Sojourn

I had no intention to actually leave. I thought this over. I hated my job. I barely made enough to cover expenses. My girlfriend told me my fortune the day I left by reading the lines on my hands. “You’re intelligent but you’re lost. You’ll grow old. You are not very creative. Your biggest battles will be with yourself.”

I showered and we had a breakfast of bananas and coffee. All the while I said I was going to see Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben in months. I told her I was excited to see my old friends. I told her their names. She drove me out to the highway. I spoke distractedly.

It hits you very quickly, when you realize you have no ties. You feel yourself more than you usually do, you feel your limbs hanging off your body and the shapes and colours and smells and how they come together. I stuck out my thumb and started to walk backwards down the highway. I was wearing dark jeans and a tight, dark-blue shirt. Probably not the best choice, but I felt best in that shirt. It took me about two minutes to get a ride.

The second leg of the trip was a total failure. He dropped me off at a flat stretch beside town where cars had half a kilometers of wide, open shoulder to pull off on. One hour, two hours. I was soaked with sweat and knew no one would stop now. Is this how it happens? I thought. Your chance to connect with strangers destroyed by your body’s own survival instinct, trying to keep you cool. Just like that, cut out. I even felt like a bum.

I walked east off the highway through a knee-deep grassy field and then into a little thicket of trees with white bark and lime-green leaves. A few metres of that and then an open, manicured lawn. I saw a school. Owing to it being a Saturday in July, there was no one around. I sat against a tree in the shade and drank from my bottle of water. I felt the sweat on my back dry and the mosquitoes bite into me and for the first time I didn’t care. Usually I’m a spastic mess when those Godless little bastards start humming around.

Just when I thought I might be toughening up, becoming a man, the bites really did start to bother me, and so did the heat and everything else, so I continued eastward into town. By utter chance I happened across the one bar I knew, where I’d been drinking a few years prior for a friend’s birthday. We weren’t friends anymore but that was mostly my fault. I was happy to have history with something in the town. It was small and dark and cool just like I remembered, and the girl at the bar gave me a bright smile. I ordered a beer and took my bag into the washroom. My face was red from exertion and sun, my hair wind-blown and just greasy enough to sit right, and my pectorals and triceps were bulging against the weight of the pack. I had road dust all over—enough to look rugged but not quite dirty. In short, I looked awesome. I looked like every guy I’d ever wanted to be, the tough loner. The sexy loner. The guy who walks into a bar out of the baking hot sun, orders a beer and gets a bright smile from the bartender.

I sat down at a table and went through my stuff. I don’t know what I did exactly. I think I just sorted. I had a small coiled notebook and I may have jotted something down. It wasn’t important. I just wanted to keep occupied. It felt good to be occupied with my objects. Piling them on a table and sorting them, drinking, putting them back in my bag, drinking some more.

It was late Saturday afternoon. Five o’clock. I was expected in town by six, but didn’t get there until 11 owing to the Greyhound schedule. On Sunday I did run into Ben, walking downtown, and he thought it was hilarious that I couldn’t hitchhike three hours up the highway.

Monday there was a little more in my step. I looked for purpose in the meetings. I looked at my work like it was the first time I’d seen it. I was happy to see the people I worked with.

By 10:30 everything was how it was.