His mother’s words echoed in his head. Please don’t go to Wisconsin, she had told him. But here he was, heading north out of Trempeleau on Highway 35 going as fast as he could without being too reckless. The red sun began its descent in the western sky over the Mississippi and everything was lush and green. Hawks soared overhead and everything would have been beautiful but not for the dozens and dozens of dead deer littering the shoulder, making the hills and dales of the river valley look like the similar landscape at Glencoe after the Campbells went riding home with the fresh blood still dripping off of their broadsides. Racoons, badgers, bobcats and muskrats added their flattened carcasses to the trail of destruction. Even the mutilated remains of a dead housecat or two was seen from time to time, which, for some, added an extra tinge of sadness to the scene.
In addition, all of the joys of driving had been removed from the car, a rental purveyed in LaCrosse with a fake credit card. When he first got in, he didn’t even know how to start the thing. It was a new model, and he was an old model. Once the boy showed him what to do, he happily got going, but his joy was short lived, not only due to all the carnage that marked the path, but indeed also because of further difficulties in operating the vehicle. The windows did not seem to be able to go down. The radio had been removed. And in its place was some kind of Apple device which needed a password and enrollment in the rewards program. The heat and AC was all controlled remotely from a server in Idaho, and there was no override.
The dashboard display was dominated by a video monitor playing ads for products he would never in a million years be interested in. Again, no off switch could be located. He could feel his blood starting to boil and contemplated jumping out and sending the car down the embankment and into the river where it belonged.
He motored on and tried to relax, consciously turning his blood down to a simmer. Was there no one else who saw what was happening, he thought. Not a total collapse as some might predict or even wish for, but something more insipid and sinister, a slow but steady fracture. He could see the cracks in the walls, the blood stains slowly appearing on the floors and the ceiling. But no one else seemed to notice. The well paid prominent journalists of the time busied themselves with writing about what to do about things like stale bananas and how do you treat an ex at a child’s high school graduation. They went into great detail about new trends in brewing kombucha, and who tweeted what to who and what they tweeted back and how that tweet was responded too. Meanwhile the bodies piled up.
He had dealt with it the only way he knew how, with lots of whiskey. But now he was heading north on highway 35 and looking for some kind of a breakthrough, a way to rectify the situation or at least a better way of self survival until the robots and the plutocrats and the hollywood types had gotten their fill. A doe’s eyes stared up at him from the asphalt, dried blood stained her head, her legs twisted behind her. He wanted a smoke but was trying to quit and purposely didn’t bring any along, and thus started to visualize a convenience store up ahead, his willpower waning by the minute.
He was due in Billings the next morning for a business meeting. Actually, no. That wasn’t true. But he tried to imagine what his life would be like if that were true. A lot of downside, obviously, but the advantage of having a destination and purpose, however shallow and illusory, was somehow appealing, at least for an instant, and at other times in his life when he felt this way.
After cresting a hill, he saw a figure in the distance, standing on the side of the road. What’s this, a hitchhiker, in today’s day and age?, he thought. Well, he thought, I gotta stop, I guess. He pulled over and a man got in. At least that’s what he thought at first but upon further study, he wasn’t sure. Damned gender fluidity, he thought. How ya doin, he started, i aint seen a hitchhiker in quite…
I am a dog who knows how to get to the bone, the person responded. Oh, ok. He himself was not a dog who pursued a bone, but he stayed silent and instead said, oh ok where you going? Janesville, the person responded. oh, that’s back the other way, I’ll let you out, he said slowing down. No i meant Jamestown. I don’t know any Jamestown. I meant Williamsburg. Or Petersville, or Johnstown.
He drove on slowly and considered his options, not feeling very comfortable with his companion. Well, he finally said, I’m just going a little bit ahead up here to Alma, that’s as far as I’m going. I’ll go there too, the person said, and the car slowed down to 35 as they entered town at dusk. They were both smiling. The smell of ripening strawberries filled the air.
THE MOSSY BOG 