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D I V O R C E by cmsix Chapter 4 Aside from the road the next thing I noticed reinforced my earlier impressions of animal behavior. There were too many animals just fucking around outside. They weren't getting in my way or anything like that, but I kept seeing flashes of movement that you just don't see in a nature preserve where people are wandering around all the time. Also, now that I'd been paying more attention to such, I'd noticed the occasional big oak or hickory and actually several other type trees scattered around here and there. I'd seen quite a few squirrels prowling around for acorns or nuts and that just isn't normal now-a-days. Things got curiouser and curiouser when I finished walking to the end of my road because it wasn't really an end. It seemed like my road T'ed into another one. I know that's completely odd, for one non-road to T into another non-road out in a seemingly untouched forest, but that's what it was. My original not really a road road ended in another not really road going nominally north to south from where mine entered, and yet they couldn't possibly be roads because no one had traveled them. I could see probably two or more miles toward the south and the path was straight, much more so than it could have been in nature. To the north it was same song, northern verse. Since the northern verse was being sung gently up hill I could only see about a mile. Straight ahead was nothing but forest and I could tell that the brush and undergrowth thickened considerably, about where I thought the Neches was. Two roads diverged in a green wood, in this case anyway, and being a lost redneck I took neither. I should probably spend a moment offering my apologies to Robert Frost, but I don't have time. Still thinking I'd been heading east, I walked north east into the forest across from me, hoping I could find some sanity at the dam. It couldn't be more than a mile or so. Thirty minutes later I found that it could indeed be more than a mile away. In fact it wasn't here at all. The Neches River was still in place but there was no Twin Bluffs Lake to be seen anywhere. The river was pretty wide for a while but a lake and dam were no longer on its agenda. Now I was impressed. It's one thing to make a café and gas station disappear, but getting rid of a dam and lake is in another league entirely. Something was dreadfully wrong and I didn't even feel a deep burning pain in my side. No doubt I was in even more trouble than Marty Robbins had been in out behind Rosa's Cantina in El Paso. I was fucked, and neither Felina nor anyone else had even kissed me first. Completely at a loss for what to do, again, I wandered off toward the northwest and maybe a half hour later ran across the road heading north. It was still a road that wasn't really a road but I worked my way uphill along the edge of the trees, heading for the top of a rise. At the top it was more of the same. I could see the road trend down into a little swale and then back up another rise. It was probably two miles to the next top point. It hit me then that I'd been an idiot striking out on foot. I'd been in my truck and hadn't even turned on the radio. I never listened to it much anyway and that's probably why I didn't think about turning it on. Now that I'd finally tumbled to a plan, I walked more purposefully back to my pickup. I needn't have bothered. The radio came on just like it was supposed to and there was nothing but static. AM or FM was all the same; dead air. I could have turned that tuning knob for days and not found a station, there weren't any. I turned it off and got out. I wasn't going to find any answers here and that was that. My next trick had to be trying to drive somewhere. First things first though, I had to get the Zodiac deflated and packed up. They never bother to mention that those things are not as easy to deflate and fold up as they are to inflate to go boating in the first place. It took me two hours to get it back in my camper shell. The next item on my agenda was changing tires. The ones I had on the truck were of the ground grip persuasion, but they were never meant to do service on roads that were not roads. When I'd first bought this truck, in 1976, it was meant to be nothing but an off road vehicle. It didn't have five hundred miles on it before I'd had the wheel wells enlarged to accommodate a set of huge Monster Mudders - tires that had a thirty-four inch diameter and a twelve inch tread. I'd also been forced, though it didn't take much forcing, to install air shocks on the back and the front axles so I could raise the body to clear the new rubber. My enthusiasm for off roading, wet country style, came to an end after I learned that every trip down a seriously muddy road required about twelve hours of maintenance to remove the mud, change the oil, transmission grease, differential lube, and repack the front wheel bearings. And particular attention had to be paid to washing out the front disc brakes and the rear drum brakes to make sure no mud remained. I learned this when I had to replace all the above. I also learned that Monster Mudders were for use in mud, or at least on dirt roads. Twelve thousand miles was all they lasted when used everyday, on pavement. Shortly thereafter I gave up off-roading and resigned my tentative membership in the Queen City Jeep Club, but since then I'd always kept a set of Monster Mudders with me, even though they are a huge pain in the ass to carry around. At the moment they were in their custom built rack on the back of my trailer. I'm sure you've seen Monster Mudders before, even if you didn't realize what you were looking at at the time. At least you have if you've ever traveled in real redneck country. Monster Mudders are the giant tires you see on pickups that are jacked up so high the redneck needs a ladder to get in. In my particular application, I had a removable step that I could hang off the bottom of the cab when I put the big tires on. An hour later, after changing tires, hooking my trailer, and making sure I had everything packed up - I pulled out of my former parking spot and headed for the T ahead. I stopped after only a few yards and put the transmission into low range. Even though my road was smoother than a path through a forest had any right to be, fourteen miles per hour was not on the program, and that's as slowly as my truck would move idling in low gear while in high range. I took off again and did well at roughly nine miles per hour, idling in third gear in low range. When I came to the T there was no trouble making the turn north and it looked like I would have been able to turn south almost as easily. At this low speed I had no trouble just idling along, but I didn't really see anything but forest. Of course this was the Big Thicket, but there was nothing, except trees. I did see a few more different types, but I didn't know what to call most of them. To me trees were pine, oak, hickory, and other. Twenty-seven minutes later - five point seven miles by my odometer - my road turned left, heading west, or maybe a little south of west. I guess I should have opened the camper shell and looked for my boy scout compass, but I didn't. I followed the road for twelve point six more miles and then it turned left again, heading due south, as best I could tell. Things got slightly more interesting for a few minutes, as the road made a sweeping curve to the right and swept back left and then made other rambling curves that I lost track of. But twenty-eight miles from the turn south, it turned back east again. Suddenly it dawned on me that I'd better try keeping track of all this exploration information, so I fished around behind the seat for my clipboard that always had a spiral notebook in it. Flipping over a few pages to the first blank one, I tried to sketch out my route so far. It was probably from the close scrutiny I'd given my map lately, deciding which part of the thicket to visit and the best way to get there, but my sketch began to look familiar. Taking the clipboard with my rough sketch back to my trailer, I found the map of the preserve they'd let me have at the Turkey Creek Welcome Center. My sketch didn't show much, but at least I knew where I thought I'd started from this morning. The distances told me more than my sketch did. Except for the missing pavement, or missing everything I guess, it seemed that I'd gone north along a road that was where State Highway 92 was supposed to be, and the left turn I'd made put me west bound on what should have been US Highway 190. I'd gone west until I turned south approximately where Woodville should have been and then headed generally south, on what should have been US Highway 69 until I got here, which should have been Kountze. Kountze wasn't here either. I was at another T intersection and my best guess made me believe the road heading east should have been State Highway 418. If these roads were really where the highways belonged, 418 should take me to State Highway 96. Trouble was, I would have to cross Beech Creek in a couple of miles. Those thoughts made me realize that I hadn't had to get wet at all today, and the map showed plainly that I should have had to cross several small streams and even some that weren't all that small. I started back east anyway and kept a watch for Beech Creek. I came to it right where I'd expected it and the weirdness got weirder. The creek came up almost to what I considered the edge of the road and disappeared only to reappear on the other side. I stopped and got out and walked up for a closer look. The water was murky and I couldn't see anything below the surface, but by walking from one side of the road to the other, I could tell that the water was flowing at about the same speed on either side. I just didn't know how it was performing this miracle. The road didn't seem to be mushy, even right over the creek. Knowing I'd never understand this, I accepted it and got back in my truck. Following the road, I found that it turned left - northward - about a mile short of where I thought it would have hit what should be State Highway 96. Of course, it was State Highway 92, the one I'd taken to get to last night's camping spot. Dutifully I turned north and headed back to where I'd started from. I didn't make it, since my nine mph max speed had already run me short of daylight. I stopped in what I considered the middle of the road, warmed up some beans and chili and then went to bed, hoping against hope that a Texas State Trooper would bang on the trailer's door to write me a ticket and tell me to pull off the god dammed highway. I slept through the night with no interruptions, dammit. After fixing some breakfast, going back to where I'd started still seemed the best thing to do. By now I was sure that's where I was headed anyway. I tried fourth gear today, in low range idling, and it wasn't too rough. I was making nearly eleven miles an hour and was back to square one by ten-thirty AM. After turning left to go back to my previous campsite, I noticed a change right away. My short road now continued straight ahead as far as I could see and I didn't come to the little clearing I'd been in yesterday morning. This was even crazier than crazy. How could the damned roads be changing over night? After two miles I realized my mistake. I'd turned left on what I thought was the road I'd started from, but I must have turned off on a different road before I got to it. I couldn't have noticed this road before because I'd turned north yesterday and this was still south of my starting point. Surely I was a creating to get lost with so few roads available. I stopped and studied the gimme map from the preserve's welcome center. My best guess was that I was now on Farm Road 1746 or where it should be, and that I was headed right back to where Woodville wasn't anymore. I was and it still wasn't. I had room to turn around where Woodville was missing and I did, retracing my path and ending up back at the green grass path formerly know as Farm Road 92, where I turned north. A quarter of a mile on I could see the tracks from where I'd turned north yesterday morning. Not wanting another major detour, I parked in the middle of the road, such as it was, and walked westward down my tracks to the clearing where I'd slept in bliss as the world turned to shit around me. I went back for the truck, drove it to the clearing, and circled around until I was headed out. Tonight I broke down and made some cornbread. I had to break in those molds sometime. I needed something to settle my nerves. Cooking helped. Later, after eating, I went outside and decided I should build a campfire. Dammit, I was sure as hell camping now, even if I was sleeping in the trailer. I'd dare anyone to say I wasn't really camping. If I had anyone to talk to I would. Pine is not worth a shit for firewood and I knew that. I fished out one of my Estwing single bit axes and strolled over to a deadfall oak I saw. The sun was still a couple of hours from setting and I didn't have any urgent appointments so I was off to gather firewood. Breaking up small branches and gathering squaw wood was easy enough, but cutting off something substantial was a bitch. The Estwing axe might be good for a lot of things, but cutting firewood wasn't any of them. It was too light and the handle was made funny; for the first time in my life I longed for a good, old-fashioned, double bit cruiser. My next thought was why wish for an axe when you could wish for a chainsaw, as long as you were wishing. Grousing all the while about buying everything in sight except a chainsaw or even a decent axe, I gathered wood enough for a campfire. Most of it was long limbs I broke off and dragged near the fire. I saved the effort of cutting it into short handy lengths by placing the longer lengths over the fire to burn in half. I realized that if I was really stuck here, wherever or whenever here was, I was going to have a hard time cutting and splitting firewood, because I didn't have a maul, sledge hammer, or any wedges. I barely stayed out with my fire past sunset. Maybe I was feeling sorry for myself or maybe I was going crazy. Things hadn't been so bad but they were nothing I would wish for even if they'd been possible, and clearly they weren't, even if they were real. I undressed and went to bed. I was asleep in seconds. I didn't even want to drag myself out of bed the next morning, but I had to pee and so I did. When I came out of the tiny bathroom I happened to glance out of a window and I saw the parking lot. I wanted to jump for joy and then run out and kiss the ground. The ground hell, I wanted to run to the café, order two of everything and then kiss the cook, and she'd been ugly as shit. I couldn't pull my clothes on fast enough and barely took time to comb my hair. It was hard to keep from running out of the trailer. Things went bad when I touched the door's knob. A voice came into my head and if I hadn't already been to the bathroom I'd have pissed myself. "You were right here, but in 1720. Find what you were wanting, but you'll be back then tomorrow morning, no matter where you go." I went to my knees, stunned. The voice had been inside my head, and I knew it, and now I knew it had all been real. I had no doubt that I would be back there, or then, tomorrow - and I knew I was completely fucked. If I tried to tell someone they would never believe me. If I asked the police for help, they'd probably lock me up, for my own protection if nothing else. I also knew it wouldn't make one bit of difference. Since it was all impossible anyway, how could anyone prevent it? There wasn't a doubt in my mind that I'd be right back where I'd been, or at least when I'd been, tomorrow morning. If I weren't parked in this lot and in my trailer, no doubt I'd be back to 1720 no matter where I was. Chapter 5 Back to story Index Back to cmsix Index Copyright cmsix |