Now It's Only You
A new story by Nathan Dragon about loss, driving and time.
where once was three / now is but only two / where once was we / now is but only you - “Walk Through the Dark” by Pajo
I rush to pack up and leave to beat the weather.
The news said tornadoes, all over the place.
The dog watched me. He didn’t know. I put him in the car, went back into the lobby, filled two paper coffee cups with hot water and left—I had some instant coffee in the car.
When I saw a gas station that I felt like I had time to stop at, I did. I got ahead of things so far. I parked at a pump facing the road. And when I walked into the store, I noticed the back of the truck. The tailgate was wide open. Had been for a hundred something miles and nothing had fallen out. Not the dog’s food, not my bag, not the weights I brought along for exercise. At least twenty over up some long hills and no other car had tried to warn me. No one flashed their brights, honked, pulled up next to me and shouted signaling to the back or to put my window down or to pull over. I couldn’t believe it. I shut the tailgate. I opened it again and slammed it. I looked up and I said, Thank you.
The dog started barking, like he was saying, Relax and cut it out.
I shushed him. I said, We’re alone in this world! I said, Okay, one second.
I came out of the store with fresh Mississippi milk for him. He didn’t want any water earlier at the hotel and he never said no to milk. I didn’t want him dehydrated. We had a lot of driving ahead. I didn’t know when we would stop.
I had to go back into the back of the truck. The dog watched me from the back window. I had to open the tailgate to get his bowl. He drank up all but two tablespoons of milk. I said, Come on, finish it.
He looked at me, Yeah, right. He curled up.
And again we headed out.
Almost immediately we drove past three cows walking together up a hill under a gray-bright sky.
Lookit—cows, I pointed them out to the dog and he got up to watch them.
When I see things like that, I miss him. We’d seen an owl cross the front of the truck. And a puppy sitting at the edge of driveway-rain stained red from the clay. It was watching cars. It was a small, fast road.
I couldn’t and still can’t believe how long it’s been. The day before, things seemed hopeful, and the next day we walked into the room, all the machines beeping like they always did. But this time they prepared us for goodbye.
And I’m always thinking about him. I say hi. I leave him notes. I leave him things in places. I don’t think I’m living as good as I can for him. But I’m trying, I think.
It’s been an uphill thing everyday and I try to imagine that moving uphill gets me closer.
And I try not to think about how no one gets it. Because even if they did it wouldn’t fix it. I wonder if the other babies’ families saw the priest come up and go into our room through pulled-closed curtains. I can imagine any number of their thoughts.
I’m worried that my dad is sad because of what happened to me, that he’s afraid to talk to me because it gets him down.
And that gets me down.
I’m honest about how I am when he asks but I always try to follow it up with something trivial.
Talk about the dog moping around. Whether he’s really moping or if he’s just being dramatic. He’s a funny dog, I tell my dad. And he agrees.
Or I bring things up like, You notice that commercials haven’t changed much in twenty years? Plaque brushed away easily or more efficiently than other leading brands? Ibuprofen capsules dissolving even faster for even faster relief, breaking open, gel or granules rushing out? I keep seeing them on the hotel or motel TVs.
He’d told me he had to sell his truck. Transmission issues. Got a great price to sell it so we did, he said, I’ll miss it. I could tell he was sad about it. I was sad about it too. I remember the ride back home. 21.8 miles.
When he calls me I don’t tell him where we are.
I tell him how many miles we’ve done so far that day.
I say, Of course we’ll come by when we’re up there.
But sometimes I feel guilty and I’ll give him a rough idea. I say things like, In one of several Henderson Counties, I saw a red-headed woodpecker.
Which is true, but it was just a glimpse.
I said, Hi, buddy.
And the dog got up from his nap. I snapped, Not you. Then I said, Sorry.
Thousands and thousands and miles since.
Time moves in such a terrible way. Here we are still moving through. I keep looking at the odometer. As long as I didn't accidentally reset it, we’d have the means to measure differently and could fall out of time. Well and I know what mile we started on, so as long as I knew where we were at, I could do the math and go from there.
I know, right now, it’s been 23,126 miles since.
The dog’s good in the car. He likes to look out for cows. He likes to get little bowls of milk from the store. I like to listen to the way talk radio changes from place to place and think about that old trick, driving in reverse to rewind the odometer.
And I’m thinking about it now.
I pull off and head back the way we came. To an empty parking lot that we passed a little while ago.
I note the number on the odometer, shift the gear into reverse, look over my shoulder through the back glass, and go.
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