Going 74 miles an hour on I-74, blasting a strange playlist of Eminem, Willie Nelson, and Gregorian chants – I could have been anyone; a literature student, a field engineer, a runner. Maybe I belonged to Lee Brice’s drinking class, maybe I didn’t. Of course, I wasn’t actually drinking, drinking and driving is illegal and I always follow the rules, yet there I was, drunk all the same, intoxicated with the highway, flirting with hypnosis. Smooth curves and steady inclines, the hallmarks of modern American highway travel, slid past my two-door navy-blue four-cylinder-engine Altima like Barefoot Moscato, the favorite of college females of Western European descent. Speeding cars travelling faster than I was willing to go passed with tail light colored shots chased by median reflectors. Occasionally I was blinded by oncoming lights in the divided highway, blinded like the deer hiding in the median strips and stripped corn fields, just waiting to jump out and smash into my car. It wouldn’t end well for either of us; I’d be out $5000.00 and he’d dye black asphalt red. Suppose I met the lights head on, then I’d be smashed too, a blast of fire, then out cold. A switched lane on a rural route, the wrong leaf off a clover only seen from the sky…how would they have known where I was going, anyways.
How was I supposed to know where I was going? Every exit was the same. The same chain restaurants, same chain hotels, same chain gas stations. My dad called them petrol stations, although he’d never been to England. They were different there. By now I knew how to navigate the exits – pull off, slow up, turn down the music. Gas up, put on a smile, get your coffee, and get back in the car. Never take your trash inside, let it roll around on your floorboard instead.
Starbucks cups and Diet Pepsi bottles collide gently with Clif bar wrappers, C+ exams and halfassed workout schedules. No one sees those here; if you stay on the Interstate the collisions are small and don’t make any noise. If you decide to never throw them away, then you don’t have to look at them either, they can just ride right there with you, all the way across the country. You think you’re calling the shots, but they’re the ones in the passenger seat.
Only cities and numbers on the mileage signs change. 19 miles to Peoria, 46 to Davenport, 355 to Wall, SD, 1400 miles to the edge of here. Of course, what does the ‘Federal Government’ know anyways – I knew, even if I didn’t want to admit it, that it was always only 42 miles to Indianapolis, and besides, Clint Black says that wherever you go, there you are, and everyone knows country music is about real life. The monotony though, isn’t what matters, it’s keeping someone talking, it’s keeping a good pace, it’s anything to avoid what comes from too much silence. The sound of wheels on concrete and clicking of joints isn’t loud enough, besides, I knew too much about them and might fall through the cracks. Settlement can cause even concrete to crack, you know, can’t settle, keep going, they’re following you, you can’t be anonymous but you can’t be yourself – your Indiana plates are showing, you can’t hide them, you’ll get fined, but as long as you keep moving, no one, not even you, can look too closely.
Go on vacation, visit out of state law schools, take internships out of town. I say it’s for the destination but I know it’s for hours of anonymity, where I’m just another traveler going from here to there, unable to check email or answer texts, unable to move from my seat and do anything anyone would consider ‘productive’. Limited access highway, limited access to me. Nothing can touch me here…but how far till I reach the end? What happens then? Maybe I’d melt into the Pacific, at peace at last. Maybe instead I’d turn around and see everything that had been chasing me, strewn across the beach, whale sized wolfish skeletons fleshed out with trail mix and McDonald’s, grown strong after running thousands of miles. I was smaller, but smarter and more ingenuous. I couldn’t outrun them, and no matter how far we went, they’d never be left behind…here I was chasing wasted. Maybe instead, this time, I’d better turn around, pack it all back up, and deal with the challenges.