“Not knowing how he had come to sit behind the steering wheel, he considered driving into town for help but was too fucked up to walk much less commandeer Emma’s truck. The hike into the canyon where her body would be—500 feet beneath the Claw and at least a 90-minute jog from the truck—was too much to consider, the stream requiring being forded at least a dozen times. Paralyzed by indecision and the horror of seeing her jump, he pounded the steering wheel with palms, tears soaking his face, collecting like dew drops in the wiry strands of his beard. “What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? Goddammit Emma…”
Desiring nothing other than to have her back, he felt the urge to lie down on the seat and cry himself into oblivion, having no more control over himself than he had over the way Powerball had spun the universe, spitting out random equations from a spinning cage. So maybe, his mind conspired, she didn’t jump and was still wandering around the Claw, lost, searching him out. But the image of her stretching her arms wide and leaping was crystalline in its authenticity, tangible and substantial.
She’s not here. The voice returned, stripping earthly context from reality. Go look somewhere else.
“...the other half found me stumbling around and drunk on burgundy wine,” the tape player shattered his thoughts as though someone had thrown a large rock through the windshield, the engine suddenly idling. Like it just happened on its own, there was no way he’d touched the key. Fumbling for the cassette deck’s knobs, he watched his hand disappear into the dash, lacking mass or substance, sensation, an immaterial thing dangling uselessly from the end of his arm. Outside the truck, the mountain and trees pivoted, the world turning on a spindle, the turnout giving way to the meadow and the rutted path back to the gate. Gooch watched the speedometer needle bounce back and forth, wind tumbling the dashboard trash and debris so that everything danced against the windshield in time to the music.
“I’ll get up and fly away….”