Water & Ice

I made it to the end of the driveway, and turned my head to peer up and down the road. Nothing looked familiar, and I had no idea where I was going. My hands were resting on the steering wheel of an old farm truck; my foot pressing down on the brake. I turned my vision to the passenger seat to see his head still resting in my lap; I reached out a hand to run through his hair, and before I could ask him which way to drive, his lips were parting and I heard a faint sound reach my ears.

“Doc…” he muttered, as he lifted his hand and pointed at the dash of the truck.

I followed his pointing finger, and found a pamphlet of paper at the end of it. It was resting at the base of the windshield, collecting dust on its plastic-covered surface. I fumbled with the edges, and finally opened the pages to reveal a simple map that extended past the width of the steering wheel. It had been laminated, but not before a few details were added.

On a far edge of the map, there was a sticker of a Marigold flower, and a circle around the words, “Dot’s Farm – You Are Here.” There was a dotted red line leading down the map of the laneway, turning left onto the road; and I traced it with my eye to where it met others. A solid green circle was drawn over an intersection, and then a circle traced around a building that read, “Doc’s.” Suddenly, I knew what I was looking at, and I followed the map that seemed to have been waiting for me.

I turned the wheel to the left and watched dust form behind the truck as we sputtered down an old dirt road.

We followed the same road for longer than I can remember, and I eased around its curves as quickly as I could. Every now and then, he would release a cough from his chest, and I’d try not to look over and see the blood fly from his lips. I kept my focus on the road in front of me, and glanced over at some of the surroundings we passed. I knew I had never driven those roads before, but there was something familiar about the homesteads that flew by.

The truck came to a halt as I approached a stop sign, and I took a moment to catch my breath and my bearings before pressing down on the gas again. Looking up at the never-ending stretch of road in front of us, I saw a faint green light shining in our direction, beckoning me towards it. My foot peeled away from the brake pedal, but before I could rest it back down on the gas, my head was turned by some unseen force and my eyes were taking in a sight I didn’t even know I had forgotten.

The banks of the river were just outside the walls of the truck and I watched a spring breeze blow the water down its path. It was flowing alongside us, taunting the truck into a race for speed; rushing me to our destination. With my foot still lingering between the two pedals, I turned my gaze to the rear-view mirror, and watched the river flow toward us. The longer I stared at the horizon behind me, the more I felt drawn to turn around and follow against the flow.

I brought my eyes back down to the map in my lap, and traced my finger along the dotted line. When I found the cross-roads where the truck was halted, I ran my finger back up the road, and found a light blue circle in the middle of a field. There were little blue lines darting out from two directions, one of them flowing alongside the road. I finally realized that it was a pond, with the river rushing straight threw it; and although I had driven right by, I hadn’t seemed to take notice.

Suddenly, though, it was on the insides of my eye lids; and it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. It seemed that when I blinked, the pond was right before my eyes –but it was frozen rather than flowing. Its surface was flat and smooth, shimmering in the Winter sun, with a calm current swirling underneath. There was a break in the ice, as well, where the pond and the river met –where the pace of the water quickened.

I tried to grasp onto the imagine in my mind, but my body shuttered and I felt a cool Winter breeze. The pit in my heart began to feel like ice, so I pulled my attention away from the out-of-sight pond, and sent the truck rolling toward the green light in the distance.

As we approached the mysterious green light, it seemed to beckon me in with a feeling that I couldn’t quite place. I brought the truck to a stop again as we drove into the green light that was spilled on the pavement below us. It was a simple traffic light, indicating no need for me to stop; but rather than turning a quick corner to arrive at the Doctor’s, I moved the truck from Drive to Park.

In the middle of the road with a green traffic light flooding the seats of the truck, my hands fell from the steering wheel. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the source of the light, and everything else began to fade away. As the light finally turned yellow, and then red, I sat motionless, still dreaming of that bright green light. Tears began streaming down my face, but when I looked down at him in the passenger seat, he was gone.

His large, beaten body had disappeared from the seat of the truck, as he was replaced by someone much smaller –a little girl, who seemed far too familiar.

She was wet and shaking, with ice frozen in her blonde hair, and blood-covered tears in her denim overalls. I reached out a hand to run through her curls and watched as her blue eyes locked onto mine. I didn’t say a word, but I heard another woman’s voice leave my lips, “What’s your name, honey?”

The girl broke our shared gaze instantly, lowering her sight to look at the floor of the truck. Our eyes both closed, and when I opened mine again, I was looking up at the woman in the driver’s seat. There was concern spread across her beautiful face, and it only grew when she heard my little voice answer her question, “I don’t know.”

“Where do you live, sweetheart? Your mother must be worried sick!” She stroked my blonde curls with my head in her lap; my tears pooling on the legs of her jeans.

My body ached with every breath, and all I could muster was the same three words, “I don’t know… I don’t know!” I searched my mind frantically and tried to find something familiar to grasp onto. My eye lids were shut tighter than possible and my fists were tapping at my forehead; I tried with all my might to think of my mother’s face, but her image kept alluding me. With absolute defeat, I looked into the strange woman’s eyes and yelled, “I don’t remember!”

Her green eyes were staring back at me, but they slowly began to fade; I watched her face disappear from my sight, as it was replaced by the glare of a little green light.

To be continued...

• Part 1 – The Old Barn
• Part 2 – Peace & Cake
• Part 3 – The Kitchen Table
• Part 4 – Paper & Twine
• Part 5 – The Polaroid Picture
• Part 6 – Bulls & Bullies
• Part 7 – The Raging Beast
• Part 8 – Water & Ice