coming from the west, I can smell that Confederate jasmine and honeysuckle wreathed in her hair.” He sat upright again. “I suppose I’m headed back there someday.” He looked past me for a long moment into oblivion. Memories are one of the only things that I know of that can be made of nothing and everything all at once. “That’s what I know about Peace River,” he finished, the prophecy done. The lights in the filling station went out. “You get on now, son,” his voice flowed out of the darkness. “I have to check this damn breaker. This place is old as dirt and twice as cheap...” he faded off into the gloom of the back of the store. The humidity of the night brought on by the proximity of the lake washed me as I emerged from the store. My skin tingled with energy. I couldn’t open either bottle, they were frozen shut, but I had to do something with my hands. I put one bottle in the cab to thaw, then strode into the gloom to find a rock. A sizable one presented itself on the other side of the road by the levee and I struck the bottle against it several times until slush spilled from a gash in the plastic and spattered onto its surface. I put my mouth to the bottle and the sting of it tasted beautiful but it hurt my teeth. I took a couple more drinks from the rock bottle, then threw it in the back of my truck and continued excitedly off into the night, following the lakeshore, bolstered by promise. An hour and a half later I was right back in despair. This happened when I sought rest in a town called Port Mayaca. This is not a town at all—it is a lock system on the lake. I watched it intently from the bridge next to it for several minutes. It was cold, sinister, and mechanical, bathed in unnatural orange light like a menacing fortress suspended in the thick gloom of the wee hours. I was suddenly overly tired, but it wasn’t the blessed fatigue of an honest day’s work. It was the inertia of heavy thoughts, my mind hanging like an iron weight in my head. I had little money. Time, too, was trickling out of my reach, like the water from the bottle in my truck bed had long before. I parked the truck at the edge of the bridge off the road and climbed out, needing a walk in the dark to clear my burdensome mind. The footing was not good, and I foolishly slipped on the loose gravel by the hill of the bridge and cursed fiercely, almost sliding into the canal leading to the lock. I tried to get up and immediately
Spring 2012
smacked the top of my head on the concrete embankment of the bridge, my balance again deserting me. I lay in the dust and the dirty gravel, a wastebasket to my right and wasted time flurrying around me, taunting. My ankle burned and I dragged myself to my feet and pulled the atlas from my truck, tearing Map 60 out of the pages, burying the blue thread and Peace River in crumpled remains. I stalked down the hillside and up the massive grassrobed levee next to the monstrous lock system muttering profanities, and I leered at the yawning, black chasm of water in front of me. I dug a little hole in the earth of the levee with my knife and threw the crumpled map paper inside. I lit it on fire with the matches from my tin and took my cigarettes from my pocket. Brooding over my sacrifice in the dirt, I eyed the little fishing shanties that outlined the lake, clinging to the shore like grease to dishwater. I waited some time. The frightening breadth of the lake seeped into my heart. My eyes glanced down at the smoldering pieces of the map in the dirt, slowly rising through the air to heaven, gray wisps rimmed with gold. I wanted to curse again, but I could only shovel dirt over the funeral pit with my boot. I think this is where I lost faith, in Port Mayaca. I know because my heart didn’t even slip into anger or despair after this, just numbness. Throughout this whole trip I fluctuated between feeling like I was chasing something and feeling like I was running away. I needed a place where I could string my hammock up and pretend to sleep for the night. It had grown very late. My weary hands drove all the way to the town of Okeechobee, where all of the roads in the Glades get stitched together: SR 70, SR 700, SR 15, and Highways 441 and 98. This would be my best chance for camping. I drove around aimlessly, having never been to this town, until I finally pulled into a motel to ask for directions. In some distant part of my anesthetized mind, the night manager reminded me of a penguin I had seen in a book when I was young. He had a crooked smile, a black shirt with deodorant stains, black pants, and eyes that gleamed with the artificial, caffeinated light of the night shift. He was odd-looking, as most people are who work the graveyard hours, and out of place in the faux-opulence of the hotel lobby. “Do you have a reservation?” His voice was saturated with coffee and a slight lisp.
Creative Essay 93