On the highway exit ramp, the sign to the left was small. Hardly noticeable. I actually hadn't ever noticed it until my friend recited it one day as we were driving, “To Overton Road,” she said simply and coolly. With an arrow underneath the text pointing to to the left. The square green sign stood meekly on the side of the highway exit, the exit I took to reach my neighborhood. If you kept driving down the main street, its name changed from Jerry Murphy—a local WWII hero—to Overton Road. Overton Road had farms and ranches along the first part of it, eventually losing its pavement to dirt road, rolled out endlessly into the prairie. Most of my peers went down Overton a few miles to scare themselves, drink or smoke weed.
My junior year I liked to be alone most of the time, so driving down Overton on school nights or uneventful weekends became my habit. I’d bring weed too, and stargaze, try my hand at poetry, scrawl long ramblings, just sit and think, or listen to music. I could drive endlessly on the road, far past the “Pavement Ends” sign, past the watermelon-shaped house (painted to look like one, red with green rind, in the summer they painted black seeds on it) that marked the end of settlement along the road. After this, the road became empty, a desolate dirt county road to the next city, about an hour away. I’d drive miles until the terrain became hilly, where no city lights were visible, where the only sounds were of rabbits in the dry grass and distant train horns.
The washboarding in the dirt road vibrated the car relaxingly, and most of the time I was stoned. I would play music, always had music, and sort of get lost in the drive, the sounds, the endless road. I was driving but stationary, the scenery always stayed the same. I'd drive, and, feeling satisfied with my distance, park on the shoulder. Depending on the season I’d stay in the warm car or get onto the still-warm hood, and be completely pacified and mystified by the night sky. It looked absolutely wet, ready to perspire cold drops, and sharp, so sharply clear and real. Reminiscent of a dome, a glass paperweight ceiling above my head. This is the same night sky the Egyptians saw. Or Roman citizens, prospectors, serfs, Lao-Tzu, hunter-gatherers, everyone that has ever existed. Except in more clarity; the light bulb has killed the night sky. They saw more stars, the Milky Way. Same basic thing though.
I love the stillness. I love the silence. I love the openness of the prairie, so barren and unexplored. From an outside perspective it seems simple, flat and boring. Once you hike around, get inside it, the impression is much different. Cactus everywhere, both pad-like prickly pear and contorted, upright walking-stick. Rabbits leap from dry bushes, arroyos cut giant gashes in the land, making mazes of small canyons that provide refuge for owls, hawks, foxes, and coyotes. Mazes for me to explore. In the spring the cactuses bloom brilliant magenta, pink and yellow, and the grass is all a rare green. Tiny purple and yellow flowers bloom close to the ground, creating wide splashes on the tope land.
The road was escape, was much-needed isolation. It was as far as I could get away from my life in a night before I had to head back and do homework. Or something equally menial. As far as I could get away from society before having to return to it, slave to regulations and expectations and judgment and its inescapable structure. Being alone was self-imposed. Being alone in the city just gave me a creeping sense of loneliness. On Overton, though, it didn't feel wrong to be alone. I didn't feel like I had to share my experiences with anyone save my blank paper. Or not even the paper; some things couldn't be written down.
As I was driving one December night, road still paved, houses around, I heard and saw a cat get hit by a car. Actually the only things I perceived were a great hiss and a thud; I wouldn't deduce what happened until later. I kept driving far into the prairie. Far down the dirt road there was a copse of trees which caught my attention. They looked like contorted hands, stretching for the sky, like zombie hands breaking through the soil and reaching above. Bare of leaves, their sharp angles and complicated growth fascinated me. The alien loneliness of these trees in the usually flat and grassy prairie gave rise to many feelings about life. Bunches of atoms arranged into a living thing, important to nothing, unobserved really, unremembered, mortal. Struggling for life without having a reason to. I felt related to them, they were my brothers.
I turned the car around and headed back. I reached the paved road and not long after saw the cat. I turned the car to focus the headlights on its corpse, and stopped in the middle of the road. Illuminated by my yellow headlamps, I saw it dead, on its side, with a tire indention right through the middle. Arms up, trying to block the car, a look of horror frozen on its face. Horror, fear, resentment, wanting to escape. It was disgusting, sad and awakening. Perhaps it was because that was the first really “dead” thing I had seen that I felt so strangely. Its face affected me the most. Pathetically dying. One second living and the next is pain, then you're road kill, there for everyone to gawk at. Jeer at, gawk at. Gone. The cat told me much about death, and I felt camaraderie with it. We were bound for the same fate, had shared living together for a time, and I was present for its demise. The trees and cat spoke no words to me, even now it's difficult to convey the sense they exuded, but I realized on the drive home that they had made more sense to me than anything else had before.
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