Reflections

A Journey not Measured in Miles - Rash
had no shoe.
Instinctively, as if to blank out the scene, he turned off the flashlight, and sat there in the cold darkness. He tried to think what to do. He could not
reach the car without endangering himself. He had no way of knowing how deep the water was. Besides it seemed obvious that the man was dead.
On the road at this hour of the night, the wreck could have been there three minutes or three hours. Regardless of that, the impact had probably
killed the driver. The concrete looked like it had been dynamited.
Behind him in the darkness, he heard the cattle moving in the truck, stamping and beginning to bellow, impatient to meet their own appointment
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
with death. He remembered he was supposed to be at the meat packers in Ft. Worth by daybreak. He would call the highway patrol from the next
little town. Turning the flashlight back on, he looked again at the wreck and satisfied himself there was nothing more he could do. He turned and
scrambled up the slippery bank. His legs and butt were caked in mud.
Regaining the highway, he walked out onto the bridge. Not a car had passed, nor did he hear any approaching sounds in the night, just his restless
load of cattle. He walked to the boot and picked it up. It was beautifully made, heavily stitched, the bottom part made from some expensive, exotic
skin. He looked down at his own plain boots, caked with cowshit and now with mud, and holding the boot to his chest over his heart, he thought
how we are all equal in the end – cows, rich men, and poor truckers. Equally dead. Turning and leaning over the bridge rail, he vomited into the
cold, dark water below.
˜
“A ribbon of moonlight!” Yes, that was it. The Highwayman. De-da, de-da, de-da. “I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day. Then look for me by moonlight, Watch for me by moonlight. I’ll come to thee by
moonlight, though hell should bar the way.” He was talking out loud to himself. Scraps of poetry floated through his mind and out his lips. “Of all
sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these: ‘it might have been!’” He thought of her. “The moving finger having writ, moves on, nor all your
piety and wit can erase one jot of it.” He thought of himself. A quick euphoria gripped him as he thought of Invictus, “It matters not how strait the
gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
Perhaps it was not too late for him, perhaps life could be good and gentle again. As it had been when he could remember his mother’s cool, tender
hands. Oh, but that was so long ago and she dead for so many years. He thought of what resolute assholes he and his brothers had become and he
was glad she had been spared that knowledge by an early death. But not to think of those old sad refrains – not now, not while he was on the verge
of resolution!
The patchy fog had become one dense thick pall. He suddenly realized he did not know where he was. He was in an alien land. Exhilarated by this
new excitement, he pressed the Cadillac to its limit. Nothing could touch him. He felt as if he had found the secret. The secret. What was it? He
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