered off into the woods, mostly in pairs. Presumably there was sex. Later in the day the host led a large group of them in a walk through the woods. They took a well-maintained path through the groves of trees and over several footbridges spanning narrow, rock-strewn creeks. They were all lulled by the loveliness of the day.
There was that one time. It seemed so much the direct consequence of the trauma of that specific episode--the actual encounter with madness--it was like something else entirely, something more fleeting and ephemeral. It went away fast, after only a modest struggle to explain away the experiences that caused it, and in the years following there was only acceptance of the truth these experiences had revealed (or so it now seems in retrospect). Apparently, those years had merely acted as a dam, holding it back while cracks meanwhile began spreading through the weeks and months so that finally it started seeping through, rapidly enough increasing to a steady stream.
You continue on the country road, which eventually makes its way even deeper into the woods, crossing several creeks and twisting around various knobby hills. Here the houses are many fewer and much farther between, and they are older and less well-kept, more like the shabbier homes you remember occupying these rural parts and expected would still find here. You feel a twinge of self-disgust when you realize you were really hoping that things had not changed, that the country poor of your memory were still in their established place. Still, you feel some relief that change hasn't penetrated this far into the countryside, as you come in sight of a house you're sure you recognize, so little has it changed.
I am beginning to understand how these verbal currents might be related, as tributaries moving toward some confluence with a stronger channel of narrative logic the outlines of which are unfortunately not yet on the horizon. Voices in a conversation the subject of which will become clearer after the noise of it dies down and the thread of discernible speech becomes more distinct. But while this is a beginning, I can't know if these strings of sense will work themselves out more fully and make this effort worth carrying through until I can hear what the voices are telling me, where the logic can be found.
He heard loud laughter to his right, across the road he'd been travelling. After scanning the brush lining the roadway, he saw the opening in it that led to the concrete footbridge spanning the creek. He realized that the voices were coming from the sandy area across the bridge that some people used for fishing. The creek widened and deepened enough here, so close to its confluence with the river, that it was possible to catch a few of the catfish and sun perch that otherwise inhabited the larger river downstream. He had himself once spent an afternoon on that sandbar. He had been told those catfish might especially be found near this bridge after rainstorms, when the water was running higher and muddier than normal, but on this day all he caught was a single scrawny fish. He had put it on the stringer nevertheless, and he watched it swim helplessly in circles, releasing it when he finally gave up and went home.
Since she was good friends with his sister, she'd have an excuse for being there even if she lost her nerve and didn't ask to see him. It had been his sister who first told her he wasn't going to his own Senior Prom, but they hadn't discussed it since. She hadn't told her in order to get her brother a date--even his sister thought he was too unsocial to care about it, whether or not some girl might agree to with him, despite the fact he was so silent and withdrawn. Probably they would both be shocked if he actually agreed to go.
They were all taken aback by the sheer magnitude of it all. They emerged from the gently rolling, tree-covered terrain to encounter a gnarled, twisting gorge in the earth that seemed to extend halfway to Canada. They listened to the host explain that this was what was left of an open-pit coal mining operation that was shut down ten years previously. One of them, the one who had mostly been keeping to himself throughout the party and again on the hike, now joined the group and began to recount the history of such mining, bringing everyone else to a high pitch of indignation at those who would so heedlessly mutilate the landscape. When they began walking again, to return to the party, one of the women continued speaking with the sullen fellow, accompanying him back down the path as they talked of the fragility of nature.
The way it feels now is like he's sliding down a whirlpool, swirling around at a high enough level to stay afloat for now, but the trajectory is clearly downward and soon enough the bottom will be reached. Even now it can be seen in momentary glimpses. It has no substance or even location; it appears to be just a void leading on to the further extension of void--to nowhere. It is an expanding cone of emptiness carving out its space.
You drive on by, although you have determined that aluminum siding has replaced the house's original shingled frame. Otherwise the same screen-covered porch, the same lean-to built onto the back. You don't know if the family still lives there. You long ago lost contact, even though at one time you spent almost as much time with them as with your own family. He was your best friend, but that didn't survive into adulthood--even by your senior year in high school your paths had diverged, as you prepared to leave the place of your birth and he already began to fade into your mental tableau of people left behind. The image of him you retain is of a Little Leaguer about to throw a fastball no one could hit. You wonder if those days turned out to be the best of his life.
I continue to search through the days that define a life. Although what life isn't yet quite clear. The more I seem to grasp the requisites of my task, the farther my subject seems to swirl away. All these days I've sat here and tried to sort through these images that must be connected or they wouldn't flow before me in such a steady stream. Perhaps my mistake is in assuming the images will eventually be meaningful to me. Perhaps the more urgent necessity is that they make sense to you.
When he got to the little sandbar he found no one there. Still he could hear the voices, although when he paused to determine exactly what they were saying he could make out no words, only what seemed to be the sound of voices engaged in conversation. They seemed to be coming from farther downstream, although neither the bank, which jutted straight up from the water as far as he could see, nor the creek itself, which was hardly deep enough for swimming, seemed to afford much opportunity for a gathering of people. He'd have to leave his car sitting off the side of the road, and he'd be late in arriving at his original destination, but he decided to look around and see if there was a pathway that might take him along the side of the creek in the direction of those voices.
She arrived at the front door and went ahead and rang bell before she had the chance to hesitate. Her friend's mother opened the door and greeted her in her usual friendly manner, then yelled out her friend's name to summon her from some other part of the house. While waiting for her to come to the living room, she thought she heard voices from the back of the house, where his room was located. He could have just been taking to his younger brother, but it sounded like there might be several people back there. She wasn't used to thinking of him as someone with a lot of friends, so she wanted to know who they were and what they were saying.
They went back to the house on another path, although the host assured them they would make it back in good time. They paused to look at the various kinds of trees turning various shades of yellow, red, and orange and to inspect the various signs of wildlife to which the host drew their attention. It was now late in the afternoon, and many of them declared they wished they had brought jackets to fend off the increasingly crisp fall air. They had gone a few hundred yards farther down the path, increasingly hard to distinguish from the forest floor itself, when they heard what sounded like voices off somewhere in the darkness cast by the trees. They all looked in different directions, trying to locate the source of the sounds.
It hasn't yet been accompanied by the hearing of voices, but can that be far behind? If it happens, it might even be a relief. It would make further resistance, all attempts to fend it off, finally futile, a sign that it was always going to win. Accepting it as the inevitable outcome of a process that had to unfold along its own ordained course, that was ultimately at the very core of one's existence, could be the only way to achieve the tranquility it had otherwise made impossible.
You can still hear the talk in the car during the drive to the university. You didn't say much yourself--you were already preparing for your life elsewhere by refusing to participate in the usual family banter--but you do remember the voices expressing a mixture of relief, anticipation, apprehension, and sadness. You didn't think you yourself felt much of the latter, but after you unloaded your few belongings into what you only then realized would have to be your new home--the first of many, although you couldn't know that at the time--and walked back down to the circle drive, you watched intently as your parents drove back out and turned right to begin the return trip. The image of them looking back at you just before the car disappeared from sight was one that remained vivid to you over the years.
I grow tired listening to the voices. I again look out the window and notice the shadows are already lengthening on this late autumn day. If past is prologue, the voices will renew themselves tomorrow, after a night during which they will transform themselves into phantom images I will also try to translate into these words. But if they don't, if the stream dries up and leaves me searching in vain for its former traces, will the time I've spent sitting here, looking up, down, and around, as if what I'm really after will materialize out of the empty space surrounding me, be redeemed nevertheless? Or is the end of this the end of all?
He reached the mouth of the creek, where it bent gracefully into the flow of the river that here skirted the edge of town before making its way through the hills that seemed to pose such an obstacle to its path toward the even bigger river it met in turn not far to the east. Whatever it was he thought he was chasing wasn't here. He must have been imagining those voices. Why had he gotten out of the car in the first place? How had he found himself out in the middle of nowhere pursuing phantoms? Going back where he came from would be difficult. Several times the bank had disappeared and he'd almost fallen in trying to stay upright on the tree-filled incline. He might have to find a path leading farther into the woods, away from the creek, and see where that will take him.
She walked on back toward his room. But suddenly she was no longer sure what she wanted. She really barely knew him. She didn't find him attractive. It wasn't even her prom. When that came around, she'd be able to get a date without any problem, she was pretty sure. Did she just feel sorry for him? Everyone would think it was pretty cool that she got to go this year's prom, but when they heard who she'd gone with, would they think she had low standards? Before arriving at the bedroom door, she turned back and made it to the living room just before her friend finally arrived from wherever she'd been. They greeted each other in their usual friendly manner and then she asked her friend if she'd like to go back to her house and listen to some new records.
They didn't hear the sounds again and concluded they weren't voices after all, just something being carried by the wind. The path turned out of the deep woods, and they were soon enough within sight of the house. The party would continue well into the evening, and many of them were already gathered in the backyard as the host was apparently preparing a barbeque grill. Some of them were walking to their cars, however, perhaps to spend a more tranquil night at home. The rest of them would remain, fixed in memory at least, ready to enjoy their unforeseen camaraderie and eager to achieve all of their plans.
There won't be any voices. It isn't like that. It's not that grandiose. It's nothing many other people haven't endured. It's something that will have to be accepted. Perhaps it will become just a kind of background noise. It might be the price to be paid for remaining alive and conscious. It might be the very meaning of being alive and conscious.
You have reached the outskirts of town, which you know because you have just exited the sharp S-curve. You can see just ahead the overpass that leads travelers on by this otherwise nondescript place, or that leads inhabitants of the place away from it, perhaps for good. You had originally planned to drive through town, but now as the overpass looms, you wonder whether what you would see would be of much interest after all. You're no longer sure what you really did expect to find, but it now seems to you that your expectations count for little, anyway. Things as they were can only give way to things as they are. Illusions can only break down. Whatever has changed and whatever remains will co-exist peacefully if left to the imagination. You wait for a freight truck that must have just made a delivery to cross in front of you onto the entrance ramp before making the turn yourself.
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