Sky‑Road Soliloquy
Stay out on the road too long, and a darkness begins to cling to the soul. It’s a murky twilight where shadows take on weight and hope a stranger. Somewhere in Arkansas that darkness invited itself into the van and took up residence in the passenger seat. The horizon already turned pewter; sky and earth hung together by November haze. The radio was useless, delivering more static than song.
I'd been on the road for hours. I was alone but not solitary. I was lonely, but that is its own kind of curious company.
Mile markers ticked by like reluctant confessions: Brenda should be here. The steering wheel vibrated with the noisey rattle of Josie’s sixty-seven horses, but the seat beside me stayed heartbreakingly empty, the indentation of her absence deeper than upholstery could show.
The Long Thin Thread
The road teaches lessons a man never asks for. It tells him what he loves by stripping him of it. It tells him who is by leaving him to talk to himself when the sky goes black and the shape-shifting moon laughs when he mutters to himself. Somewhere outside of Siloam Springs the road narrowed into simply two ancient ribbons of asphalt, shoulders a thing of the past. I eased back a bit on the throttle and let Josie cruise in her comfort zone of 45 m.p.h., where the RPMs turn into a hymn of endurance.
Town names appeared at uneven intervals. Most on a green sign. Maybe there was a grain elevator. The towns pop up, present themselves, and immediately pass away down a narrow corridor in your mind. I imagined my wife walking in those streets beside me. I could hear her laugh and how it ping-ponged back and forth between brick façades. Without her there, the towns were of no consequence, just cardboard cutouts, really.
I spoke to her out loud, mostly nonsense that drifted to the windshield and vanished. You’d like this bend in the river. You’d scold me for drinking gas‑station coffee this weak. The cab absorbed my voice and gave nothing back, a confession booth without a priest.
Calling Home
Cell service out there became a game of Whack-A-Mole, bars rising and falling in random sequence. When a signal finally held, I hit the brakes, scoured the immediate area for a place to park, silenced Josie's engine and made a call.
Her voice answered—warm, clear, achingly close. We traded small facts first: weather, mileage, and yes, the dog never stops barking, what Josie had rattled on the highway. But the space between sentences filled with unspoken need. I could hear it in the hitch when she inhaled.
“I miss you,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“I miss me too,” I tried to joke, but the words clung to the roof of my mouth. What came out instead was a ragged exhale. “Soon. I’m turning the corner on the tour.”
Soon felt elastic—capable of stretching into weeks or more. We both knew it; neither acknowledged it. Still, we pressed soon between us like a down-filled quilt. It collapsed for a moment, giving us something to hold against the bruise of separation.
We said our goodnights and hung up, creating that small, immediate awkward place of what exactly to do next. With the cab empty, only road dust and the metallic echo of her absence were left.
Sky, Unbroken
My eyes traced the arc of the night. I couldn't help but think of Brenda beneath the same sky, just a different longitude.
Out here silence is never absolute. Crickets formed a choir; a coyote yipped at his hunger; Josie's engine ticked as the engine cooled. It was a lullaby older than any recording, and still sleep remained elusive.
I thumbed the edge of the next thousand-dollar gift earmarked for tomorrow. I felt the weight of intention in my palm. Each crisp note carried a wish, a promise Brenda believed in as fiercely as I did. Keep going, the money said, find the next story, light another candle.
Dawn Reckoning
Just before sunrise a ribbon of fog engulfed the pasture, and nudged the blacktop. I fired the engine, headlights cutting tunnels through the white. As gears engaged, thoughts of Brenda rode shotgun: those gorgeous brown eyes, the stern way she folds laundry, the crooked grin she can’t suppress when puppies tumble over each other. I cataloged these details like a miser counting coins.
The sky blushed rose, then gold. With daylight came traffic—two pickups, a battered school bus, and migrating geese overhead. The world woke without ceremony, and I drove, heading east, the sun a burning breadcrumb leading home.
The Arithmetic of Distance
Loneliness isn’t static; it compounds. Ten miles without her equals an ache. A hundred becomes a low‑grade fever. By the thousandth mile it calcifies, an interior stone pressing against lung and heart. Yet the mathematics of return offer hope: each mile traveled now is one I won’t have to travel later. The distance shrinks, bead by bead, on an invisible abacus.
Somewhere in the Ozarks, on a ridge overlooking a patchwork of pastureland, I pulled over and scribbled Brenda a letter I’d never mail:
Dear Bren,
Today the sky was so wide it hurt. I wanted to stretch it like a quilt until it covered the miles between us. I bought peaches from a roadside stand—sweet enough to make a man believe in July, even in November—and wished you were there to taste the juice on my chin. The vendor’s dog followed me back to the van, tail helicoptering. He knew I was lonely. Dogs always know.
I’m carrying home stories like river stones in my pockets. Some are smooth already; others need tumbling. You’ll help me polish them, I hope, when the miles are memories.
Keep the porch light burning.
Always and forever,
Brock
I tucked the page into an envelope and tossed it into the glove box, among the spare fuses and the spare ignition switch.
Turning Toward Home
The road arcs south then east, tracing ancient rivers. Towns blur, names instantly forgotten. I stop only for gas and to hand out hope wrapped in stacks of twenties, each gift a tribute to the woman who showed me how giving pieces of yourself away often leaves you more whole.
By dusk Josie and I pull up outside West Helena. I park near the river and sit on the front bumper. Far across the water lies more highway, but also the promise of Brenda’s arms.
I close my eyes and hear her laugh. When I open them, the first star pricks the sky. I make a wish a grown man has no shame making: let the miles be merciful; let the road rise to meet me; let home be waiting, lights glowing, coffee hot, and Brenda’s hand finding mine before words are necessary.
The engine turns over. Headlights carve two bright rails toward the horizon. Somewhere up ahead a sign will announce the border of our state, and beyond that sign Brenda will be shaping a pillow, listening for Josie's distinctive engine rumble. I give Josie a little gas, and we chase the darkness eastward, carrying sky and thoughts and the unbreakable thread that leads me home.