Odd Days — part one

In reflection, 10/1/19 starts & stays messy: 

	First thing to do after leaving Tempe at 8AM is cater-corner east through Tucson where I get back on the I-10 after veering through town to p/u a chorizo, egg & potato to-go with an assortment of sauces to line up on the seat divider tray. The burrito stands partially dressed in a cup holder. I watch the road & glance down quickly to pour a random sauce over a bite mark, steering with knees & grazing whatever I can get while dropping some onto my shirt & lap before setting the burrito back into the holder & chewing, looking past the wheel with 450 miles left.

I take it easy, skimming most every business route to get some photos or hit up a thrift store.

It’s a dark day — like it hasn’t fully awakened.

After losing an hour, I figure I’d better stop meandering & just get somewhere. 

	Passing El Paso at 5:30PM, there’s lightning ahead between where I am & where I need to be. The limit ups itself to 80. I set the cruise at 90, speeding up towards the storm. 

At noon it resembled dusk, but now at 6:30PM the sun breaks like dawn.

A piece of rainbow: not high, no arc & not touching land, floats as a patch sewn to a storm shroud with a dark cloud-tip pointing like a gnarled finger that touches the spectrum as it’s sucked into the spreading darkness. 

Lightning, now closer ahead, strikes upward from the ground to frame a dim canopy.

Between displays, a grey curtain sits on the land, darkening as it rises .

	The interstate veers northeast.

My left is a now a sunlit blue wound — the right is a dominant palette of blackness with blinks of lightning illuminating like sudden, blank memories. 

The blue disappears to the north, slowly then instantly, as if it's barely escaped — it made it.

Not me, though: the road turns east, directly into the storm. 

	Forty more miles to go.

Approaching a border checkpoint, a burned out frame of a forty-foot semi container is crumpled & partially melted into the asphalt. 

I pause at the patrol booth long enough to confess that I'm a citizen.

	Construction slows to 65.

A wreck merges the I-10 into a one-lane going carefully east outlined in a smear of red & blue flashing lights.

80MPH again, but the rain gets too heavy with twenty miles still somehow left & I ride the pedal. 

Good thing I didn't try to shoot for Fort Stockton. A few more hours east woulda been bad.

There’s the sign: Exit 138: Van Horn.

next time: Odd Days — part two