SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME

The direct continuation of Cort's story from the end of part 7 of Back On Track

By Jo

PART ONE:

The afternoon sun was lowering in the piercingly blue sky and Cort leaned over, fumbling

for his dark glasses. He was past Austin now, heading steadily west, not sure just where but

going almost relentlessly as though some magnet had a pull on his heart. He had plenty of

money with him, his clothes were all casual western, mostly jeans, and nestled in the sleeping

bag in the trunk of his car lay the rifle he'd bought in Bozeman, Montana, the afternoon the

robbers had come into the inn where he and Rachel were honeymooning.

Memories weighed heavily on him and he put on some music, trying to distract himself from

his thoughts. It didn't work all that well. He hit interstate 10, drove through Junction and

somewhere near Sonora, pulled off the road behind a truck stop and slept sitting in the car.

He woke, muscles cramped, in the morning and went into the truck stop for some breakfast.

While still early, the sun now at his back, he was on 10 again, heading across west Texas

toward El Paso. There were long, lonely stretches of road, most of it very straight and running

through dry and open country. He was making good time, then he snorted at the thought. Good

time to where? To what? Each turn of the tires took him further from the only people in the

world he knew. All he knew was that he had to do this, had to go.  He felt like a blind man

groping for some unknown something in a room with no doors or windows, with no features at

all...very like the desert he was traveling through. His eye was caught by three distant dust devils, twirling, curving not far from each other as though in some sort of strange dance.

He'd seen a lot of those back where he'd grown up. That thought got him to thinking that, yes, that was where he needed to go. He needed to see his grandmother's house, the big cottonwood he used to climb and under which he'd buried her when he was fourteen.  Reality, that's what

he wanted. Reality and connection. Now he had a name for what he was feeling...disconnected.

The loss of his family had taken that from him and he was flopping around as disconnected as

a dust devil. He'd jumped into a dust devil once when he was twelve. It was only whirling air,

only visible because it had picked up sand. He had no sense of substance more than that. Maybe

if he found the house, the tree, he'd feel whole again.

He drove right through El Paso, only stopping for gas and a fast food lunch, following 10 as

it jogged north to Las Cruces then west again through Deming. Crossing at last into Arizona

it hit him he hadn't been here since he came out of his movie. Well, he'd gone back into the

movie to get his wife when Sid left her there, but that was the movie, not the actual state. He

began to grow tense as he turned south off 10 just before Benson. He was getting close now to

where he'd spent his first fourteen years, well, at least where he remembered spending them.

He wasn't exactly sure how much of that was real.  He'd been to Terry's Thorneton, though,

in northern New South Wales, and that was where Terry remembered growing up. But then

Terry had grown up only recently and Cort's past was very, very past. Even if the cabin were

real, would it have survived all these years?  It had been out in the middle of nowhere so maybe

it had been left alone?  He needed to see.

He was on a two-lane road now, a tall cloud beginning to reach higher and higher just off to

his left.

Yes, he remembered clouds like that. Rain was probably coming.

Within moments it seemed the rain began to fall, veils of gray in the direction he was headed.

Shortly he was enveloped in it. Wipers did no good and he had to pull off the road, waiting a

while for it to slacken. As he sat there, enveloped in the wetness, he closed his eyes and was

transported back to when he'd lie in the hay in the barn, listening to rain pounding on the tin

roof.  He remembered it so clearly, how the air briefly cooled, how loud the drops sounded just

above him, the rustle of the hay he lay upon when he moved. He did remember it. He knew he

did! 

When the rain had gone, he started down the road again, driving now in a world gone all softly

muted and blurred like a watercolor painting.  That, too, was familiar and he clung to the very

familiarity of it.

Then he saw it, the distinctly-shaped ridge and knew that the road would curve shortly and

beyond it lay the land his grandmother had owned.  Parking, he got out of the car and walked

into the grasses, squatting and just staring at the ridge.  He knew the lines of it so well, had

climbed up the steep slope of the nearly bald mound at its southern end so many times, sitting

there, looking down at the cabin and the farm. He stayed there at least half an hour as traffic

passed by on the road and he lost himself in memories.  It was just the same...exactly...as he

remembered it. It was real and just beyond it he had spent his childhood. Smiling, he strolled

slowly back to his car, ready to follow the road around to the other side now that he knew

nothing of consequence had changed.

The sky was clear, rain-washed and clean, in the late afternoon as he headed around the

curve, his breath almost held in anticipation, the sense of homing pulling at the fibers of his

being.  Then he frowned as he came across a gas station, shortly followed by an area of

nondescript suburban housing.  Looking to his right out the passenger window, he judged

from the ridge where he was in relation to where his grandmother's cabin was supposed to

be. When he knew he was almost there, he stopped, gripping the steering wheel, his lips

parting then his jaw clamping tight.  He didn't even hear the horns honking at him to move

his car on. Sitting there, he stared almost blankly at where home should be.

ON TO PART 2

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