First Beats

Jack leaned back, perfectly content.  His wide eyes drank in the eternal cosmos, while between his ears A Sentimental Mood conveyed his spirit to another world.  The wistful, lilting trills of the piano sang a mother’s lullaby — each plink in perfect sync with strobing, pulsing stars screaming in the void. Then entered the saxophone, a wailing melody telling the ageless saga of pining and acquiring, calamity, and bittersweet acceptance.  Together in blithesome mournful harmony they transported him across the miles, to rooftop bars where bloodshot dreamers howled at the moon.  To Brooklyn dives and gin soaked stages where laden poets and forlorn crooners unburdened.  To hoary alleys where blackhole dice and boney hipsters rattled. To L.A. jazz joints — red wine, brown liquor, blue beats poured out onto buzzing orange streets. To grey smoke dens, sticky sweaty cross-legged, shooting conversations and shooting veins — passing pipes and passing time with supernova highs. To piss-stained tile floors, the bass yet quaking through the walls, through the stalls where groping blind sex and galactic dragons screech. 

But alas the final cymbal crashed, and the snare rolled out to revolving thumping needle scratches, as to his right, incandescent singularities in the black firmament gave way to the grey-green harbinger of sunrise.  Another sleepless night.  Jack pulled the headphones from his ears — the phonograph yet throbbing — and paused a moment to survey the light of day edging over the horizon, illuminating endless grey fields of corn arising from the shadows like Lazarus. He scoffed and spat off the roof side before climbing back through his bedroom window.

It had been a stellar night for creation, even without pen and pad on the porch roof.  Too obscure to write anyways, not without kindling suspicion.  But the stanzas were burned into memory, and by the failing glow of the setting sun, after toiling in the dust, would he reap the last night’s yield — jazz induced dreams, ink-scratched in haste, in angst, into a leather-bound diary shoved deep within a pillowcase. And there between those cow-hide covers, a symphony of epiphanies blessed by Calliope. Page after page of blessings and curses, praising the distant grey peaks looming above his sill, and damning the soot beneath his fingernails. It was a gift to the masses, a treasure, buried beneath duck down feathers, but to the doubtful Jack no more than words words words.

Up the stairs wafted the aroma of Mother’s toiling; scent of grease, scent of burning fat, scent of yoke-some repetition clinging to his clothes and hanging off his back. Dungarees and flannel — the uniform of his broke back forebears — he pulled from his closet while inside so much more remained.  Glossy magazines featured teens on California spending sprees.  Tall sophisticated men, sexy men in black slacks and wing tips, feet flying gracefully down slick city 5th Avenue. Hollywood fashion rags stacked dripping vapid, delicious glitz, glamour, and gossip. Deeper in, a locked box filled to the top with postcards from friends who had escaped the yawning. Seattle to Miami, Boston to Frisco — best wishes from would-be farmers turned painter, turned singer, turned beerhall bar back and loving every minute. And in the deepest recesses of the closet, standing opposing Jack, a body-length mirror framed in black. Within its glass stood a demon — an angel? — the worst and best of him glaring, staring back with fiery eyes, vibrant green, they despised the boy before them.  A veneer, a fraud, an affront to God, this queer awkward vessel draped in shabby bucolic garb. The image condemned, declared the boy a coward for not leaving, not believing, for suppressing his will to power. Jack slammed shut the door, unable to face his accuser anymore. It was a familiar dance, a morning ritual — self-flagellation and a steaming cup of pity before breakfast.

Jack arrived before the supper table — that holiest of Midwestern alters. He took a seat at the right hand of Father, but not before donning a tragic mask with an imperceptible nod to Dionysus.  Nearby, but not close enough to touch, stood Mother, shackled to the stove, the frying pan her destiny, a bellyful her legacy. Marriage vows she spoke at the age of eighteen, years before maturity, for such was the custom in those parts. In her glory days she’d glide on the back of ponies, hair turned loose and wild.  Breaking stallions and breaking hearts, unfettered and unbridled, a lifetime before her, she would surely ride into the setting sun untamed, she reckoned. But best laid plans, and parents’ demands, and a respectable farmhand, and the sun set on her own saddled back.  She remained a fearsome beauty, though, long after hope and desire had abandoned her on the splintered kitchen floor. Slender waist, her face permanently bent to a state of grace and compassion, though what tumult broiled beneath, Satan himself knew not.

“You’re late,” growled Father, his voice a gravel road, his tone scythe sharp. But to be early was an impossibility, an asymptote in time; for Father was time embodied, rising, and falling to the everlasting, unrelenting beat of the earth, counting seconds in his bones and years upon his face. Time belonged to Father. It was his to keep, as it was bequeathed — now third generation curator of Eternity as told by harvest moons.

Father knew — like God knew — for it was his job to know. He knew the rain by the wind and by the lightning in his knuckles. He knew the field by the curl in his toes. He knew Jack by the death in his son’s eye, the defeat in his shoulders. He knew the truth — he whispered it in the cold stone chambers of his heart.  He knew the truth — he wept it aloud behind barn doors with Johnny Walker tears. He knew the truth — the collapse of a house, three stories tall, three chapters long — an epilogue written in a foreign tongue. He knew the truth, for he had led his foal over verdant pastures but it would not eat, to shimmering sweet rivers but it would not drink, to the very foot of Yggdrasil but it cast its eye aside. He knew the truth: that buzzing neon and flash bulbs would steal his son away from Heaven’s rays, and yet he knew not truly where to place the blame. 

“Let’s go.” Father rose from his chair, an unstoppable force of nature. 

How long had Jack sat dumb and mute — five minutes, eighteen years? A plate untouched before a pale, rawboned boy crowned with golden, curly locks — an historic tableau reenacted morning after morning, Mother yet mourning his delicate frame. For Jack did not live alone by bread, but by the rhythms in his head, the verses in his soul which made him whole. Not Mother’s bread nor Father’s time, only wit-spun rhyme in 6/8 time. Not bread, but hope in freedom, in change, in the breaking of chains, in the Road cresting just beyond his sight. Not bread, but a fire inside sustained, stoked each night by starlit visions of urban Jack — his pen ablaze, his voice a thunder peal, a spotlight, a stool and a frail boy turned messenger of God, turned Gabriel on the stage, applauded by his true kin. How long could he feed the fire, hidden as it was beneath the bushel basket? How long before it burned through the facade, laying him bare before the alter? How long before it was snuffed out, smothered by shame and guilt and earth-stained denim?

The screen door slapped shut like a smack across the face, snapping Jack out of his reverie. He stood bolt upright, no appetite for the day’s labor, but willing nevertheless. He exchanged a glance with Mother, who faced him with hands on hips. And he thought in that moment that he had caught a glimpse of a curl in her lips — a nearly imperceptible grin, a twitch of the chin, a smile like a Mona Lisa riddle. Was it pride he espied in that smirk? Did she see through his pathetic attempts to please his roughneck folks? Did she see the boy, the man, the artist trapped beneath threadbare plaid, the beating heart of a madman possessed by the spirit of Wilde? Did she see an empty chair at the supper table, a cloud of dust on the westward Road, and a mailbox jammed with postcards, or perhaps a solitary Dear John — an apology from the coast.  Or was it merely pity she expressed; not a smile but rather manifest embarrassment escaping through the muscles in her face? Did she see a wayward runt, a withering apple fallen miles from the tree? Did she see a phantom, clothes draping off his shoulders ghost-like, most likely to stalk the fields where he gave up his last. Did she see a narrow casket, a black mass, and pews moistened by crocodile tears and serpentine tongues spitting gossip of an unnatural boy, a Seventh Circle, and a departure too long delayed. Was it a wince or a grin — doubt or grace — that flashed across her face? It didn’t matter. Jack chose to believe the latter. And with renewed vigor he sauntered over to Mother and kissed her on that perplexing mouth and followed Father out the door.

Jacked stepped out into the great outdoors, typically so loathsome to his urban sensibilities, which lay a thousand miles away in every direction. But Mother’s smile elevated his mood, and the lazy grey mountains in the distance felt less a wall and more an invitation, motivation beckoning him to take to the Road and claim his birthright in lands beyond. A milky white sky drew him in a bee line over Mile High, over bubbling Vegas lights to Bixby Canyon, Big Sur, where he’d stand on his head like the Jack he wished he was. The barn, the fields, ho-hum workaday Kansas was in that instance no longer a destination but an unsolicited vacation — a rest stop on the way to glorious fate. 

Presently, Father, laden with planks and stakes and pail full of nails, plodded from the barn toward Jack. “Fence needs mendin’, he muttered, his lips barely separating to loose the words.

Jack, yet effervescent sped to the aid of Father. “Lemme take some of that from you, Daddio” he said like a hep cat, the grooviest farmer’s son west of Soho. But he received nothing in his outstretched arms.  No, Father didn’t even break stride as he eyed Jack bearing a countenance which blended disgust and defeat into one lethal blow to the cheek. Jack staggered back a step, his ethereal mood put on the ropes by Father’s withering glare. But he took the jab in stride, his pride not as fragile as all that. So he grabbed a couple planks and slung them across both shoulders, carrying them like Christ upon the cross — Jack the lamb sacrificed upon the family tree. He marched on a half yard behind Father, the sun on the rise to his left. They spoke no words, complete silence, save the shuffling of boot heels upon the gravel drive — the steady crush-crushing kicking dust into the dead morning air. The smell of earth and manure pervaded, the sun cooking the unshaded acres, the promise of sweat-drenched sleeves and salt-stung eyes all assaulting Jack’s hopeful temperament. Inertia prowled like a lion.

Then a breeze picked up — a briny gust blowing in off white-capped breakers. Top down, the jalopy engine roaring, two spirits soaring down California One. Cumulus skies pale blue, tinted a brownish hue through the frames upon Jack’s  nose.  His left hand gripped the wheel tightly, while his right hand rested gently in the palm of his passenger — a poet, like himself, not with the pen but with the brush, though both painted pictures with the sharpest of lines. The man laid back in the passenger seat, black shades, white tee, blue jeans, bare feet, the swirling eddies having little affect on his greased pompadour. He lit a cigarette, striking a match, then striking a languid pose like Michelangelo’s Adam. A lazy day’s cruise up the coast from their Chinatown studio apartment. A bottle of port from the back, sheer golden bluffs to the right, and a winding open highway before them. Brunch at a diner, a roadside truck stop, and a look of shock worn by their waitress Dot as they strolled through the door with fingers intertwined. Egg white omelettes, toast and cantaloupe — or can they? — over talk of Ginsberg and Pollock, under the suspicions of local folks choking on their grits and ignorance. A day of exploration — of worship — discovering God in roaring chasms and salvation in an embrace. On the sundown return journey, a stop at the beach, wine drunk, no swimming trunks but no need in the pitch black isolation. White sand turned to silk sheets, two hearts beating to the same rhythm, while above their heads rolled spotlights cast by cars that passed not a stone’s throw.  Copulation below the constellations, beneath the dangling Cassiopeia, no doubt jealous of their love; for she was tethered to the northern sky, while they were set free by their collisions. So much more than flesh meeting flesh, their love-making the final step to complete transcendence. A life once hidden, once forbidden, once locked in a box stored on a closet shelf now on the verge. Depression, forces of compression, the tenuous balance between pressure and gravity, and then oh so suddenly a supernova explosion of cosmic proportions.  Layers of guilt and ritual oppression, at long last, cast off into the void, leaving in the wake of the blast a brilliant pulsing core — the culmination of Jack’s transformation, lain bare, naked and burning luminescent on the California shore.

“You’re not straight,” Father barked.

Jack raised the fence plank an inch to make level as he reflected on his unparalleled dream — surreal and detached it seemed, and yet the taste of salt and skin remained on his tongue. So cruel, so defeating to experience a fantasy so fleeting, like ocean fog on the hot plains. But his dreams had only been intensifying. With his mouth ever sewn shut, his spirit’s crying — its screaming against the dying — had no way of escape, save his manic midnight rooftop jam sessions with Duke and John. Years of yearning Jack had bottled down below, where it fermented in his gut, bubbled up, got him drunk — euphoric drunk, the kind of high that comes with a cathedral choir accompaniment, with visions of paradise and lithe angels in Levi’s 501s.

Jack was hungover as he labored alongside Father, but was sobering up quickly by the sights and sounds of humdrum reality. The faint peal of church bells, like smelling salts, woke him fully to fresh ol’ hell. The distant mountains purple-gray, golden fields, every shade of green, all God’s majesty and yet the scene brought a pang of anxiety. The bells, those Sunday morning harbingers of desolation, singing hymns to Creation, and yet Jack saw only isolation in them hills. Those grim ranges a fence, hemmed him in, miles from significance. Scream as he might, though the stars could hear his howl, though the angels would scowl, though Zarathustra would weep just up the Road yonder, the hills echoed only the ding-dong bells of noon.

“Dinner’ll be ready,” said Father. The old yeoman stepped back and surveyed what had been accomplished thus far that day beneath the hard sun. He scratched his bearded chin, then his chest, examining a thin line of fence made new by the wisdom in his hands.  He snorted and spat, eyeing Jack — brows stitched though somehow emotionless — the same as he eyed gray clouds descending from the heights. He huffed, his throat rumbling like distant thunder before he at last spoke. “Not bad. Ya might have some potential yet.”

Jack’s heart leapt, indeed he nearly wept at Father’s sentiment, grudgingly presented as it was. Oh affirmation! So elusive. For a lifetime did he pine, did he seek — like Sisyphus’ peek ever unattainable, just out of reach. To have been misunderstood, ignored, cast aside — a cuckquean bride — for time out of mind, and then to hear from Father but a whisper of pride… it sucked the air from his lungs. Jack was asphyxiated, and with the hypoxia came euphoria once more — a dizzying cascade of unsubstantiated subconscious claims: that he was accepted, that he was prized, an apple of an eye. He felt the boulder roll away, the millstone rope begin to fray. Freedom like a song began to play in his ears. A drum roll for a fence well mended, and then came the blue swoon of the clarinet as Jack thumbed his way up the Road to parts unknown. The brass section arose alongside passenger trains galumphing westward beneath moonlit cactus silhouettes and Angel City spires climbing higher above the horizon like summer fire flies. The tempo ticked up to allegro, presently caught up in the morning pedestrian flow — crosswalks, traffic lights, footfalls choreographed to a wild high-hat skitter. Truly in his glory stood wide-eyed Jack, marveling at café tables — black coffee, black berets, bare white thighs and little white lies, and not a steeple to be espied ‘cause god had skipped town ‘bout a decade ago. An afternoon spent star gazing on Hollywood Boulevard, neck craned downward, jealous but hopeful that one day maybe his name would be carved into that pavement. An evening in and out of poetry slams and art expos, in the atmosphere a piano solo in F major, though still a minor himself lost in lustful La La Land. And in the dead of night, as the band played out and exited stage right, in the cool Pacific night, the starless vacuum night, in the silent night — even as the taxi horns blew, the sailors screamed their drunken lullabies — Jack’s freedom song played on. Final destination unknown, no friends, no home to call his own, but embracing the unknown, his story yet untold, about to unfold. He heaved a sigh of relief — his primary goal thus achieved — for he had at long last opened his hands to be filled with whatever-will-come. He felt the rhythm wash over him, palms raised to the sky — his first prayer in a long while, drawing outside his lines — blind to the curious passersby who were witnessing redemption, rebirth, the first beats of a soul transposed. No debt, he had bet on himself and the house paid big. With the Road behind him and the Road ahead, no end in sight, nothing left to do but live.

“You comin’ er what?” called Father from over his shoulder to the lingering dreamer.

“Yessir,” replied Jack emphatically, his pulse still thumping, pumping like a kick drum. He bit his lower lip and added some pep to his step, catching up to Father along the dirt drive. It had taken but one kind word and Jack was ready to explode, to unload a stockpiled cache of emotions, a stash of aspirations, each one feeling less a fantasy by the second.  Eagerness beckoned him to speak to his stoic old man.  His focus narrowed, as the stone dust below his boots transformed into a stage. It was the role of a lifetime, playing himself for the very first time, acting out a part for which there was no script.  Playing opposite him was a seasoned thespian, lines memorized, scenes rehearsed, no concerns, for the show must go on.  Upon the fence, an audience of three crows in the know who scored front row seats to a tragedy befitting the Greeks. Jack heard the call, action.     

“If you like how I mend a fence, you should see me turn a phrase,” began Jack, the spotlight sun striking him dead in the eyes. He squinted hard to make out the figure form of his co-star.  Not a word. No prompts, no cards, drawing blanks and stifled breaths, Jack withered before the ruffling feathers of the restless spectators on the fence. They cawed — jeered — the worst show they’d seen that year, and they flapped their wings to take flight. Jack was drowning, with nobody to throw a line, time evaporating, stage lights dissipating, and a curtain closing on a theatrical abortion. 

“Hm,” Father groaned right on cue, for Father knew. And just like that, the production sprang back to life, the drama running rife with but a grunt from the farmer’s throat. The gallery reposed — one last chance for the floundering show.

Butterflies in the gut, mouth shut, so Jack opened it up to let them out and maybe words of significance would follow. But none did… Until he quit. Whispering I’m done, he set aside the role of dutiful son. He gave up the act. He hopped off the stage, threw away the script — that blank white page — and, donning the shroud of his surging shadow, met with Father face-to-face.  

“I’m a writer,” spoke Jack, “and I know that I am because writers write. I write every night below the stars, about jazz bars, cigarette burn scars, and crashed cars. About vodka dreams, waking in the twilight to an animal scream — a mad poet shouting out the pain from his eighth-floor fire escape.  About protest lyrics and guitars that kill fascists, pink freedom fighters and Black pacifists. About bearded angels, white nosed, eyes closed, but their third eye wide the hell open, making love and spreading love and spreading truth — the prophets of the modern age. About demons in rectories perfecting propagandized histories; their mouths full of plots and cocks, lurking in vestibules — glad-handing — their cuticles festering with the purloined skin of the lambs. About lying naked on the floor, sweating summer Harlem heat, radio beats, and through the open window street-ball clamor passing the hours, while a lover — post-shower — sitting cross-legged in his towel reads Leaves of Grass, tap tap tapping on the hardwood. About bedlam and rock-bottom and clawing at throats, rebuking the mirror, absolution drawing nearer, catharsis and metamorphosis. About Mother Earth — more than majesty, more than a sermon, more than a womb, ignorant of our wounds — she is beyond the bounds of Father Time, beyond our power, beyond the race, though we etch lines across her face. Those lines, the Road; I write about the Road! The Road — no chores, no closed doors, better watch your step or get swept off to any-ol’-where. Oh the Road, the hope, promises undefined on either side of a yellow line. Ay the Road, lures a boy from his home, delivering him ‘cross town, ‘cross state, ‘cross dimensional planes not to become a man, but to Become — not a branch, but a root — for the shadow persists as long as the son remains.  Oh god, The Road, I must go it alone, a pilgrim sans commission, all progress my own. Dear Father, the Road… you will not understand for your heart is the land, your bones are tree limbs and the plow is your hand. And here you will stay until Time has betrayed, but my heart is the journey and the Road is my veins. My dearest Father, you have poured out your cup, but these wrists they are weak, and through these fingers have seeped all your dreams of a boy. But I have listened, and I have learned, and now I yearn for the Road.

Jack stood motionless, silent, drenched in August sweat. The audience perched yet on the fence, reluctant to take flight after such a soliloquy — bravo, good show flapped their wings only momentarily; for presently their cobalt eyes turned to Father in anticipation of the denouement. Jack, too, froze in place, eyes glued to Father’s face, waiting. Waiting not for approval, for his mind was made — he had already overstayed — and the Road had called his name. Waiting not for condemnation neither, for determination recognizes no castigation, and in that divine moment neither did Jack. Waiting was Jack solely for acknowledgment — be it praise or judgement — some confirmation that his words had been heard; that a mark — be it a stamp or a scar — had been made on Father’s lead-lined heart.

Father blinked twice, no sign of stage fright. Over his shoulder the old man glanced at the Road, then creased his nose, snorted and spat on the dust just before his toes. “Dinner’ll be ready.” 

End Scene. The crows squawked in dismay — derivative, overplayed — and they took their leave of the theatre and soared away to another sad playhouse where nothing would change, save the names. Jack watched them fade into three thin black brushstrokes swallowed by pale blue, off to where nobody knew, but he would’ve preferred to have been there. The screen door snapped shut behind him, telltale sign that he was alone in the drive, the Road not a hundred yards ahead.  He stared blindly into the wall of corn stalks all about as he ran a hand through the curly mop atop his head, mind racing, but to what finish line he had not decided.  He could’ve retreated, burrowed back down into the comfortable hole where pity and sorrow hung on the walls like tattered portraits of his ancestors.  He could’ve erupted, projected his rage and failings on indifferent Father, Jack the martyr held back by a ghost. But this particular day was not the same, for all had changed when Jack flipped the switch and tossed the script. It was an Answer he had continually sought, asking the stars, asking birds perched on the scarecrow’s arms.  He had asked Hollywood queens, beatnik rhyme schemes, needle-worn 78’s, and perfumed dime store tabloid magazines. He had asked Father, that sage, that omniscient seer, guardian of knowledge; and he had asked the Heavenly Father too, though neither cared to respond. But it was in that moment that Jack — strung out on highways and cruel fate and great escapes — stopped asking, stopped pleading, stopped bleeding for a voice to tell him to go, to speak the way, (no Answer would come, leastways). For an Answer is wrought, not purveyed, it is forged, it’s made — the corollary to action, the effect not the cause, coming only after the long pause.  And so the time had come.

No supper for Jack. Through the door, past his folks, gotta pack he said to himself; in no mood for corn soufflé anyways. Straight to his room, up the stairs, slammed the door, fully prepared for the ensuing drama. A sack pulled out from under the bed.  It was meant for camping. Never went, since time in the field was time best spent. Ain’t no time for idling by fires or grappling with tents. Father’d be there shortly with little to say — a monolith within the doorframe.  Tossed in some shirts and a pair of jeans, holes in the knees, hand-me-downs from when Father was a teen. He’d fumble with some pearls of wisdom about respect, and to not waste, and how things were when he was Jack’s age. Finally the diary, the complete Jack anthology — a single leather-bound journal comprising his body — his soul incarnate. It had simply appeared one night, top of the stairs, outside his bedroom door, tossed on the floor — a trojan horse, full of emptiness, space to create, and means for escape.  A present for Mother — so she would later explain with that curious smirk — it was gifted to her by Father, though Jack had always wondered why he’d bothered since she’d never been one to write.  Neither had he, for that matter. But the words were always there, hovering in the clouds with the rest of Jack’s consciousness, and with the vast expanse of blank pages in his possession could those wayfaring words at last precipitate, consolidate between the cow hide. It was the beginning of his journey and the last thing packed. He’ll ask for an apology, then turn and leave to wait at the table for some form of remorse. 

But Father never did appear. No creaking ascent, no knock on the door, no pacing a rut into the bedroom floor. No, not a thing Jack predicted took form, and then quite unexpectedly came the truck’s engine roar. He pulled back the curtain to see Father’s blue pick-up tear down the driveway, skid sideways onto the Road, and disappear with a cloud of dust trailing above the corn husks. 

He considered leaving right then. A kiss on Mother’s forehead. She’d cry, ask him to stay, even though she’d seen him in a dream on Santa Monica Bay. One last embrace and then the Road. But that was the cowards way, he knew: to slink out, no goodbye for Father, no shake of the hand, no man-to-man. He’d leave no space for lingering shouldas, no whatifs, no self-imposed midnight guilt trips. He owed that much to Father, to himself — to close the book before it was put up on the shelf. So he kicked up his heels and flopped down on the mattress to await Father’s return, to close his eyes one last time and see potential life ahead from the stillness of his bed. It was kinetic from that point on. 

Then darkness.  Jack hadn’t planned on dosing off, but reality had melted into daydreams, and daydreams into deep sleep, and the sun slipped away in the meantime. Nobody had come to wake him up, much to his surprise. He opened his door, took a look down the flight, no sounds, no lights, just the sad, cool blue of the moon casting sorrowful shadows across the foyer floor in the lonely night. I spose it’s better this way, he thought. Jack retrieved his sack, slung it over one shoulder and took one last look about his bedroom before departure.  A record player, a bed, a closet, and a shelf.  Nothing much at all, but his entire world. A haven, a hell, a sanctuary, a cell. The past.

Jack stepped lightly down the steps, but they creaked that familiar squeal nevertheless. He held his hands out as he descended. Gritty plaster, cracked paint chill on his palm in spite of the stuffy summer air. Wooden banister, the spindles played a song of selfsame notes as he plucked each one like a harpist. The living room now, front door before him, only ever used on holidays.  Ball of yarn, two needles on the love seat, an ottoman for her sore feet — a clever place for hide-and-seek when he was only three.  A pipe in an ash tray. Folded up front page news from yesterday, crossword opened on the coffee table, never able to hack it himself — so he said — always left it for the curious Jack. An arm chair, smoke and sweat stained, head and thigh indentations, permanent impressions; the entire room testing Jack’s best intentions to vanish.

Quickly now. Through the kitchen to steal out the back, more quiet that way, the screen door never latched. He half-expected to see them seated at the table — in their typical positions, but with somber expressions — ready to make a stand, to reprimand, send him back upstairs, their last attempt at a command. He braced himself, fully prepared, but hey there, what’s this nobody there. Jack paused, stood still a moment, and swallowed hard, his courage screwed up for no reason. Not with a bang, but a whimper he said to himself, and made for the door fully justified. Jack reached for the knob, but he abruptly stopped, his eye caught by a blue-white aberration peaking out from beneath the doormat. With trembling did he remove from under the mat, a folded up map of America. He smiled and turned ‘round, still by himself. He opened up the map to find tucked within a paper scrap. It read in Father’s hand, “To find your way there. And to find your way back.” Jack wiped his cheeks with his flannel sleeve. He push into his pocket the paper scrap, and shoved the map into his sack. Out the door, down the drive the crush-crushing of stone dust below his boots, humming John and Duke, in a sentimental mood, a Milky Way orchestra above his head. The end of the driveway reached, a moment of silence, one last moment of peace. He considered the journey, the way paved before his time by the kings of skid row. He considered the footprints before him, the footprints of beatdown giants, of titans; footprints stamped into the earth during the golden age of expression, footprints that inspired, to be admired, to which he would never aspire; though he would follow just the same to the very end of the Road. He took a step…