The man drowns out his doubts and his fears with music. He listens to James Taylor’s Carolina in My Mind as he drives and though the sound system in his car is ancient, he manages to play the song on repeat without any sort of automation. When the song ends, he rewinds the tape, counting seconds in his head, and always manages to press play at the right time to start over at the beginning. He feels that the song is singing his truth, that he will only be able to return to Carolina in his mind and it’s the only song that he wants to hear ever again.
Almost instinctively, definitely without much forethought, the man pulls over at the first rest stop he sees and finds a pay phone. Maybe he is too ashamed of himself to go back in person, but he is practiced in lying now and he thinks that he can feign happiness on the road on his own, at least on the phone. But just the thought of his mother makes his knees buckle and he knows that he can’t talk to her without telling her everything, without begging her for help. His mother had always been the shoulder he felt comfortable enough to cry on, he didn’t think his father would tolerate his tears. The man’s father raised him to be stronger than the average man, so when he felt weak and needed reassurance, he went to his mother for comfort that she was happy to give.
His mother is off limits though, she can’t know what he did at the gas station.
A homeless man sees the man crying in a pile next to the pay phone and he wanders over, obviously drunk. The man smells him and looks up to see the homeless man offering him a drink from his bottle in a brown paper bag. “No thanks, I’ll be fine.”
“If I had some money for you, I’d help you out with that call.” The homeless man slurs and the man feels trickles of saliva on his forehead like it is raining.
“I got money.” The man offers the homeless man a five dollar bill and it is enough for him to leave the man alone.
He can call his sister, the man decides. Just five minutes, just to hear her voice and then the man could hang up and continue his journey out of TN. He dials and waits, realizing that it is late in the night and she may be asleep. But she answers.
“Brother!!” She yells loud enough to justify two exclamations. “I can’t believe it’s you, I was just thinking about you. Mama and Daddy already in the bed, but I’mma go wake them up…”
“No, no. Listen, don’t do that, let ‘em sleep.” The man says.
His sister is shocked by the sound of his voice. “You sound weird. You already changed that much in less than a week? Your testicles finally dropped?” His sister jokes and they both laugh.
“Don’t disturb ‘em, I didn’t realize how late it was, I been driving.” The man trails off.
“Where are you now?” His sister asks.
“TN, the great state of TN. Its nice, they got cool grass out here.” There is a long pause in the conversation.
“We really miss you brother. I hope you’re having a good time out there, living it up.”
The man sighs, then says, “I’m seeing it all. It’s nice. I gotta go, but make sure you tell everybody I love ‘em. Tell them that I miss ‘em,” and he hangs up before his sister can respond.
The man gets back into his car and decides to power on and put as much distance between him and TN as he can manage without stopping. When he makes it to AR, he understands why Sandra’s son was so reluctant to go. There isn’t much to look at and he feels like an alien when he stops to refill his car, he is the only black person for miles. He keeps driving and decides that he will feel much less paranoid if he can make it to Texas, then he can stop and find a permanent place to sleep.
He enjoys the farmland of OK as he drives through it and he imagines himself running through fields with horses, as free as the wind, and when he sees himself running with horses beside his car, he remembers that he is not a normal man. His imagination is not an escape, it is just more things to crowd reality. The man hits the gas and speeds off as he watches himself and a group of galloping horses disappear in his sideview mirror.
The man meets Amarillo, TX early in the day and the light from the sun makes everything feel warm and welcoming. And then without warning, he feels his back tire explode and his car wobbles uncontrollably while he struggles to the side of the road and to a stop. He managed to avoid a crash with another car and stands next to his car on the shoulder inspecting the damage. The tire is shredded and he worries that there is permanent damage to the axle. He flags down help and the woman driving by who was kind enough to stop calls a tow truck before continuing on her way. When the tow truck comes, an older white man with a bright red face and round belly steps down from the driver’s side.
“Looks like you could use some help. I’m Randy. Lets see if we can get this mess back to my shop and fix ‘er on up.” Randy has a thick Texas accent and he is friendly. The man helps him attach the old brown car to the tow and he rides up front with Randy back to his shop.
As they drive, Randy asks the man what brings him from NC and the man tells him an abbreviated version. “Trip to celebration graduation.”
Randy is pleased to hear that the man is such an industrious fellow and asks how long he plans to stay around. “Could use some extra hands at the shop if you ain’t headed out in a hurry.” The man agrees and Randy does not realize that he has just found himself a near virtuosic mechanic. The man loved his car like a normal boy does his girlfriend and he had learned all the intimate parts of his old brown car and he could easily fix the problems that arose. When his father would take him on jobs to fix people’s water heaters or to shingle their roofs, the man would always make extra money changing the oil of the customers’ cars or doing tune ups. The man thinks that Randy is the best person he could have possibly met in TX and he hopes that tinkering in a body shop will help him forget his recent history.
At the shop, Randy shows the man to a small apartment attached to the back of the building. “Its not much, but you can afford it with what I’ll pay you and you’ll have something left over. What do you say?” Randy asks.
The man eagerly accepts and before he can control himself, the man hugs Randy. And when he is back to his senses he thinks to ask, “Why are you offering me all this? I’m a stranger to you.”
“To be honest,” Randy says with a smile, “I just lost the guy that used to work here and he was renting this place. You seem like a good kid. And if you don’t know shit about cars, I can still use you to sweep up and keep track of customers. Really, I’m more glad you’re willing to do it than you are to have it. So settle in. I’m gonna go see what I can do with your car. If you need anything, holler down at me. And get ready for your first day tomorrow morning.” Randy offers his hand to the man, who looks at it on the verge of tears. It doesn’t erase the guilt he feels, but it is better than driving alone with it. And when the man is alone he prays that he won’t bring tragedy on Randy as he had on everyone else he’d met.
In Knoxville, Detective Young knows that the tall man from the hospital is not the son of the woman, Sandra, that had been in the room with him and he wonders why they would have lied. “What can they be hiding? That boy definitely didn’t kill nobody, right?” Young is puzzled and he wonders if there is any way to get to the bottom of it all. When the sun is up, he heads to the motel where Sandra has been staying and he finds her in her room with the door wide open.
“I know you?” Sandra is sitting on the floor with empty beer cans all around her, drowning the sorrows that seem insurmountable on her own. She misses the man, she misses her son, she even misses her abusive husband and she will take any company now. “I know you,” she says before Young can answer. “You that racist ass detective. I told you that boy ain’t do nothing and he already gone.”
“He ain’t your son is he? Y’all lied? I just want to know why ma’am. Did that boy kill somebody?” Young approaches Sandra slowly as though he is afraid to frighten her.
Sandra laughs, she is drunker than she knows. “That boy ain’t kill nobody, but poor baby was probably crazy. You shoulda heard the mess he said he could do.”
Young closes Sandra’s door and sits to listen to her recount the man’s story of the events that happened at the gas station the night of the explosion.
PRL Serials 