The last day of Snow

I thought back on all the loves gone past. Forgotten now, I can't recall their last names. They've faded too, along with my goatee and dwindling noise-rock CD collection. And after all these things have dissolved away, and our old stuff eventually disappears, what's left is what we take on as we age. We can't forget these vital moments when we were younger, and still experimenting with being adults, still thrilled with the enormity of life that lay ahead of us, wider than the horizon line.

Sometimes when I'm driving up through the mountains on my way home from a sit, or a hunt, or just wandering around the woods in the middle of the night, I stop my truck and stare at a neighbor's mailbox for a few hours. I lose track of this, and inevitably have to move on, for fear of raising an eyebrow of suspicion in this one peep out of you and your not welcome anymore town.

Years ago I'd had friends and colleagues, but after I moved out of that bigger town for this speck of a town, I've kept a low profile. The loneliness that I thought would be debilitating I find a comfort. The silence allows me so much time to think.

I’ll be in the store one hundred miles away. I drive way out of town to do my shopping. I don't want to be a part of the local chatter. They always look at me strange enough when I'm in the store that's one hundred miles away. They wonder who drinks my milk, suckles on my beer and eats the chicken with the plastic biodome of a container.

I've written three books since coming here, and every word about the man I used to be. Sometimes it's hard to know whether or not I even exist in many ways. It's ludicrous, because I have a job, a night watchmen at a canning factory, but it's after hours, and no one sees me or knows about the meditative walks I take through the aisles of canned pork entrails.

I was on one of my famous walks when I stopped for a moment; blind-sided by the brilliance of the scarf that rested on a loose nail on the wall to the right of the microwave. The perfume, an herbal lilac, mixed with a raw cucumber.

It's Winter 1995. I am asleep in my car on a deserted road off highway 26. I have successfully passed through Atlanta, and more than likely am somewhere outside Decatur, GA. It's still dark, and the partial hangover I'm suffering from tells me it has only been four hours or so. I cough and the ensuing rattling that occurs tells me the ephedrine is still working through my spine and tingling my hair follicles.

I was off to see Claire. A girl I met once at a party in Columbia. That night we talked for hours about the world, and the poetry that sometimes can describe exactly at that moment in time. We had the same taste, she had just broken it off with an asshole friend of mine. He was happy now, moved on and even taking some sort of solace in the void he left behind. I was there to pick up the pieces. I thought, Naively, of course, that we had something, had found something in that evening when the camels flowed as quickly as the keg beer, and the dinosaur Jr. on the stereo--a beer-stained relic that had seen days of sobriety, when it must have been given into its recipient in junior high--I'd never been in that situation before, in love, and saw myself as the "good guy" who could serve as both confidante and lover to a complex woman. In reality she found me amusing and entertaining, but nothing more. I hadn't yet become hardened by the world. Hadn't yet discovered my fire, or If I had it was in the wrong place, and I just looked desperate and sad.

But I was on the road this early morning anyway. We had talked on the phone many times since the party, and I was on the way to Auburn to visit her, albeit a surprise visit. She had no idea. I didn't even know whether or not she had a boyfriend. I only knew she loved Tom Waits and Rimbaux as much as I did, and in many ways still do.

The sun came up as I crossed the Georgia/ Alabama border, and I lit my first morning cigarette in celebration. I'd usually hit this spot right around 1AM, when I'd be fueled by cheap white wine picked up at a truck stop somewhere and the cool night air would whoosh through the interior of the car, and I would just sing and sing until I arrived at my sister's house at three AM, dosing in the car until a more acceptable hour found itself. But on this particular morning I felt a little better, less lonely, a soul with more purpose than the one who last crossed this same border.

And so a few hours later, I found myself suddenly embarrassed at her front doorstep, or at least the doorstep of her housemates, whom I had met only a few weeks prior.

Todd looked at me strangely, staring at his watch and realizing only then that he'd spent the night on the couch, and I smelled the litter box that the cat inhabited, and she rubbed her fur against his ankle.

The door stuttered shut on the carpet, a longhaired dark blue shag that contained random samples of the night before. With the door closed, and Todd returned to his horizontal position on the couch, I waited while a stranger in a wool cap played playstation with the sound down. It seemed as if they’d had a party the night before. If I played my cards right, I could somehow sneak in with the late night crowd, and cover up my desperate yet not without its own never-say-die-charm early morning visit. For all I knew she could have been with her boyfriend.

And as the morning hours passed, and I turned down joint after joint, that was consumed by Todd, -- who occasionally awoke to inhale, cough and fall back to sleep -- and concocted an alibi for exactly what I was doing when it came to me. I was in town visiting my sister. We ended up at their party, late night. I was tired from the drive, and when I woke up it was morning. There, and with that, I finally accepted a toke, leaned back against the wall, and let the beleaguered sleep wash over me as the comforting plotlines of my imaginary visit took shape and form.

When I awoke, her other roommate Tom was vacuuming, and repeatedly bumping the well-lit Hoover –appearing to me to be some sort of miniature squad car, backing up to jab my torso as images of police officers knocking on my car window off the highway, waking me up—against my torso. I woke up with a shot, scrunching my body against the wall.

“Oh, Hi… “ I managed, holding back the anger I felt.

“One of last night’s casualties I see” Tom said. I remembered him from the party in Columbia; he apparently did not remember me.

“Yeah, I checked in late last night, my sister and her friends must have left.” I glanced up at the now empty couch; Todd had left, as had the video gamer.

“Well the party’s over, you can go home now.” Tom was angry, and nursing what looked to me to be a relatively severe hangover.

“I was told Claire lived here. I’m sort of a friend of hers.”

Tom squinted a bit, before sitting on the couch and hand rolling a cigarette.
“She’s asleep in back, always the last to wake up after one of our bashes”

He seemed much more relaxed now, “Aram, right? Yeah, she mentioned you before ‘that guy from Columbia.’” He held his last breath of smoke in, pausing before exhaling.

“Would you like some coffee?” I agreed to that, and we spent the next few hours hanging out, exchanging stories about people from Auburn and Columbia, and the connectedness of the south. We listened to four or five records, of a more mellow nature than the ones in current rotation in my own CD player at home. We were so ensnared in telling stories that I didn’t heard Claire stirring and there she was, standing right in front of me, wrapped in a tattered old robe. Her eyes were big and red, like she’d just been crying.

She sniffled as she walked into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, “What are you doing here?” She posed that question in non-committal fashion, the way a person would respond to when asked their preference of salad dressing.

“ Late last night, at the party, with my sister and her friends” I said, coughing and looking down over at her eyes as she peered through the blinds.

She seemed disappointed with the couch, something was telling me she expected to find somebody else on the couch. “Well, do you wanna get some breakfast?” She finally managed, walking back towards her room.

The ice broken somewhat, and pleasantly surprised with how I had pulled off my alibi, I relaxed somewhat. “Sure, yeah, breakfast would be nice.”

Winkies was an Auburn staple, an older diner updated with a few collegiate trappings. It was a glorified greasy spoon with gourmet coffee and tattooed patrons. We waited for a table outside for a while, keenly aware of the tension between us. Girls in pink sunglasses walked toy poodles along the boulevard, and I began to feel a little queasy.

I wasn’t expecting this lackadaisical welcome for one. I thought she’d greet my presence with open arms. I wanted her to embrace me with kisses, but instead she was treating my like unwanted leftovers. She smoked her cigarettes with the regularity of a metronome and I knew some asshole had gone and broke her heart again. I didn’t even need to ask.

Breakfast was pleasant enough. With the addition of food and caffeine, the conversation picked up, no longer pale and hung over, we were back to the old back and forth of our phone calls, and I forgot all about her puffy red eyes and the absence on the couch that seemed to deeply trouble her.

We talked about all things, poetry again, and what kind of writing we’d been banging around with. This led to a torrent of activity as the fields of Art; History, music and stupid jokes we’d made up on the spot came tumbling out of us.

“That’s not a word Aram, I don’t care how intelligent you sound when you say it” jabbing my arm for emphasis.

“Can I blame you the charlatan for not knowing what a neo Platonist is, and you call yourself a romantic.”

“This from a guy who came in with the cat last night.” She turned to look at me, and her green eyes found mine, and she smiled, sitting back and taking me in and for the rest of the meal we sat in silence, content to just be with each other.

The bill came too quickly and we found ourselves in her car. We were headed for the record store when she announced her audible “I’ve got to go see about someone”, the tone changed. Her eyes became heavy again, and she put her sunglasses on and turned up the stereo, now playing Rage Against the Machine. It was a little too fitting. I hated Rage Against the Machine for the macho bullshit posturing it was. The people that found themselves enraptured in the predictable shuffles of this band were the same people who enjoyed the excess of keg stands. I wanted to leave right then and there, but she sped the car up, and headed towards campus. Auburn University.

Sorority girls, or “Sorostitutes” as my sister would call them, always wore white ribbons in their hair, as a leftover from the old southern plantation days. We passed rows of them attending some sort of outdoor fair, replete with frat boys lining up for the kissing booth.

I suddenly felt very empty inside. Like I needed to be alone immediately. It didn’t help when we pulled up to a very pissed off Todd at the rear of the fraternity quad.

I was tired, instantly so tired. I slammed the door before either of them could say anything.

All I thought about for the rest of the afternoon was the look on her face. The shock in the way that her jaw flew open upon the realization that I would not be there to protect her filled her with a disgust that was obvious as I turned and walked away and didn’t look back.

I went straight to Amsterdam, a bar/restaurant. Like most places in Auburn, bars are not allowed, on their own, to exist. In order for an establishment to sell alcohol, fifty percent of their overall sales must also be food. So an old-fashioned bar where one can go order a few shots of whiskey to say, forget about a girl who is wrapped up in a destructive relationship with a pseudo-intellectual frat boy is impossible without being offered a panoply of deep fried appendages that are served with a variety of creamy dressings.

I ordered a shot of house whiskey and a bud and sat down with my shadow, which leaned heavily upon the bar. I wandered over to the jukebox after a few and proceeded to play the saddest country music in the joint. Hank Williams, George Jones, Patsy Cline, they all received a good airing that afternoon as I stared out at the hot pavement and wondered how I got this far. The whole unplanned event had been a complete disaster. Any chance I had was drowned out the moment I bought that bottle of white wine, screwed off the cap and hollered out at the wind “She’s my post to lean on. And I just cut her down. Hopefully something will come between me and the ground.”

My chuck taylor’s seemed to have the answers and after a few rounds I wandered around town, peeking into stores and felt better as the sun came down and I called my sister.

She showed about an hour later, earnestly putting her arm around me and walking me to her car. I told her everything on the way to her house. Ann and I have always had a bond of trust, where we look at each other and know there’s no point in hiding the facts. I told her about Claire, and my last minute voyage, the sleeping off the highway, the arrival, the charade and ultimately the letdown. She laughed the whole way through, which surprisingly made me feel a whole lot lighter.

That night a few of her friends came over, and we played scrabble and I rocked the house, winning game after game. I collapsed on her futon at two am and slept blissfully. It wasn’t until the morning that I realized where my car was, and more importantly, at whose house I had left my keys.