Someplace Better

The sky here will lie to you. Break into colors you cannot name, tint the dead grass a reddish gold and make you believe things that aren’t true about the land and the people on it.

I had to go for a drive. Smooth out a few wrinkles in my brain and crank up the hum in my ears to drown out the voices. I have an assignment I’ve been putting off, like everything else I’ve been putting off. So I got an oil change and shoved a wardrobe change into a bag, apologized to my dog who fucking hates a car ride and headed out to see something or see if I could see something.

The playlist was wrong and I didn’t check the weather. The lady at the tractor supply asked if I was headed to the game. “There’s a game?”

It’s my first Friday night in Texas, apparently.

I ripped the tag off my new hoodie and pulled it on while she told me to watch the weather and a guy in a red hat stared like he wanted to say something. I need a hoodie that says I’m doing a story for Texas Highways. It’s a thing I say so I can watch their faces change. Hostility and suspicion give way to curiosity. It would save me some time and might save more than my time if we’re honest about how people are acting right now.

I haven’t seen them much. But they spray painted over a sign and another sign’s toasted on the highway out here. And I’m still trying to figure out the flags. I folded a few dozen flags over coffins one summer, and raised and lowered more than I can count. But I’ve never purchased a flag or hung my own, not for my country and certainly not for a man. And I cannot imagine what would possess a person. To raise a flag.

I’d love to know. I really would. Someday I’d like to make sense of this thing. I’ve asked more than a few. Not one has answered. They don’t talk about him in person, maybe at a rally and maybe among the deranged but you ask them and they won’t say. They like to send emails and they like to fight on twitter. But they don’t talk politics. They say it’s impolite, and fascism tends to be, but they don’t call it that. So it’s strange they won’t just say what they believe.

I’m not in the shittiest motel in Texas, but it’s close enough. It’s the one across the street from the taxidermy and deer processing, next to the deer processing and taxidermy. And someone will think I’m kidding and they’ve never been out here.

I walked Woody down to the river and it wasn’t dry, but the grass was full of burrs, and he’s not impressed by sunsets. The kid at the sonic gave him a milkbone, a treat he’ll reject any time I offer but a stranger offers one and he’s never been fed once, in his whole entire life.

I haven’t checked the news and I’ve deleted my socials because I don’t feel like wasting time. But the news got here anyway, the old fashioned way. A phone call from a friend who knew I’d want to know that we lost Dorothy Allison. Maybe the sky was telling the truth tonight. But it’s hard to lose the writers who helped me make sense of things when nothing makes any goddamn sense.

I don’t know how to hope except that it’s not sorrow or despair. It’s not a thing like that at all. Maybe it’s just getting up and doing a thing to get someplace better. Maybe I’ll drive some more tomorrow.