Part 2: The Road

It took at least a hundred miles before my tears dried, another hundred before I realized I had no clear destination in mind. I was driving on Interstate 37 heading North West towards San Antonio, Texas. I pulled over at a roadside rest area to make a plan. I asked my phone what I should do. “OK, Google. Take me to the Rocky Mountains?” Crap, I pull up an article, and it says there are at least a hundred regions you can call the Rocky Mountains. I try again. “Google, do you know where Rachel is in the Rocky Mountains?” This time an article about Rocky Mountain National Park took the top spot. I will look there first. Why not? Colorado is as good as any place to start, and I had to start somewhere.

I drove for nine hours the first day, pulling into a camping spot at Buffalo Springs Lake after one in the morning to get some shut-eye. After finding a place, I spent a few hours tossing and turning on the bed. I was wired and couldn’t sleep. I remember thinking God; please let me sleep. Please let me sleep. God! Please, please, please.

Wham, a loud banging on the rear door of the camper shell startled me. The banging caught me in the zone between sleep and the conscious world. I leaped from my bed, tripped over the treasure chest, rolled right out of the back door, and fell to the dirt with a giant thud. My head smacked a rock and knocked me out.

When I awoke, I found myself in a teepee. A dark-skinned Indian man wearing a buffalo horn headdress stood over me. The headgear had shaggy fur that looked like a buffalo hide, and a long trail of feathers reached down to the ankles. In his hands, he held a pipe. He had a sad face, a proud, sad chiseled face with gray eyes.

“I heard your screams for God,” the Indian said in a whisper. “Are you looking for him?”

“No,” I whispered back. “I am looking for Rachel. A woman I met in a dream.”

“You need Manit, the god of dreams.” He replied. “He is not here. He far from here, but I know where you can find him.”

“Will he know where I can find Rachel?”

“Perhaps.”

The old Indian helped me to a sitting position and placed the pipe in my hands.

“You suck,” he said.

“I know,” I replied.

He brought a burning twig from the fire and held the flame to the pipe. I took in deep draughts, the twig flaming, dying back, and burning again. At first, I thought I must be mad. Already insane? Everything around me there and not there; I was in the teepee and not in the teepee. All faded away, and I sat in an open field amid millions of fuchsia-colored flowers. I sat cross-legged, and the tops of the flowers tickled my chin. Soon my body dematerialized to nothingness–a head bobbing in a sea of flowers and regret. Blooms turned to starlight, and I became a speck of light in a thick black ocean of darkness spanning infinite distances. Using my star eyes, I gazed in reverence at Alpha Centauri, and I transported there, another point of light. I morphed into the star Alpha Centauri A, and Rachel arrived. At first, she was not, but then she came. She materialized as Alpha Centauri B. We were a binary pair locked by gravitational forces.

Then I was back on earth. A dove landed near me, delicately balancing atop a flower moving rhythmically in the wind, and cooed. Its little white head at an angle, it looked at me whimsically, then flew to an open space on the ground in front of me. The delicate creature transformed into a nude woman on her knees, head lowered, hiding her face. I tried to move towards her but found myself still at the mercy of the tidal flowers. She stood, and I now looked upon her face, and even though I could see her, I was helpless. We were together again and yet still apart–separated by space and time. I wanted to run to her, but I was still a disembodied head floating on the breeze.

The last thing I remember before waking was standing with Rachel next to the cliff where I met her that rainy night.

I looked her in the eyes and said nothing.

She replied, “I know.”

A shaggy white sheep now, she looked up at me, her neck burned and bleeding.

I awoke. The sun already up, I found myself alone in the teepee and the mysterious Indian gone. When I stuck my head out of the shelter, the blinding sun burned through me. I was in an open clearing near to where I parked the camper. My head throbbing, dying of thirst, I collected myself a bit, and staggered back to the camper and started a pot of coffee.

>> Go to part 3…