06-10-2309
“Don’t tell me we’re lost.”
“I’m not saying that at all, I simply said I don’t know where we are.”
“Brick, we’ve hardly known where we were this entire trip.”
“Yeah, but I’ve made most of this journey before. Everything until the past few days was the same exact route, and after then it’s at least been somewhat familiar. Today it’s entirely foreign,” he spoke as I looked around outside at trees that would have grown up where I did.
“Alright, alright. I’m sorry; these directions aren’t telling me anything useful, either. How far do you think we are?” I asked trying to gauge the distance out of the time until we had to be there.
“I can’t begin to say. Either the mileage is wrong on the application, or the sign numbers are wrong on the freeway. It could be both, I don’t know,” he punctuated.
“Guesstimate?”
“Ugh…30 minutes or 13 minutes….or 17 minutes..the other way” he figured, all the while trying to decide if he should just turn around or not.
I beat the side of his PDA against my palm and said “I really wish I could get a signal with this thing. If it could just get on I could load a new map for us.”
“I guess we’ll just have to survive on our instincts…and hope there’s a sign for the spaceport,” he said spying into the distance ahead for flying rockets or contrail streaks.
“You’re right, and hope it comes up soon, or Leona won’t be too happy,” I put the PDA away as I dug in the console for a cigarette. I lifted the pack to offer one to him, but without a word he pulled one out and lit it, handing me his lighter, still silent. “I’m glad we’ve got that down to a science,” I admired as I lit my own cig and pocketed the lighter.
“Yeah, I’d say we’ve been trapped with each other long enough. We get to look back comically on parts of the trip that seem so far away now, but really happened earlier this week.”
I laughed out loud a moment before composing, “It certainly has felt like a long time.” I almost lost myself to a nostalgic mental tour.
“Remember when we were in Copernicus?”
“Hahaha……barely..” we both burst into laughter so hard that 75 miles an hour became dangerous to maintain. I almost missed the obvious sign, but shouted “Appalachia Spaceport, next right!”
“I see it. Wow, we may just be too high today.”
We got a late start this morning after sleeping in at his aunt’s house in Troutman. She had left early in the morning with her daughter, Brick’s cousin (no confusing family lines this time), so the house was ours all of the morning. We fucked off for a while, probably watching more TV than I had yet the entire trip. Although, we had been tuning into sports coverage each night, but I can hardly say that I was paying that much attention during any of those.
Ahh, well even this morning too, I guess. My attention was focused on dismantling two days worth of roaches on the coffee table. Until this last half of the journey, before we‘d stayed with two different sides of Brick‘s family, we’d been doing pretty well to reuse the day’s leftovers to create nice suppers for ourselves, sometimes mixing it with a little bit of tobacco for filler. Either way, it guaranteed a good bit of nightcap for each of us without having to dip into our daily rations. Plus, it’s already coated with resin by the time you recycle, people.
The Fire of Jove crackled along with the sizzling shreds of tobacco leaves out on the back porch. It probably didn’t need them, I know we had enough to smoke without it, but I wanted to start the day off large, so I rolled a good amount in along with the precious, sticky scraps. It took a good while to burn, during which we inspected each of the insects flying about for cautionary markings. Nothing as hazardous as a bee even bumbled by.
After removing the last of the laundry we‘d put into the dryer while smoking, we finished collecting everything we‘d need for the festival. The Martian, just packing enough for the weekend, left the possessions he brought for the rest of the summer in the room he’d be spending it in. I’d have left Eon’s stuff there too if I were catching a ride back through after it was over.
At this point though, we had traveled 15 minutes after discarding all previously established directions, trusting that the brown signs would just line up like bread crumbs.
“It’s been a minute since we saw the last sign.. You don’t think we missed one already, do you?” Brick had a familiar, unsure tone in the back of his throat.
“No, not unless it..” I saw a corner of brown and white peeking out of the trees. “It was just covered by an untrimmed branch,” I said, crestfallen.
“Huh?”
“Turn around, they just tried to hide it from us. Heavens, they must really not want us to find their spaceport. Who knows what madness must transit through there.”
“That’s a stupid thing to do, why wouldn’t they want to make that the slightest bit obvious? By the way, you’re definitely too high,” he deduced.
“Shut up, there’s a turn-off up here,” I pointed ahead.
It seemed it was a small enough spaceport from the entrance we drove in through. Before rolling under the structure of one of the concourses, I caught glimpse of just one ship taking off, some type of passenger ship; bright, polished silver with four nacelles, maybe a Perseus or a Theseus, but I couldn‘t make out anything that would tell me which. This port didn’t seem to have much incoming traffic either, but I may have only had a limited view. I probably just wasn’t paying attention.
I was distracted from my usual of pastime of staring up at all the ships departing and arriving, trying to lose the horizon so I’d be staring at an open sky filled only with flying craft. Instead I was peering as far as I could ahead to catch a glimpse of Leona, classmate and roommate of Brick.
I had looked her up online the morning before we had left Saline, back in the beginning of the journey. It had been quite a long week since I’d seen the pictures, but I was sure I’d be able to spot her from far off. Her profile only teased at how interesting she could be, and I couldn’t wait to meet her to find out.
Standing on the yellow striped curb with a full heap of luggage laid at her feet, the Earthling girl’s blonde hair caught wind in a gust from a nearby bus lifting off. Robotic skycaps hovered about in the background, some assisting people with their bags, others just floating idly by. Leona Crown waved when she and Brick recognized each other, smiling at us underneath her acrylic framed glasses.
Soon after helping her situate her things in the trunk, we were all seated again in the cabin, comfortable and on our way down the exit ramp already. Brick was still in the driver’s seat, and though I offered the front seat to Leona she opted not interrupt my navigation. We sparked the third to last joint shortly after getting back on the freeway, I handed it back to her.
“Sorry, no thanks,” she said, turning it down. I gave a look of disbelief until she reassured me, saying “Oh, no I’m just getting over a cold. Don’t worry, I’ll be smoking tons this weekend.”
“Alright, I understand,” I said as I redirected it to Brick, who took it as he peeked into his monitors. “That would of course never stop me from smoking, but I get it.” Things become blurry after he handed it back to me, I had saved a large one for the three of us. For some reason or another, I can’t remember the conversation very well until we were entering a Ionian-themed chain restaurant.
“M’Kay, Three. Smoking or Non?” asked the hostess behind the counter that took a good minute or two to assist. Baffled, Brick and I looked at each other and then to Leona.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that on the whole trip,” I stated to Brick as I turned back to the inattentive Neptunian-Earthling girl. “Smoking, please.”
We were seated in a rather open end of the restaurant for this time of day. When the salad was brought out by the unattractive waitress, who I still called ‘Hon’, I served it to my two companions first.
“Well, such a gentleman,” Leona remarked.
“Don’t get to excited, he’s been calling every waitress ‘Hon’ this entire trip,” Brick revealed. “He’ll clean up after we’re done too to make it easier on them.”
“Yeah, he’s right. It’s all part of my evil ploy; all just to give less of a tip,” I admitted. “More croutons, Dear?”
“Uhm..Yes, please,” she answered. “How do you and Brick know each other again?” she asked, either because I seemed so different from him, or from everyone she knew that he made friends with.
“Heh, well.. I moved to Mars to be closer to a girl who I met over a summer when she came to do this theater thing here on Earth. After a year of having a long distance relationship, I packed up and headed to Mars to awkwardly restart my life. And Brick had gone to high school with her and been friends a long time,” I paused to breathe. “When Linda and I broke up, you could say that I attained custody of Brick,” I said, pinching his cheek and making baby noises before he swatted me away.
“Yeah, you could say that,” he admitted. It really did seem like a permanent enough thing to warrant calling them ‘mommy and daddy’.”
“Especially towards the end,” I glared at him for a second.
“Why did you guys break up?” Leona asked innocently enough. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask for your whole life story.”
“No it’s ok.. Well, she..” I started, then shot a glance to my legal counsel. My attorney’s face was stern and turned down; a definite ‘No’ seemed to slip out of his lips. “We were too close all the time, so much that we grew apart and needed our own space,” I said, relieved I didn’t have to go into the grimy details. “And that was over a year and a half ago, so I’m pretty sure the distance between that space will never get any smaller.” Brick nodded with approval, so I added “Especially after all that’s happened.”
“So–” the question started on her lips before she caught a glimpse of Brick’s expression, advising against it. She stopped mid-sentence.
“My attorney is right. We’re about to get our food and it’s hardly appropriate dinner table conversation. Maybe if you’re unlucky, I’ll regale you with the horror story one day. Until then, look what’s here,” I indicated to the food, which couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
After finishing the entire meal without even a glimpse of delicious breadsticks, our party and its newest member returned to our vehicle. Walking across the blacktop parking lot, I pulled the pack of menthols out of my pocket and offered one to each of the others before taking mine. Brick snatched one quickly, a firm believer that every good meal deserves a cigarette. Leona, to my surprise, turned them down. I blinked a moment, but I didn’t insist she take one any longer.
“Nah, I don’t smoke. There’s been a lot of people in my family who have died of lung cancer,” she said, eyes dropping the the pavement as she finished her sentence.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, pulling the cigarette from my lips and getting ready to put it away.
“No, it’s fine. You can smoke around me, I really don’t mind,” she said, looking up and waving her hands to stop me from not having it. “I just don’t.”
“Oh, well…thanks?” I said, lighting it finally, as we got to the silver doors of Brick’s crawler. After burning an ember shaped hole somewhere in the interior, we were back on our way.
A short while later, my attention was grabbed as something flicked at the windshield. Before I could look up at it from the screen, a few dozen other pounds, like impatient fingertips, fell upon us. A dark cloud tumbled over momentarily and the downpour released. Brick cut his speed, flipped his hazards, turned up the wipers and squinted desperately ahead at the other beacons of red light.
“Guys, this is terrible,” he cautioned us. Nervously he reduced his speed even further, unable to make out anything beyond his nosecone. “I’ve never driven in anything as bad as this before!”
Leona and I simply looked at each other and smiled, resisting the urge to break out in laughter. “Really?” she asked after taking a breath.
“Yeah, I can’t get it off the windshield fast enough. Zero visibility and traction, I almost just want to pull over,” he confessed, obviously scared.
“Oh, silly Martian. It’s just a little rain,” I said, unable to contain my laughter.
“Yeah, Brick, this is nasty but it isn’t the worst it could do here,” the other Earthling explained.
“Are you sure?” he asked, still not convinced.
“Yeah, man. This will all blow over in a couple of minutes,” I assured him.
Precisely four minutes and thirty-eight seconds later the storm let up. It seemed to disappear from right over our heads, as if we’d only just passed under a limb or finger of a greater, mysterious being. It wouldn’t be the last time we’d have to deal with this beast today, though.
Leona received a message from her aunt a short while later, informing us that tonight’s spectacle will most likely be rained out. We were supposed to culminate our trip by sitting back to the synchronous fireflies, one of the rarest spectacles on the planet and something the likes of which I’ve never seen, and it looked like I wouldn’t for a while still. Instead we adjusted our course, cutting out the next attraction and settling on this evening’s stopping point.
“Hey, we probably want to be coming down by the time we meet your aunt, right?” I asked Leona.
“Yeah, you probably should…although she’s going to know something’s up with you, Klay,” she pointed out.
“Hehe, you shoulda heard what my family thought about him. Any of them, any time they’ve seen him,” the Martian said, giggling.
“What, that I was high? High out of my mind?” I asked, not very amused.
“No, just that you’re weird,” he said.
“Yep, weird as hell,” confirmed the voice from the backseat.
“Oh.. Well, I can live with that I guess,” I shrugged. “Either way, that means we spark this now, right?”
“Right,” said the driver, handing me a lighter.
Before we’d gotten halfway through smoking it, he’d passed the joint back to me and asked me to hold onto it cause traffic was slowing down. Another minute and we were bumper to bumper with big rigs and smart cars alike. The two lane highway through the mountain pass was at a standstill as far as the eye could see, though that was only until the first bend–we couldn’t tell how far this blockage stretched.
When Brick had to throw it in park, we all sighed and looked at each other in forlorn. We already knew this was going to be lengthy and tedious. The Martian decided it was snack time, passing around peanut butter-filled pretzels and trail mix. Earthgirl opened up the giant polymer cooler that kept her company in the backseat, dispensing red and blue drinks. I, Earthboy, picked up the tuni plugged into the entertainment system and turned up the music.
Start. Stop. Start. Stop another hundred feet from the last place. Start in 2 minutes after watching anxiously ahead for the red eyes to fade. Stop and wait again another 3. Repeat for another hour or so until it lets up just a little bit, accelerating to a slow crawl. Start to drive fast enough where you have to give all your attention to the road ahead and giant trucks slowing suddenly in front of you. Stop being able to see the scenery. Start to get annoyed at all the waterfalls and cascades the two Earthlings riding in the car are pointing out to each other. Stop trying to imagine the drivers thoughts.
The mountain pass was beat at last, and your heroes excitedly exited into a much wider valley, filled with trees, and rivers, and many off-ramps to thin the traffic out. The next destination was Morris and the second time through it so far. To Leona’s aunt’s house in the hills above town, right next to another national park named after an extinct animal; it sounded nicer then the part we’d caught a glimpse of just the day before.
We arrived earlier than we did to any of our other destinations, pulling into the long, freshly paved driveway before the sun even went down. A minute later and Aunt Devvie was out to greet us herself, giving us the grand tour.
A giant walnut tree, old as the boundary lines around it, grew in the middle of the front yard, by a younger magnolia tree in full bloom.
“You know, in all the time we had this place, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this tree in bloom; and they’re so damn huge!” Devvie shared with us.
She walked us around the front of the house, a space as large as my entire backyard before bringing us to the west side of the yard, the sun already escaped behind the mountains. Down the hill from where we stood was a hole in the Earth, named the gully. Dev warned us that all manner of scrap could be found in that pit.
“He used it as his own landfill…more like a little dump I think,” she stood for a while to explain. “He hauled anything he didn’t need over here; trees he’d uproot or rocks he’d unearth, equipment he couldn’t use anymore, and anything else he found dead,” she snorted, turning away at last.
She continued on her circle and brought us counter scroll-wise around the back of the house, where there was a manmade water feature. A long fountain, stretched out into a rocky stream that ran from far uphill. We walked along it to the top and looked back down at the house.
“He built this one bit by bit. One day we were down there on the porch, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the hill, and he got this idea. The next day he had a hose and a bunch of black rubber tarps set up from about halfway to the bottom. And see there where that sticks out? For a while that became a pool with a waterfall that drained to the bottom one,” she paused to take a sip of her drink.
“Then one day he decided to make it longer, got a bunch of instant concrete from the store, and tore up everything he had before,” she then kicked at the spout below her foot. “He laid these heavy duty cables attached to a massive filter pump he installed down there, and started pouring.”
She brought us around to the final stop on the 6 acre estate, a view east of the town of Morris. From here it was the same quaint setting you could imagine on Earth colonies hundreds of years ago. Little bits of flickering yellow light in each window low in the hills, fit in between with spires and steeples that all glowed too. My opinion of it changed a little bit as we stared on.
After the others had all gone to bed, Brick and I crept back outside to the patio. One joint was left, the grand daddy of them all. Rolled in a clear piece of cellulose paper like a tornado, the finest keif and choice pieces of bud went into this monstrosity, easily putting each of the other 20 I made to shame.
We smoked it ceremoniously and were privy to an other-worldly high, it felt like we’d never gotten stoned the entire week of this trip. This majestic piece of smoking history treated us well–so well it didn’t seem right to just snuff it out and flick it away. We had to dispose of it respectfully.
“Come on, Brick, grab your head lamp. I have an idea,” I said, standing and looking west.
When he’d found his gadget and a pair of Martian sandals, we started walking through the back yard, around the house. Up on the hill beside it, we came to the creepily shadowed gully. I emptied the ashtray into my open left hand, then closed it when I closed my eyes.
“Thank you for all the good fortune so far and please may it continue,” I said to no god in particular. Then I dashed the roaches and blew the rest off my hand into the welcoming gully. We turned about and headed inside, intent to rest before the big day.
