Cross Idaho, through forests and hills, Scandinavianesque, get to Spokane, Washington by sundown. It’s one hell of a city, where you can grab a double cheeseburger slider and a portion of hotdog poppers for less than ten bucks. I park the Hyundai Sonata beneath an overpass, drinking champagne from the bottle and watching Street Beef videos on my phone. I feel as though the skull of Walt Disney is growing somehow, as if it is collecting emotional nutrients from the atmosphere inside the car. A cop knocks on my window.
“What?!” I scream at him through the glass.
“Can you roll down your window and can I see your license and ID.” They say.
“The windows broke. I can open the door, whatever man, I just wanna get the fuck out of here, know what I’m saying?” I say. The cop punches the window through, leather fist through broken glass, releasing a plume of smog out into the atmosphere.
“I need your ID.” He says. I brush the broken chunks of glass from my lap, show him my fake drivers license, my American passport. He lets me go, and so I drive to an empty car lot, hoping to guard the car whilst it was without a window. At some point I fall asleep, then wake up coughing and damp, a crane fly going backwards and forwards beneath the windshield.
I drive the car down the interstate, the fresh air a welcome change to the interior of the car. The smell from the accumulated food, rotting flesh, smoke, sweat and vapes was disgusting, though I had gotten so used to it that it felt pleasing, familiar. I got my window replaced and the other windows fixed so they could roll down. I also got an oil change, checked the tyres, topped up the screen wash and brake fluid, gave it a little clean. The car had done me well on my journey, I’d gotten attached to the sound of its engine turning, the idiosyncrasies of how it moved, it had impacted me as much as I had impacted it. A spider had spun a web between one of the side mirrors and window, hiding beneath the reflective glass, sometimes coming out and eating a fly caught in web strands. I think it had roughly travelled three thousand miles away from where it had been born, with no chance to ever return home, the drive taking it further from anything it had known, on to new country. I had a lot of respect for the spider, sometimes noticing it as I checked my mirrors, giving it a nod of admiration. It was a fellow explorer, a witness to the end of the American Empire, carving a path across a country unimaginable to its kin. Its eight eyes have looked, unblinking, at a sky turning from day to night, at the road beneath hurtling past at lethal speeds, the headlights, the passengers, the gas stations, the cities, the forests, the stars, then back at me. We are fellow travellers connected together via the Hyundai and the miles of road ahead as well as the miles of road behind.
Now that the car was fixed, maintained, I felt myself beginning to get ready. Something had changed whilst I had been making my journey recently. It had been hard to pinpoint when exactly, but the sensation that something had altered seemed urgent, needing to be acknowledged before the next step. I drive the Sonata through pine forested valleys, the windows down, smelling everything around me. I take a side road, pull up, hit the vape. Ahead of me is a waterfall. I listen it, a roar of static, seeming to smother all other sound around me. Tomorrow I would start driving south. Down towards L.A.
