July 25, 2008
All I could see was the quick dart of sharp object plunging into my best friend’s kidney. Or, at least that’s what I imagined that night at the motel while Allison slept soundly next to me with all the sheets stolen. She was warm and safe and at peace while I imagined my best friend breaking up a fight or getting jumped outside the shelter he worked at. A stupid paranoia ran through me as the window unit flushed in the sand and salt of our coastal hideout that Allison and I so eagerly sought relaxation in. My mind was hanging out on the dark edge of the bed though - 1am clicked into sight - Then it was 1:07 and then 1:14 and all I could think about was Pete.
He’d been there for me as only a brother, in the best sense of the word, could be. We were college roommates at the beginning and it seemed at first this acquaintance was only some Residence Life logic since we both ran on the cross-country team then and would lead similar academic lives as freshmen. It was a pairing based on convention of lifestyles in many respects but now I see it as much more. Something else seemed to place us – I don’t like to babble about fate or luck but whatever it was, we became friends and from then on, we sustained a connection that took us to the brink and back in more ways than one. Jobs, deaths, loves, 28 hour drives out into nothing to hike and feel like drifters, hikes into places unknown, endless Cleveland summers as we seemed to stretch the weekends out further and hold on. I guess we had our own private defining moments as friends. My thoughts soon turned to that one moment, though, when we almost didn’t live to talk about.
It was the typical mid-twenties thing to do that spring or any spring, I guess. Three friends trade driving shifts to make it to Colorado or anywhere to camp, drink beer and feel liberated and beyond and above all worry or convention. I’d never really stayed in Colorado either so it was new and we anticipated the description John Denver left behind.
I’d traveled like this for so many years that surely the horrors that were to come would never catch us. I guess it was inevitable. How many times had we done this – car – hours of highway – night turning into day –all for the experience and the feeling of mattering little to anyone out in the wide open wilds of the country – the American dream at work or a version of it anyway. We mostly enjoyed the feeling that we had gotten “somewhere else,” I guess. I guess sooner or later, though, what seems easy has to kick you in the ass a little. We’d pushed the limits again and this time they snapped back and smacked us square in the face.
A grey wasteland of the mid-western prairie flashed like a subliminal message in a dark theater just before I finally gave in and fell asleep in the passenger seat that spring morning back in May, 2005. It was the break of dawn, somewhere in Nebraska, when my body sensed the car swerving and I shrugged it off as a dream. The series of events that played out after that resembled something out of a disaster movie – at least, that’s the best comparison I can give it. It had all the makings of something a Hollywood director would have choreographed with stunt doubles mid-air and fire crew on standby. The car careening out of control, the passengers flailing, blood trailing from nostrils and head wounds, the shards of glass raining in, the sheer helpless gravity of the situation. I wasn’t really awake to see it and I’m glad I wasn’t. All I know is that the car fumbled to a halt like a horrible onside kick and landed laces up. We had in fact flipped end of end rather than rolled the car like I assumed. The police report later indicated that the car had toppled more than 70 feet, something I’d only seen on Knight Rider and the Dukes of Hazard.
The car looked like a landmine had gone off. The roof of the car was flattened down in the back and had Tony, our other stuntman on the journey, not been laying down, sleeping on the back seat; he could’ve lost his head. In the end, he still received a bad strain on his shoulder and neck. I began to accept the reality that this was not a dream and watched blood pour from my nose into my lap and then the center console of Tony’s Ford as I surveyed the damage and asked if Tony was okay. A shocked groan of a “yea” came from the backseat as I turned to find he’d made it but was banged up. I was still waking and in shock all at once. My heart caught up to the situation. It was real alright. I’d seen bad accidents before and even been in a couple minor ones before but this was it. One of those “how’d they live to walk away” scrap-heaps by the side of the highway that you see from time to time and tug on your seatbelt to make sure.
Pete sat crying, pounding the steering wheel and trying to hold back the blood from the gash to the top of his head where the frame for the door had cut him. I tried to settle my breathing. The dashboard smoked from the obliterated wiring, the windshield was shattered but held neatly into place through the calculated innovations of the auto industry. The side windows were gone, small fragments of mine now blown into my shoulder. The airbag had caught me right in the nose thus the blood bath on my lap and I had some minor aches and bruises and a few cuts. All in all, I was mobile - lucky. I feared for my friends. I quickly went to that place you hear about – the adrenaline kicks in and your brain sort of organizes and assesses the situation as if, somehow, someone pre-programmed how to handle all this and set up a plan to help you survive.
Once we’d established that we were alive and going to make it, a wide-eyed trucker raced up to my window already on his phone.
“Yea, they’re alert and moving,” he gasped into his phone. He crouched and slid back and forth surveying us and then the car and then us again. “Help’s on the way guys!”
A convoy of Army Reservists was on the highway that morning and pulled over to provide some makeshift medical services. The morning seemed to be cut and spliced together – we were in a bomb and then we were crawling out the windows – we staggered up a dirt embankment and then the military boys and girls descended and did a patch-work assessment of our medical needs. They chit-chatted and braced our necks as we sat in the dirt, quiet and freezing on the windy plain.
The next thing I knew I was laying face up on a stretcher, hoisted in to the ambulance and stabilized. I answered questions as the vehicle rocked and bounced to the hospital. We were taken like priceless packages and delivered to separate rooms. My shirt was cut off of me and shoes removed. I wondered where they’d taken Pete and Tony. Were they okay? I was soon cleaned, needled, evaluated and layered with warm blankets. I kept wondering how I could feel so cold. Was the hospital that cold? Was it the icy grip of nearly dying that was still thawing? A burly sheriff took my statement, I was left with a phone and called home, waking my dad who took the news rather calmly as he awoke to the horror himself. After reassuring my father that we were okay and would get more information to him later, I lay there anxiously in my room as a seemingly young cast of doctors ran the morning shift. Our movie stunt seemed to turn into a prime time sitcom – I’d even been wheeled over to see Pete and wheeled back and felt my gurney halt with a comical thud as the attending fumbled my entry into my room. A few snickers came from the doctors behind the information desk.
Before the laugh track played and the show antics continued, I’d sat with Pete as he showed me the staples in his head.
His eyes said enough but he spoke. “I’m sorry Jason.”
I stopped him. “Don’t blame yourself. It would’ve been either Tony or me at the wheel doing the same thing. Don’t blame yourself. It was stupid of us to drive through the night like that.”
We found out Tony was down the hall and doing fine. We rested, chewed ice and went through a series of x-rays. 6 hours passed and we eventually ended up in Tony’s room ordering food off the hospice menu. We hadn’t eaten all day. We were later informed of our options. We could stay the night or they could give us the “You just crashed your car, lived, got patched up and could go stay at the Holiday Inn up the road for a reduced rate” special. The idea seemed odd to me. Were we being kicked out? Were we that bad? Three dumb hippies undeserving of attention? In reality we were doing okay though - given the option to rest in a hotel or face hours in the sterile, clammy confines of our quirky sitcom set, we jumped at the chance to leave and did so with our tails between our legs.
A patrolman met us and drove us to the Holiday Inn. We presented our vouchers from the hospital to the stunned hotel receptionists, two Omaha college girls starring speechless. We ironed out the room situation. It was not your everyday arrival of guests. Tony’s clothes were shredded off of him and some of Pete’s clothes were now trash as well. Three men in gowns and scrubs. It took everything for us to get some scrubs from the docs so we could at least walk out with some dignity or the shred of it we had left.
The next few days at the hotel unfolded with trips to the ice machine to easy aching necks and shoulders, cleaning cuts, sleeping, eating and swallowing pride. Since I was mobile and virtually pain free, I became the Holiday Inn nurse.
Our first day, we traded trips to the phone to call home, iron out airfare and call home and reassure our parents that we were okay. We must’ve looked pathetic because I often turned to catch the girl at the front desk looking at me with sorrowful eyes as she overheard my conversation.
“We’re okay mom. Yea, he got staples in his head and is stiff and Tony will be okay. We gotta wait for the impound lot to open again on Monday. So the tickets will be at the airport then?”
The front desk gal listened to our wavery voices calling home and saw us as a pretty sad crew.
Fresh from the hospital, I spent our first afternoon crossing six lanes of traffic with my hospital gown tucked into my green cargo pants, trying to get to a nearby store to get some better clothes for all of us and some food. I did my best to move fast, avoid the stares and get back to the room. I tried to fill prescriptions for the guys but they had to be there to do it and came with me the next day. I nabbed some clothes of the racks, guessing sizes for my friends and swiftly moving along to the register. I rounded a turn outside the Mega-Target and changed into my new shirt on the side of the building moving faster than Superman. I felt like an escaped con or mental patient, rather. I finally looked, at least, sane and picked up some sandwiches and crossed 6 lanes with a bit more dignity and a lot less eyeballing.
The guys continued to sleep and ice. I tried to snooze but I was still buzzing from the thrill ride. I got up and paced the halls, found the hotel computer for guests and sent emails to my dad and continued to confirm our arrangements to get home. My dad’s emails came back with scraps of information but then I read, “I’ve given you all I know and now it’s up to you to use it and I’m proud of the way you’re handling all this Jas. When you get back we’ll have a bonfire and you guys won’t have to drive overnight to enjoy this one.”
Though our renegade trip into the wild was cut short, we salvaged it by eating junk food in the room and watching EASY RIDER. I sat in a little side yard of the hotel that afternoon and faced the land that hadn’t been prepped for the construction of a McDonald’s or outlet mall and enjoyed the hot sun on my face. Later that night, I walked out over a hill and found a neighboring walking path that seemed to travel around a somewhat private oasis of homes. I walked in silence through the dark recalling what I could of the wreck. I looped back toward the hotel and sat on a hill overlooking some untouched farmland as the moon spilled like milk into the bowl of field grass. I hugged my knees and threw a quick thank you out into the universe with my eyes as I took in the far-gone void of the Omaha night.
The next morning, a fat gentleman with a large scar on his face pulled up and took us to the impound lot to pry open the car and salvage our luggage. Our cab coasted out into a vast open nowhere on a deserted gravel road as we felt the car slide at times and braced in horror as a side effect from our last car ride. We filled our driver in on our predicament and he traded up his own tale about how he’d acquired that scar.
“I got this from a little motorcycle mishap.” Neither tale seemed to make his driving less reckless.
We’d arrived some 30 minutes later at a little white shack surrounded by fenced in scrap heaps of metal and a few cars with only minor dents. We filled out some papers and found Tony’s car. The cabby stuck close as we stood eyeing the heap and trying to rip the trunk open.
“Whew! You boys sure did get into something, didn’t ya?”
I saw the crusty blood on my seat. We gathered what we could and our driver took us back. He didn’t charge us for the wait at the lot and wished us well. We soon packed, boxed and shipped the larger camping supplies that we couldn’t tote on the plane home. Always looking out for the little guy, Pete gathered our canned goods and put a note on the door offering food to any passerby. I found it somewhat hokey but sure enough, some of the foreign maintenance men and maids came to collect with graciousness for our hospitality. What I took as somewhat odd was actually my best friend putting a meal on some poor guys table that night for his kids.
Before long, we were in the air, Chicago bound. We had a layover in Midway before we hit Ohio and ended up spending the night and taking another flight out the next morning because the airline was offering three lucky souls a free nights stay, food vouchers and round trip tickets to anywhere in the lower 48 if they would take a bump. We obliged and accepted this little game show prize, a gift of sorts – something good out of a bad situation - A free trip – I thought Bob Barker might pop out with his skinny microphone to yell out our winnings as some buxom blond gracefully outlined the prize with her hands.
Once we reached Ohio, we took a cab to my apartment and found some of our shipped items at my door as planned. Tony gathered his things and I got my car and drove him home. Pete and I went to my folk’s place and ate dinner. My mom didn’t speak or judge – she hugged us both with a tear forming. Pete and I later returned to my apartment and relaxed for the night. I took him back to Cleveland the next day and we said our goodbyes. We’d done this a million times – a quick handshake, snide comment or brief hug among men and we went our separate ways but this time it meant more.
It seemed just minutes ago that I was walking away from death with my best friend. I eyed the clock in the motel one last time. I decided Pete was tough and nothing could touch him. I refused to lay awake thinking my friend was being stabbed or was in trouble. After all, this was the man that I’d shared leg-cracking miles with over all kinds of terrain, through driving snows and sweltering summers, the guy who hiked 10 hours into the depths of California with me as we proceeded to push our limits, get lost and then plowed our way throw brush and trees, poison oak and thorns to clear a path for our weakened souls so we could climb out of the valley and arrive within inches of despair along the safety of the Big Sur coast; the guy that spent 6 hours in a Browns tailgate lot on Sundays during the NFL season collecting aluminum to exchange for cash in order to have a little money for the shelter; the guy that I had to hold back one night when a couple college frat boys who’d drank more than their weight slurred aimless rude remarks at us, prompting Pete to turn and head toward his new adversary . He could take care of himself. I knew this. But I thought about him none-the-less. I like to believe that he was worrying about me too. We’d traveled far and there I was, 500 miles away from his door on vacation with Allison. But somehow that night, we were still out there on that highway together. I imagined that grey wasteland once more – it flickered one last time. I saw morning coming up over that highway; the car rocked a little and I slept.
All I could see was the quick dart of sharp object plunging into my best friend’s kidney. Or, at least that’s what I imagined that night at the motel while Allison slept soundly next to me with all the sheets stolen. She was warm and safe and at peace while I imagined my best friend breaking up a fight or getting jumped outside the shelter he worked at. A stupid paranoia ran through me as the window unit flushed in the sand and salt of our coastal hideout that Allison and I so eagerly sought relaxation in. My mind was hanging out on the dark edge of the bed though - 1am clicked into sight - Then it was 1:07 and then 1:14 and all I could think about was Pete.
He’d been there for me as only a brother, in the best sense of the word, could be. We were college roommates at the beginning and it seemed at first this acquaintance was only some Residence Life logic since we both ran on the cross-country team then and would lead similar academic lives as freshmen. It was a pairing based on convention of lifestyles in many respects but now I see it as much more. Something else seemed to place us – I don’t like to babble about fate or luck but whatever it was, we became friends and from then on, we sustained a connection that took us to the brink and back in more ways than one. Jobs, deaths, loves, 28 hour drives out into nothing to hike and feel like drifters, hikes into places unknown, endless Cleveland summers as we seemed to stretch the weekends out further and hold on. I guess we had our own private defining moments as friends. My thoughts soon turned to that one moment, though, when we almost didn’t live to talk about.
It was the typical mid-twenties thing to do that spring or any spring, I guess. Three friends trade driving shifts to make it to Colorado or anywhere to camp, drink beer and feel liberated and beyond and above all worry or convention. I’d never really stayed in Colorado either so it was new and we anticipated the description John Denver left behind.
I’d traveled like this for so many years that surely the horrors that were to come would never catch us. I guess it was inevitable. How many times had we done this – car – hours of highway – night turning into day –all for the experience and the feeling of mattering little to anyone out in the wide open wilds of the country – the American dream at work or a version of it anyway. We mostly enjoyed the feeling that we had gotten “somewhere else,” I guess. I guess sooner or later, though, what seems easy has to kick you in the ass a little. We’d pushed the limits again and this time they snapped back and smacked us square in the face.
A grey wasteland of the mid-western prairie flashed like a subliminal message in a dark theater just before I finally gave in and fell asleep in the passenger seat that spring morning back in May, 2005. It was the break of dawn, somewhere in Nebraska, when my body sensed the car swerving and I shrugged it off as a dream. The series of events that played out after that resembled something out of a disaster movie – at least, that’s the best comparison I can give it. It had all the makings of something a Hollywood director would have choreographed with stunt doubles mid-air and fire crew on standby. The car careening out of control, the passengers flailing, blood trailing from nostrils and head wounds, the shards of glass raining in, the sheer helpless gravity of the situation. I wasn’t really awake to see it and I’m glad I wasn’t. All I know is that the car fumbled to a halt like a horrible onside kick and landed laces up. We had in fact flipped end of end rather than rolled the car like I assumed. The police report later indicated that the car had toppled more than 70 feet, something I’d only seen on Knight Rider and the Dukes of Hazard.
The car looked like a landmine had gone off. The roof of the car was flattened down in the back and had Tony, our other stuntman on the journey, not been laying down, sleeping on the back seat; he could’ve lost his head. In the end, he still received a bad strain on his shoulder and neck. I began to accept the reality that this was not a dream and watched blood pour from my nose into my lap and then the center console of Tony’s Ford as I surveyed the damage and asked if Tony was okay. A shocked groan of a “yea” came from the backseat as I turned to find he’d made it but was banged up. I was still waking and in shock all at once. My heart caught up to the situation. It was real alright. I’d seen bad accidents before and even been in a couple minor ones before but this was it. One of those “how’d they live to walk away” scrap-heaps by the side of the highway that you see from time to time and tug on your seatbelt to make sure.
Pete sat crying, pounding the steering wheel and trying to hold back the blood from the gash to the top of his head where the frame for the door had cut him. I tried to settle my breathing. The dashboard smoked from the obliterated wiring, the windshield was shattered but held neatly into place through the calculated innovations of the auto industry. The side windows were gone, small fragments of mine now blown into my shoulder. The airbag had caught me right in the nose thus the blood bath on my lap and I had some minor aches and bruises and a few cuts. All in all, I was mobile - lucky. I feared for my friends. I quickly went to that place you hear about – the adrenaline kicks in and your brain sort of organizes and assesses the situation as if, somehow, someone pre-programmed how to handle all this and set up a plan to help you survive.
Once we’d established that we were alive and going to make it, a wide-eyed trucker raced up to my window already on his phone.
“Yea, they’re alert and moving,” he gasped into his phone. He crouched and slid back and forth surveying us and then the car and then us again. “Help’s on the way guys!”
A convoy of Army Reservists was on the highway that morning and pulled over to provide some makeshift medical services. The morning seemed to be cut and spliced together – we were in a bomb and then we were crawling out the windows – we staggered up a dirt embankment and then the military boys and girls descended and did a patch-work assessment of our medical needs. They chit-chatted and braced our necks as we sat in the dirt, quiet and freezing on the windy plain.
The next thing I knew I was laying face up on a stretcher, hoisted in to the ambulance and stabilized. I answered questions as the vehicle rocked and bounced to the hospital. We were taken like priceless packages and delivered to separate rooms. My shirt was cut off of me and shoes removed. I wondered where they’d taken Pete and Tony. Were they okay? I was soon cleaned, needled, evaluated and layered with warm blankets. I kept wondering how I could feel so cold. Was the hospital that cold? Was it the icy grip of nearly dying that was still thawing? A burly sheriff took my statement, I was left with a phone and called home, waking my dad who took the news rather calmly as he awoke to the horror himself. After reassuring my father that we were okay and would get more information to him later, I lay there anxiously in my room as a seemingly young cast of doctors ran the morning shift. Our movie stunt seemed to turn into a prime time sitcom – I’d even been wheeled over to see Pete and wheeled back and felt my gurney halt with a comical thud as the attending fumbled my entry into my room. A few snickers came from the doctors behind the information desk.
Before the laugh track played and the show antics continued, I’d sat with Pete as he showed me the staples in his head.
His eyes said enough but he spoke. “I’m sorry Jason.”
I stopped him. “Don’t blame yourself. It would’ve been either Tony or me at the wheel doing the same thing. Don’t blame yourself. It was stupid of us to drive through the night like that.”
We found out Tony was down the hall and doing fine. We rested, chewed ice and went through a series of x-rays. 6 hours passed and we eventually ended up in Tony’s room ordering food off the hospice menu. We hadn’t eaten all day. We were later informed of our options. We could stay the night or they could give us the “You just crashed your car, lived, got patched up and could go stay at the Holiday Inn up the road for a reduced rate” special. The idea seemed odd to me. Were we being kicked out? Were we that bad? Three dumb hippies undeserving of attention? In reality we were doing okay though - given the option to rest in a hotel or face hours in the sterile, clammy confines of our quirky sitcom set, we jumped at the chance to leave and did so with our tails between our legs.
A patrolman met us and drove us to the Holiday Inn. We presented our vouchers from the hospital to the stunned hotel receptionists, two Omaha college girls starring speechless. We ironed out the room situation. It was not your everyday arrival of guests. Tony’s clothes were shredded off of him and some of Pete’s clothes were now trash as well. Three men in gowns and scrubs. It took everything for us to get some scrubs from the docs so we could at least walk out with some dignity or the shred of it we had left.
The next few days at the hotel unfolded with trips to the ice machine to easy aching necks and shoulders, cleaning cuts, sleeping, eating and swallowing pride. Since I was mobile and virtually pain free, I became the Holiday Inn nurse.
Our first day, we traded trips to the phone to call home, iron out airfare and call home and reassure our parents that we were okay. We must’ve looked pathetic because I often turned to catch the girl at the front desk looking at me with sorrowful eyes as she overheard my conversation.
“We’re okay mom. Yea, he got staples in his head and is stiff and Tony will be okay. We gotta wait for the impound lot to open again on Monday. So the tickets will be at the airport then?”
The front desk gal listened to our wavery voices calling home and saw us as a pretty sad crew.
Fresh from the hospital, I spent our first afternoon crossing six lanes of traffic with my hospital gown tucked into my green cargo pants, trying to get to a nearby store to get some better clothes for all of us and some food. I did my best to move fast, avoid the stares and get back to the room. I tried to fill prescriptions for the guys but they had to be there to do it and came with me the next day. I nabbed some clothes of the racks, guessing sizes for my friends and swiftly moving along to the register. I rounded a turn outside the Mega-Target and changed into my new shirt on the side of the building moving faster than Superman. I felt like an escaped con or mental patient, rather. I finally looked, at least, sane and picked up some sandwiches and crossed 6 lanes with a bit more dignity and a lot less eyeballing.
The guys continued to sleep and ice. I tried to snooze but I was still buzzing from the thrill ride. I got up and paced the halls, found the hotel computer for guests and sent emails to my dad and continued to confirm our arrangements to get home. My dad’s emails came back with scraps of information but then I read, “I’ve given you all I know and now it’s up to you to use it and I’m proud of the way you’re handling all this Jas. When you get back we’ll have a bonfire and you guys won’t have to drive overnight to enjoy this one.”
Though our renegade trip into the wild was cut short, we salvaged it by eating junk food in the room and watching EASY RIDER. I sat in a little side yard of the hotel that afternoon and faced the land that hadn’t been prepped for the construction of a McDonald’s or outlet mall and enjoyed the hot sun on my face. Later that night, I walked out over a hill and found a neighboring walking path that seemed to travel around a somewhat private oasis of homes. I walked in silence through the dark recalling what I could of the wreck. I looped back toward the hotel and sat on a hill overlooking some untouched farmland as the moon spilled like milk into the bowl of field grass. I hugged my knees and threw a quick thank you out into the universe with my eyes as I took in the far-gone void of the Omaha night.
The next morning, a fat gentleman with a large scar on his face pulled up and took us to the impound lot to pry open the car and salvage our luggage. Our cab coasted out into a vast open nowhere on a deserted gravel road as we felt the car slide at times and braced in horror as a side effect from our last car ride. We filled our driver in on our predicament and he traded up his own tale about how he’d acquired that scar.
“I got this from a little motorcycle mishap.” Neither tale seemed to make his driving less reckless.
We’d arrived some 30 minutes later at a little white shack surrounded by fenced in scrap heaps of metal and a few cars with only minor dents. We filled out some papers and found Tony’s car. The cabby stuck close as we stood eyeing the heap and trying to rip the trunk open.
“Whew! You boys sure did get into something, didn’t ya?”
I saw the crusty blood on my seat. We gathered what we could and our driver took us back. He didn’t charge us for the wait at the lot and wished us well. We soon packed, boxed and shipped the larger camping supplies that we couldn’t tote on the plane home. Always looking out for the little guy, Pete gathered our canned goods and put a note on the door offering food to any passerby. I found it somewhat hokey but sure enough, some of the foreign maintenance men and maids came to collect with graciousness for our hospitality. What I took as somewhat odd was actually my best friend putting a meal on some poor guys table that night for his kids.
Before long, we were in the air, Chicago bound. We had a layover in Midway before we hit Ohio and ended up spending the night and taking another flight out the next morning because the airline was offering three lucky souls a free nights stay, food vouchers and round trip tickets to anywhere in the lower 48 if they would take a bump. We obliged and accepted this little game show prize, a gift of sorts – something good out of a bad situation - A free trip – I thought Bob Barker might pop out with his skinny microphone to yell out our winnings as some buxom blond gracefully outlined the prize with her hands.
Once we reached Ohio, we took a cab to my apartment and found some of our shipped items at my door as planned. Tony gathered his things and I got my car and drove him home. Pete and I went to my folk’s place and ate dinner. My mom didn’t speak or judge – she hugged us both with a tear forming. Pete and I later returned to my apartment and relaxed for the night. I took him back to Cleveland the next day and we said our goodbyes. We’d done this a million times – a quick handshake, snide comment or brief hug among men and we went our separate ways but this time it meant more.
It seemed just minutes ago that I was walking away from death with my best friend. I eyed the clock in the motel one last time. I decided Pete was tough and nothing could touch him. I refused to lay awake thinking my friend was being stabbed or was in trouble. After all, this was the man that I’d shared leg-cracking miles with over all kinds of terrain, through driving snows and sweltering summers, the guy who hiked 10 hours into the depths of California with me as we proceeded to push our limits, get lost and then plowed our way throw brush and trees, poison oak and thorns to clear a path for our weakened souls so we could climb out of the valley and arrive within inches of despair along the safety of the Big Sur coast; the guy that spent 6 hours in a Browns tailgate lot on Sundays during the NFL season collecting aluminum to exchange for cash in order to have a little money for the shelter; the guy that I had to hold back one night when a couple college frat boys who’d drank more than their weight slurred aimless rude remarks at us, prompting Pete to turn and head toward his new adversary . He could take care of himself. I knew this. But I thought about him none-the-less. I like to believe that he was worrying about me too. We’d traveled far and there I was, 500 miles away from his door on vacation with Allison. But somehow that night, we were still out there on that highway together. I imagined that grey wasteland once more – it flickered one last time. I saw morning coming up over that highway; the car rocked a little and I slept.
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