BooksBarbecue
Back At Dawn
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

I fell asleep, woke outside Cleveland, the bus parked at a gas station off the highway in Twinsburg. I wouldn’t have known it was Twinsburg—or Ohio, for that matter—had the driver not announced it loud and clear, which is what woke me. It was dark outside. Most of the others were off the bus, walking around, stretching for the final push to Chicago. A prickly chill shot up my spine. I didn’t want to leave the bus, felt if I didn’t literally put my feet on the ground, then it was like I was never there.

The station lights threw shadows across the naked trees, white in the darkness like skeletons of bombshelled buildings after World War II. A grainy haze over everything. I sighed deeply while the past smothered over me. A pair of trembling hands and a pounding heart to go with them. I could feel it, hear it, see it through the threadbare shirt I wore. The image of my mother. Young. Cross-legged on the couch with her hair wet and smiling her crooked smile with the soft light upon her freshly scrubbed face. My old man in a beer-stained shirt with red-rimmed eyes, a thick line of drool down his stubbly chin. No, I thought, shaking my head.

I reached down and tore through my bag until my hand brushed the bottle of Xanax, a testament to better days when I actually had a job and health insurance and I was able to stockpile the pills when the economy first dipped and the rumors of layoffs began. I usually needed one. I took three, washed them down with stale water from a silver flask given to me as a birthday gift from an ex-girlfriend. I had to be patient, had to let the pills find their way and work their magic. They always did.

I counted backward from a hundred and kept my head covered as the people took their seats. I slouched in mine as the bus pulled away ten minutes later.

We were forty miles from where I grew up.

I peeked out the window and watched the landscape race by, the pills taking their dear ol’ time. I counted the highway mile markers. 179. 178. 177. Too far till Indiana. The pills started working. My lips numbed. My eyes tingled and I kept blinking as the world began to blur. We passed the Cleveland exit, 173, then Strongsville, 161. Closer to home. If I stayed awake long enough we’d pass Amherst, then what, fifteen miles away?