The City Surf – Jamin Wynans

Piano Lessons With Grandma – Alexander Desplat

How Deep is the Ocean – Frank Sinatra

I Need Your Love – Arthur Prysock

Forgotten – TV on the Radio

Steve McQueen – M83

Dirty Blue Balloons – Failure

Each Season, Every Year – Arthur Prysock

Iron Man – Nico Vega

At the base of a mountain that I’ve never
climbed-
at the mouth of a river that I’ve never crossed-
on the bank of a lake as wide as the sky, a lake
that only exists when I close my eyes-
surrounded by a green made more vibrant
by the darkness behind my lids,
and the crisp scent of hope lingering in my nostrils-
that’s where my dreams are made-
faceless people and nameless landmarks
dot the crevasses of this anonymous world,
full of sights and sounds and the richness
of the unexplored,
still thick with the mystery that we all held
onto as youths-
that indomitable fervor that flourished when we
all felt that anything conceivable was possible,
before the sting of age stunted that innocence-
that’s where dreams are made…
behind our lids-
on the peaks of great snow swept mountains, beneath rushing,
uncharted rivers, and dancing within the gentle waves of
pristine lakes, they lay patiently
in the stillness, waiting for the moment that
our eyes choose to open to the brilliance of that
new day sunlight,
and unlock the secret that will whittle away at
any existing doubt-
what we want is already there, waiting*

defy the old reality – embrace expression
defy stereotypes – embrace concentration
defy stagnation – embrace confidence
defy immobility – embrace courage
defy fear – embrace focus
defy timidity – embrace efficiency
defy indecision – embrace ambition
defy guilt – embrace initiative
defy worry – embrace change
defy anxiety – embrace determination
defy depression – embrace individuality
defy anger – embrace self discovery
defy mediocrity – embrace solitude
defy regret – embrace organization
defy doubt – embrace goals
defy despair – embrace dreams
defy negativity – embrace effort
Embrace positivity.
Embrace faith.

Embrace yourself.

Sally asked if I’d ever stopped at Rim, and I told her that I used to detour there almost every time I’d leave Harvey’s, back when the filling station was up and running right off the highway.  I always remember grabbing coffee, a paper, and a quick conversation with Bobby behind the counter before I filled up and made my way out of town.  If I had a little thirst, I’d head down to the Brass Beak for a beer, a chat, or to catch a game on the old tv.  The next town was a little ways down the road, so I’d fill ‘er up in Rim before I set out to log the major miles on the road.  She had some family at Rim, she said; a handful of cousins, an uncle, and some grandparents that had lived there their entire lives.  She’d drop into Rim every now and then to check on them and visit; it reminded me of my own family, and how I didn’t have any of them around anymore.  I really missed those bastards.  Sally told me that all the years that she’d been coming to Rim, she’d never seen it quite like it was that night; so empty.  Like I said a minute ago, this was no Chicago, but damn, this also sure as shit wasn’t no ghost town.  I agreed with her that the place did look mighty dead, and I told her that we’d better high tail it to the police station and get all of that stuff over and done with.

The rain was still coming down in sheets, and it was a pain in the ass to see anything in front of the truck.  The good thing was that nobody else was on the road that night, and that made the driving much easier.  The station was only a few miles off the highway, though, a tiny station made for a small town.  There were less than 2,000 people in the whole damn town, and there were around 5 or so sheriffs on duty at any given time; nine times out of ten, that was more than enough to get the job done.  One of the cops on duty was a friend of mine named Frankie Carwin; ol’ Frank and I welded together at Ray’s Sheet Metal up in Higginsville a while back.  I’d planned on heading right into the station, going straight to Frank, letting him know what the hell we’d seen on highway 10, and getting the hell out of there.  I had a woman in the truck whose company I wanted to enjoy, and I’m sure we both needed that drink pretty damned bad after the night we were having.  We could see houses on either side of the road with the lights out, and all of the shops and stores looked to be closed.  I started to wonder if we were going to get that drink after all.

If anything, I’d just radio the accident, head into town, and tell the sheriffs about the whole deal.  Hell, let them sort it out.  Rim was only about 15 minutes down the road, and neither one of these guys were going anywhere fast.  I ain’t no paramedic and neither is Sally, so instead of taking a diseased ridden scratch from some half dead crazy, we decided on plan B.  I hopped into the cab and grabbed for the radio; Sally looked a bit shaken, so I grabbed her hand and told her that it would all turn out fine.  I spoke the words in the most soothing voice that I could muster.  Everything would be alright, I said.  I tried as hard as I could to be sincere, and I was.  I didn’t want her to worry about any of this; part of me was saying it in order to ease my nerves too.  I radioed for the station at Highland Rim; I tried a few times, and got nothing.  Zero.  Silence.  No response.  I shifted the rig into gear and started to pull off; the guy in the road was still hollering and crawling like a slug, and we both winced as we passed him and left him in the dust.  Nasty.  I thought to myself that he must be in a world of pain…I felt sorry for the guy and hated to leave him like that, but the cops would know what to do.  I kept trying on the radio, and kept getting nothing but dead air.

I kept my hand on Sally’s, and kept reassuring her that we had nothing to worry about.  I can only imagine what was going through her head after seeing that mess of that guy.  It felt cold in the cab, no matter how high I turned up the heat; I swear, it seemed like the temperature went down about ten degrees.  Outside, too…windier and colder than before.  And not just because we were wet dog soaked.  After a time, the signs showed up for Highland Rim, population 326.  I pulled off at the first exit.  I hadn’t stopped in Rim in ages; the gas station that I used to frequent on 5^th street closed down about a year ago, and the auto supply store that I’d drop off at shut down too.  Rim got hit pretty bad when the economy went down the toilet, and damn it showed.  Rim was your typical small town; everybody knew everybody, including everybody’s dirty laundry, and jobs were as scarce as clothes on a hooker.  There were some small mom and pop shops and a bar littering Main Street, but the town itself seemed on the decline.  Sad, really…it wasn’t always that way.  As a result though, families just up and moved out whenever they got a chance.  People had to make a living, right?  I could completely understand why they split, but they left behind a sure as shit shell of a ghost town, alright.  I pulled up to the stop sign right off of Highway 10 and took a quick look around.  The roads were stark empty.  I mean, it was about 9pm, and in a town like this, you really couldn’t expect the place to be jumping anyway.

So I grabbed the old slugger and saw through the windshield of the truck that Sally had broken loose and was booking it hot back toward the truck.  I hopped out, grabbed her by the hand, and shoved her up into the passenger seat of the rig; I told her that I was gonna go take a look at the guy, girl, whatever the hell that sack of slick red flesh was.  Told her to calm down and sit tight.  I was nervous as a son of a bitch, though, let me tell you.  I mean, I’m no John Wayne, but I ain’t no coward.  I’ve endured my fair share of sticky situations, and dealt my fair share of trouble too.  I wasn’t scared of throwing down when I needed to, but I was damn certain that the thing we both saw in the road, the body, was dead.  Its legs were twisted like taffy, and it was covered in blood, so what the hell was I supposed to think?  Nobody survives getting bashed by a car and flung 20 feet like a rag doll.  That thing looked like it had been through a blender.   “Why the hell am I scared”, I kept asking myself.  It’s an accident victim, not some friggin’ B-movie monster.  I kept reassuring myself, but none of that worked.

I just knew that sally was scared shitless, a guy was dead inside of a car, and the person that he hit was rolling around and wailing in the rain like a pissed off newborn.  It didn’t seem like a person that just got hit by a car; it seemed like an angry motherfucker that wanted somebody’s head on a stick.  What the hell was I supposed to do?  Sally was ok, and was in the cab; this fucking guy rolled onto his stomach and started inching at us real slow like.  Just kind of pulling himself over in a slow, slimy, slug-like crawl.  He looked like shit, now that I could see his face in the headlights; he had this low growl like a fucking rabid dog, man, and his face was smashed to smithereens.  I mean, it looked like roadkill, this guy’s mug.  What was I supposed to do?  I didn’t want that shit anywhere near us, let alone in my rig.  I though about chucking him into the back, into the trailer, but I didn’t want that fucker to take a chunk out of me with those teeth that he wasn’t shy about showing off.  And who knows what kind of diseases I’d snag from touching the guy.   Either way, I felt a duty to at least try to get the guy to safety.  No way I was gonna leave him out there to die.  Who wouldn’t be pissed after getting slammed by a car on a night like that?  I tried to put myself in his shoes, and realized that I’d be furious too if I were in that busted up skin of his.

It was fucking freaky, let me tell you.  I’m not one to just blurt out my fears, but I have to admit that there was something odd about the whole thing.  It was like something out of a scary movie; the rain, the lightning, the wind, the glass, thunder, blood, all of that shit made my heart pound.  Even the sound of the rain banging against the crumpled car got me weirded out.  I reached out and grabbed his neck, and there was nothing.  I didn’t feel a god damned thing but cold skin.  I even shook him a little bit just to see if it did anything, and again, zilch.  This guy must have really slammed the windshield hard; his head was like a split like a ripe cantaloupe.  I could see Sally out of the corner of my eye as she bent down to kneel over the body, and I saw her reaching down toward its throat.  I yelled in her direction to let her know that the guy in the car was burnt toast, but a tumble of thunder decided that it wanted to scream louder.  She started to stand up; she was shaking her head because I guess she didn’t feel a pulse, so she turned and started to make her way back to the truck.

I took a look back into the guy’s car to see if I could get an ID from his wallet before I radioed for help.  I’d wanted to be able to tell the cops this poor guy’s name; it seemed like it would be the right thing to do.  As I reached down for the guy’s pocket, I saw a little flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and that’s when I heard the scream.  One of those startled shrieks that you can hear from a mile away, even in a storm like that one.  The kind of scream that just oozes fear and makes the hair on your arms stand at attention.  My head darted around and I saw that the body in the road started moving, and the damned thing was grabbing for Sally; he, she, or it was reaching and pawing at her, and was going for her ankles as she tried to talk at it and check for wounds.  From the looks of things after we first pulled up, we both just figured the thing was dead…the guy in the car saw to that when he slammed into it and sent it flying.  Either way, now it looked like the thing was alive, so I figured the best thing to do would be to try to keep it alive, radio for help, and wait there until the cops showed up.  At any rate, I opened the passenger door of the truck and grabbed for the bat that I kept between the seats; I always felt more comfortable with a little backup.  I’ve seen some crazy shit on the road over the years.

We had only been on the road for about 20 minutes when we saw the headlights.  Sally jumped up real quick like in her seat, and I saw this look of alertness in her eyes.  She told me to stop the rig so that we could get out and check the situation, you see.  I slowed down to a stop right alongside the lone car in the road, and we both peeked out into the black of the night.  It was a single car stopped in the middle of the road, smashed to bits and with the headlights still running.  The roads were deserted, and from the look of it, we’d just missed the bang up by no more than minutes.  This was a stretch of Highway 10 that was without street lights, so the whole scene looked like something out of a scary movie.  Dark trees swaying on either side of us, rain slamming the whole place, and the mess on the road that greeted us like a drunk friend that you wished would just disappear.  The driver’s head was slumped out of the broken driver’s side window, and the rain was coating it like nobody’s business.  The head was sliced and diced something fierce from what I could see in the dim light, and I didn’t see any movement.  I wondered what the hell he hit, maybe a deer or something, because his front end was smashed up to high heaven and his windshield was split to kingdom come.  The only motion I saw was the raindrops falling in the glow of his headlights.

Sally looked over at me, and we both knew that we had to see if this guy was ok.  She popped out of the rig, and I jumped right out after her, and right at the same time, we looked back and saw the mangled body sprawled out a ways in front of the car.  We must have passed it and didn’t even see it when we pulled up alongside the car.  I winced when I saw it; it was busted up horribly, and it’s legs and arms were twisted up like a broken fence.  Even though it was raining cats, dogs, and the whole damned animal shelter, the body was still coated red with sticky looking blood that ran black under that dark sky.  It oozed off of his body like hot fudge on a sundae.  The light from the headlights gave it this creepy ass shadow, too; the kind that makes you think twice before you act.  Sally took control, though; she seemed like one of those people that just came alive in crisis shit.  She told me to check on the guy in the car, and she’d run over and check on the body in the road.  She wanted to check the pulse, she said.  We were both wet to the bone at this point, I mean soaking wet.  She took off after the body, and I watched her slosh the ten or so feet just to make sure I could see her in the light of the headlights.  I peered into the car, and the radio was still on.  It was the same guy that was crooning up a storm in my rig.  At least he had good taste in music.  I looked closer to see the driver’s face, and to poke around for a pulse.  A streak of lightning flashed, and I caught a good glimpse of his face; it was smashed up pretty bad, and I reached over to pinch his throat and check for a pulse.  It was a guy, maybe late 20’s, maybe older, but I couldn’t tell because his face looked like fresh ground beef.

I remember saying, “you ready”? She said “yes sir”, and I can’t help but smile when I remember that one.  I’d left the rig running, you see, so I slid her right into gear and set off for Highway 10.  Pulling out of Harvey’s, though, I knew it was going to be a hell of a drive to the Rim.  The rain was coming down so god damned hard that I could barely see 15 feet in front of me.  You know how they say sometimes that rain comes down in sheets?  Hell, that night it was coming down in beds, blankets, the whole damned kitchen sink, let me tell you.  I flicked the radio on, and it was that old jazz singer from the 50’s that all of the ladies used to love.  The guy had a smooth, relaxing voice; the kind of voice that you like to have on in the background on a first date.  Sally started to talk about her night; the customers, the regulars, and all of the crazy shit that goes on inside a bar.  She had me laughing more than a few times, and we chatted and traded tales back and forth.  This guy Bill, a regular, got kicked out tonight for getting blitzed and chucking a few bottles around.  I actually used to know the guy, so it cracked me up thinking about good old Bill losing it.  He used to be a religious guy, but he went downhill after his wife left him.  I always tried to tell him that busting her lip was the worst way to say “I love you”.

I slid back in my chair a bit to relax, and the conversation had me smiling and at ease.  I’d been cruising those roads and hauling loads for years, so I wasn’t nervous about the rain, but something just felt off.  Sally didn’t seem to notice a thing, she was just talking away, but a roadie knows his roads.  I just wanted her to be comfortable, so I didn’t say anything about my crazy feelings.  Maybe it was just darker than normal or something, but I couldn’t get 100% relaxed.  The roads were clear, though; nobody was on those bastards.  They probably weren’t fool enough to come out in that shit, I guess.  I wouldn’t have if I didn’t have to.  Rim was only about 20 miles down Route 10, but the slow going made it seem longer.  I didn’t mind the slow pace because of the good company, but I was driving at least 20 under the speed limit because of that rain.

As she stood, I hurried behind her to help slip the jacket on that she’d carried over from behind the bar; it was long and red, and had a faint smell of sweet flowers and summertime.  The back of my hand grazed her bare arm, and it felt warm and smooth, and my heart damn near jumped three feet out of my chest.  “You ready?”, she said out of smiling lips.  A blast of thunder exploded outside with a crazy boom, and it sounded like a friggin’ nuke got detonated.  She jumped at the sound, and I glanced outside into that swirling mess of a storm.  The wind had picked up rapidly, and I thought to myself that it was going to be a slow, careful drive.  “Yeah”, I said, to answer her question, and I jerked my chair in and walked her to the door; we both flashed a wave and a smile to Jack behind the bar, and readied ourselves for the race out to the rig.

I grabbed her hand, and we took off for the truck; the rain was coming down in tubs and buckets, and we had to squint our eyes just to see through it all.  I laughed that neither of us had an umbrella.  The rig was in my regular spot in the corner of the lot, and I yanked the passenger door open and helped her jump up inside.  It’s weird, but I started to loosen up as soon as I climbed behind the wheel; maybe it was because I was back in a familiar place that made me feel comfortable, or because Sally was sitting right there next to me, clear as day.  I don’t know if it was her or the truck, but I felt like I was home.  It hit me, and I felt like a schmuck for acting like such a shy teenager back at Harvey’s; I was probably as boring as a chunk of cardboard back there, but who gives a shit now.  She was in my rig, and it felt good.