Blinded

THIRTY-FIVE

I used my cell phone to call Simon from a truck stop outside Montgomery. While I talked to my son, I was strolling along the border of the property, kicking at weeds I didn’t recognize and swatting at insects I didn’t know lived on the planet with me. I didn’t tell Simon I was calling from the South. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all that he knew I was in Alabama-with his limited worldview he’d have figured I was at the U of A for a football game, and he’d have a question or two about the Crimson Tide-but I didn’t want him to start conspiring with me to keep secrets from his mom, so I kept the news about my travels to myself.

Sherry didn’t want to talk to me. Her father, a gruff, kind, barrel of a man whom I’d always liked, was the one she’d tapped to tell me she didn’t want to talk to me. Angus had always been fond of me, and after I’d bulldogged my way a few years back into a position to help my niece-his granddaughter-get some medical care she desperately needed, he thought I was the son-in-law from heaven. I’d always tried hard to do nothing to dissuade him.

“She’s still being a bitch, Sam, what can I say?” was the way Angus described the situation to me. Angus was never one to mince words about his progeny. When one of his girls acted heroic, he called her a hero. When one of them acted bitchy, he called her a bitch. Angus taught me good things about being a dad.

“How about you and I cut her a little slack, Angus? How about that? She’s working stuff out.” Sherry and I had our problems, but gang-tackling her with her father didn’t seem like a fair way to confront them.

He harrumphed. “You okay? Your ticker?”

“It’s ticking fine. I’m following all the rules, and the docs think I’m a star. Simon sounds good.”

I didn’t like lying to Angus, but there it was. Not the part about Simon, the part about following all the recovering-from-a-heart-attack rules. Buried somewhere in the fine print there had to be a rule about no nonstop road trips to the land of deep-fried everything.

Yep, that was probably prohibited. That’s the one I’d broken. That one and maybe a few others.

“Simon’s good. He’s a great kid. A little on the wild side, but a great kid. Though he should be in school. You and I both know that.”

“Stay cool, Angus. This will all work out.”

“Ask me, it’s goofy. They should both be in Boulder with you. But nobody asks me. You get to be seventy-five, and everybody thinks you’re an idiot. You wait until you get old.”

“You know I agree with you,” I said. “And I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“Now there’s an endorsement.” He laughed. “There’s something I got to ask you, Sammy.”

“Yeah.”

He laughed again, a deep roar. “Are those Avalanche of yours ever going to score more than one goal in the same game? I mean ever? The point of the game is to put the puck in the net, isn’t it?” Angus’s laugh exploded into a guffaw.

All I said in reply was “Let’s see whose team is still playing in June, Angus, what do you say?”

He was laughing so loudly, I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear me.

The bathrooms in the truck stop were surprisingly clean. The restaurant seemed to be run by a group of women my mother’s age-two black, two white-who were suspicious about a guy my size ordering egg whites and grapefruit and decaf coffee. As soon as my order made it over to the kitchen, one of the waitresses came by and asked me where was I from, honey. When I told her Colorado, she nodded knowingly.

I didn’t even have to say “Boulder.”

She’d seen my kind before, apparently.

The matrons kept a careful eye on me after that. I figured they were waiting for me to call them over to the table and order some tofu, or a kiwi smoothie, or maybe a grande cappuccino.

Despite their suspicions they were kind women, all in all. Even brought me a side of grits I didn’t order. There was a big fat orb of butter melting like a setting sun right in the center of the grits. I ate around the circle of butter so that what was left on the plate when I was done looked like a cool caricature of a sunny-side-up egg that my kid might have drawn at school.

I dropped enough money on the table to leave the ladies a hundred-percent tip on the meal, filled the tank out at the pumps, checked my maps, and pointed the Cherokee toward Georgia.

I hadn’t looked in my rearview mirrors-not intentionally, not once-since I’d headed east on I-70 out of Denver. I didn’t look at the mirrors when I pulled away from that Alabama truck stop. Nor did I bother to wave good-bye to the matrons who’d made and served my meal.

I’d told myself from the beginning of my trip that I would only know that I’d really finished leaving someplace when I passed a sign that was promising me that I’d arrived at someplace new. That was the way my life seemed lately, so that was how I was going to travel.

My current plan, always subject to revision, was to cross the border into Georgia right about where Phenix City, Alabama, ended and a highway sign said that Columbus, Georgia, was beginning. Then I would drift southeast toward Albany. Farther south than that, Rand McNally said I’d find the legendary wilds of the Ochlockonee River.

When I got there?

The answer to that question eluded me, I must admit. For well over a thousand miles I’d been trying hard not to think about it. Instinct had rarely failed me in life, and I was counting on a visit from the instinct fairy sometime after I crossed the border into Georgia.

On the short stretch of frontage road between the truck stop and the highway I drove over some railroad tracks that were protruding high above the roadbed. I felt the sharp jolt from the rails as a punch below my sternum, and my pulse immediately popped up a good twenty percent.

Since I’d left the hospital, it seemed that I felt almost everything that happened to my body right in the center of my chest. It was as though any physical sensation was amplified and focused right below my ribs, centered a couple of inches down from my man-boobs.

A belch? Heart attack.

Indigestion? Heart attack.

Roll over in bed? Heart attack.

I knew that the next time I stubbed my toe, I was going to finger that damn brown bottle of nitro.

I thought about my injured heart, and about my broken heart, until I saw the sign for Phenix City. What I was close to deciding was that neither assault on my heart was going to kill me.

I was thinking maybe I was going to be okay after all.