The Substance of Things Not Seen

I opened my eyes.

Where’s the wind?

Closed them… big breath…
“Okay…”

“Caleb!” The phone crackled. “Pull the car over! PULL IT OVER RIGHT NOW!”

Trees and houses and light and morning… “I’m tingly…”

“PULL THE CAR OVER… I am coming to get you…”

January 3, 2008 I woke up at nine thirty A.M. and ran till two the next morning, packing, preparing, running. Two and a half hours of sleep later I woke up, put everything in the car, and started driving.

1:30 A.M. : “Oo I’m floating out of it now…
“You need to pull over and sleep.”
It’d be a waste of time.
“You’re going to crash and kill yourself.”
Naw… I’ve got a bit before… before I’m that tired…

I played with the can of Monster energy drink in the cup holder. Empty. “Yeah I’ve got about fifteen minutes…”

I pulled over to the edge of a fill station parking lot, plowing softly through the slush and snow and coming to a chilly stop. I pulled out a blanket and leaned the seat back. I closed my eyes for the first time in twenty hours. They stayed shut for forty five sleepless minutes. I opened my eyes. … waste of time. Get there… get there…

I filled the car and started driving again.

Seven more hours passed. Two toll roads. Three hundred and fifty miles. Three more states. No music, too early to call anyone. … Oh sun please come up… please oh please where is the sun? The light wakens you know…

8:30am Eastern. I checked the GPS. A half an hour to go… I’m peeling to the side of the toll road I’m on and swerving back in… half an hour… The sun is shining, … ,in my eyes. I shook my head and blinked hard. Everything looked wet…

I took one hand off the steering wheel and held it out. It was trembling. Crap.

The phone was ringing now… my thumb was still pressed into the call button for the third ring.

Click “Where are you?”
“Connie I’m a half hour away.”
“… what?”
“I’m falling asleep.”
“What? Caleb no pull over. Pull over right now.”
“I can’t I’m on a toll road and there’s no side ramp. I just need some noise, chatter at me. Just… talk.”

I’d been talking to the duck belted safely into the passenger’s seat for the past 200 miles. Animatedly in fact. I remain perfectly aware of myself even when I’m falling asleep. So it was with some irony that I noticed it took me three tries to read the vanity plate on the car in front of me. I was becoming illiterate. I yank the car back into my lane. “Keep talking to me, Connie.”

9:03 A.M. : I feel that I’m slumped to the side of the steering wheel, arms hanging at my sides. I hear my hazard lights clicking rhythmically… My driver’s side door bursts open. Two arms and a blast of frosty air enter the atmosphere. I’m moving.

I’m in a van, I’m in a kitchen, I’m in a hot singing shower, I’m in a bed. I’m being talked to.

I’m in a bed. I can’t sleep. Still, I can’t sleep. I’m not moving. I am not moving. I tell myself. It’s the first time in almost 30 hours I haven’t heard a constant 65 mph wind outside the window. My body can still feel the tremble of the road beneath me running like knuckles over a washboard… across my entire body, at sixty five miles an hour. I was still for hours but still awake. My stomach rolled, I’d eaten nothing since… since I don’t even know when. Dinner Thursday at four? The eggs in my gut now grumbled nervously, threatening my throat with quiet little gags. I swallowed, waiting patiently for my body to calm.

////-

The sun was sinking away when I woke. I’m clean, I’m calm, I’m breathing fine and my hands are no longer shaking. I’m… here. I’ve made it.

I pulled open the door and stepped into the living room.

“Oo he wakes! Caleb c’mere. What do you want to eat?”

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