Purpose Free of Reason

Little Stevie never asked about the content of the boxes. It wasn’t his business. Besides, he liked contenting himself with other affairs, more pressing to him than what exactly it was that he was transporting. One of those affairs was his cat’s well-being. Queenie, the old ragdoll cat he had cared for since she was but a kitten, purred in the passenger seat as he did his weekly routine. So with the wind blowing through his hair and Queenie’s fur, and the soothing tunes of Bradley Nowell playing at a low volume through his car’s speakers, he made the usual five-hour drive from Kelly Bay all the way to the forgotten town of Misserville for the drop off.

He had received the car as a gift from one of his father’s friends. The only money Little Stevie ever invested into that car was gas money. Everything else was paid for by Rick, whom the car was from. Rick always wanted to see Little Stevie succeed - ever since he was no older than eleven, mowing the grass in his enormous backyard. Rick, having no sons of his own, would have done anything for Little Stevie - be that paying for his college tuition, buying him an apartment, or setting him up with a job. And although Little Stevie knew this, he always dreamt of being a self-made man. “Like Stevie Wonder.” he would tell his dad. “But not blind.”

Queenie had everything she needed on the car seat - a bowl of cat food, and a little, spill-proof bowl of water. If she ever had bowel movements, she would simply meow a few times, and Little Stevie would pull over so that she may go outside and do her deeds. Queenie was an educated cat - she never ran off, nor did she ever climb on Little Stevie’s lap, or crawl underneath the pedals while he drove. Besides, she was far too old to do so. As of right now, she slept soundly on the seat. She had been sleeping for about two hours already. The song What I got played on Little Stevie’s CD.

This routine had begun about two years ago, around Little Stevie’s seventeenth birthday. Rick’s face was filled with joy as he saw Little Stevie turn on his new car and rev the engine, as most teenagers do. The car was only slightly younger than Little Stevie - but it ran like the devil. Getting that car was a window of opportunity for him - an opportunity which had already been there, waiting for him for a long time. Little Stevie simply did not have access to the means of seizing it, until that day. As soon as he did however, he called the acquaintance that had presented him with the opportunity of making close to nine thousand dollars a month, simply from making a drive every two weeks. Little Stevie happily obliged to the conditions - he loved driving, and despite having been given a handgun for protection, he never saw any need to leave his car. At Kelly Bay, he popped the trunk for the boat workers to load it up with unmarked boxes, and when he arrived in Misserville, usually in the cool morning dew, he once again popped it so that it may be unloaded. He would get coffee at a gas station just outside of town, before heading back home again. His home was an old, weather-beaten house in a town bordering Kelly Bay. Despite the unfriendly conditions of his house, his yard was kept to an immaculate standard, and a red hammock was tied in between two cherry trees in the back. It’s where Little Stevie spent every spring reading, as the blooming cherry tree petals fell on him.

His family had been suspicious of him at first - but given as they normally saw him every day, and they had all their bills paid for through Little Stevie’s job, they soon forgot to think about the doubt and worry that had originally troubled their minds. Little Stevie administered the money well - of the monthly nine thousand, four of them went towards paying his family’s rent, bills and groceries. He allowed himself to spend three thousand on himself and his needs, and two thousand got stashed beneath his mattress. Two years later, Little Stevie had saved up nearly twenty-five thousand dollars. What he was saving up for, he did not yet know. He always had been something of a selfless person - and he thought that in two more years, he would have enough money to pay for his little sister’s college tuition when the time came, and enough to buy himself an apartment overlooking the downtown area of his city.

“Until then, we just drive, right Queenie?” He asked the cat. She gave no response, aside from the purring he was accustomed to. “That’s right.”

The drives were mostly conversations between Little Stevie and Queenie, most of his statements being normally met with silence, and the rare glance or nod from the cat. With his music on, the windows rolled down and the heat of the car’s air conditioning blowing on full blast (to keep the temperature in his car perfectly neutral,) Little Stevie’s mind was untainted, untarnished and undisturbed by the utter mess that sometimes engulfed him.

When he had no distraction, Little Stevie would enter his mind - a place that was normally filled with negative thoughts and a cynical outlook. On one hand, it was the very dark nature of his mind that had made him become so selfless. He saw no need in gathering worldly riches for himself. Materialistic philosophies had always been a concept which he did not, nor did he feel the need to understand. He felt that the most he could get out of life is a legacy of serving others, not of serving himself. As a consequence, he was very easily taken advantage of - by his friends, his acquaintances, and the lovers he’d had through the years. He was very well aware of it too - but then as mentioned before, he did not care much for himself. So long as spring rolled around again, and Little Stevie could lounge in the hammock with a book, everything was alright for him.

His friends came and went - it had always been that way. Little Stevie had no crazy obsession for money, clothes, or any matter of comfort. The one thing that usually filled his mind, however, was people. He found a passion in analyzing, understanding, and loving everybody he met. As such, Little Stevie considered even his most distant acquaintances to be his closest friends. He offered the same love to a person he had known since childhood, as he did to somebody he had known for mere minutes.

This factor most often resulted in a constant, untimely breaking of his generous heart. And still, with the stubbornness of a child and the curiosity of a cat, he set himself up to suffer time and time again.

“You see, Queenie -” He explained to the cat during his first drive after having just gotten his heart broken. “ the value of a person’s love does not depend upon whether or not it is reciprocated. That’s what I’ve learned.” Queenie meowed in response.

Little Stevie checked the time. It was 3:34 AM on a summer night, and he was only two hours away from Misserville. A full moon and a star-covered sky served as his guide through the dark. He would arrive just before dawn, and receive his payment as the sun peaked from beyond the colossal mountains that surrounded that small town. It would be a memory that Little Stevie was bound to think about for a long time to come; he normally arrived while it was still dark, and would leave as the sun rose behind him. At that point, the sunrise would become something of an inconvenience - blinding him through his rear view mirror. This time, he would have a good look at it. He began brainstorming songs in order to figure out which one went best with the upcoming scenery he would soon experience. He settled on Santeria by Sublime.

The spacious, winding highway leading him through the deserted towns he had become accustomed to, reminded him of the twisty roads of Apulia, in Italy - a place he had visited many times, in his mind. Despite finding comfort in the thought of driving along the edge of the sea, Little Stevie had always been afraid of the ocean. Something about its vastly undiscovered parts and the potential danger lurking in the darkness made him feel uneasy. As thus, although he only lived a ten minute drive away from the bay, he only visited it when absolutely necessary. Simply looking out into the water made his stomach turn, and he was pleased to know that there was much more comfort to be found, at least for him, in the cedar-covered mountains of The Interior. Another thing he hated about the ocean was its smell - particularly the smell of Kelly Bay, seeing as that was the only saltwater he’d ever been exposed to. Kelly Bay is one of the filthiest parts of the ocean - something about colliding currents drags out all the garbage within the surrounding hundred miles of the coast stretching out into the ocean, and makes it wash up on the shore. Yet it was somewhat self-contradictory to find that stones used to pave Little Stevie’s road to the carefree life he now lived, began in the place he disliked the most.

Little Stevie drove by a massive cedar with the words “The Interior Welcomes You.” inscribed upon it. His car was becoming filled with the smell of coniferous trees and hot pavement, as he pressed the gas all the way down and watched the speedometer go from 100, to 120, to 140, to 160 kilometres per hour. He kept his car steady at that speed, and there was nobody in front of him, and no one behind him. At that moment, it was just Little Stevie and Queenie against the world. Despite having done this drive more than twenty times already, upon reaching the landmark that signified his entering the Interior Region, he always became filled with a sense of home, of belonging, of peace. He listened to the engine purr along with Queenie, and turned down the music a bit, in order to hear the surrounding forests whisper to him. If he listened closely, he swore that he heard them say stories, secrets, sins, mistakes and miracles.

He knew that whatever he was transporting in his trunk was not good. He had taken many guesses at the contents of the boxes, but had never had the audacity to open one. The mystery of the boxed contents was one of the most intriguing parts of his job, and his lack of knowledge was something which he found himself taking much pride in. As much as finding out about the nature of those contents would be liberating, it would be just as much of a mental prison which he could never again escape. The satisfaction would be momentary, but the awareness of that knowledge could condemn him to a lifetime of suffering. His mystical drives would lose their charm; he would cease to see the magic in the lack of entertainment, in the silence which he found when he drove. His peace was nothing if not wholly reliant on his code of morals. It was as though he carried Pandora’s Box - and he would not make Pandora’s mistake.

As for the police in that region, well, there was a single policeman that stopped him during one of his first drives, for excessive speeding. He came up to Little Stevie’s car, signalled for him to roll the window all the way down, and turn his engine off. He was a well-built, tall white man with a bald head and two arrogant blue eyes that seemed to have a barbaric urge of dominating whoever was unlucky enough to glance at them. The routine questions followed. “Do you know how fast you were going? Have you consumed any alcohol tonight? Any marijuana? Your driver’s license says that you live in Chilmarock, what are you doing here?” Little Stevie saw no end to the questioning, and felt the minutes ticking away and nearing the scheduled hour of his delivery. He thought quickly. Reaching into his glove box for a neatly wrapped roll of money containing a thousand dollars, he carefully avoided the handgun and took it out. The policeman watched this happen, but was more so focused on Queenie’s bright blue eyes. She continued purring. He handed the policeman the money, and in about thirty seconds, he was gone. Little Stevie let out a relieved breath as he saw the white car drive away, and he went about his road.

Several confrontations with the same man followed. The policeman had figured out Little Stevie’s routine - which led to a loss of one thousand dollars to him every month during the first six months. However, having realized this, Little Stevie began changing the delivery days, and had not had an encounter with the policeman for over a year. Were he to ever get pulled over again, he knew the drill, and the cop knew him. All he would have to lose is a thousand dollars, which was close to nothing for Little Stevie, especially now. Every man has a price, and for this corrupt cop, Little Stevie considered the price to be disgustingly low.

Nevertheless, there was no cop car in sight tonight. Nothing but a clear highway, a purring cat, the moon lighting his way, and the smell of cedars in the air. Little Stevie stuck his left hand out the window and moved it in the motion of a wave. Chica Me Tipo was playing, and he allowed himself to become immersed in the soft sounds of Bradley Nowell’s guitar. From an outsider’s perspective, he was a man driving late at night, or early in the morning. From the perspective of a law-abiding citizen or a cop, he was a dangerous criminal transporting unlabelled boxes most likely containing something illegal. And from Little Stevie’s perspective, he was simply a teenage boy driving down the highway with his sleeping cat, feeling the summer breeze in the darkness, listening to the forests’ whispers, and experiencing the tenderness of the night which most people spend dreaming. The simplicity of his life’s complications is what made Little Stevie’s life worth living.

He drove past a scorched part of the forest, one that had been badly damaged by a forest fire the previous year. Though he could not see the damages caused by the hellfire which once reigned in that area, he felt the smell of charred wood - a smell so persistent that its faint aroma still floated in the air a year later. This forest told no more stories, so Little Stevie listened closely for the whistling of the wind through the thin, black trees that stuck out of the ground like the towers of a Gothic castle. Along with the whooshing wind, he heard the faint sound of a river flowing through there - the promise that new life would soon again cover that area, as it did once before. Mother Nature does not rely on humans, for humans have been widely unreliable since the dawn of time. She cleans up by herself - and she cleans up nicely.

Little Stevie saw the warm yellow street lights of Misserville bordering on the horizon. He knew he was no more than ten minutes away from the drop-off location - a warehouse on the outskirts of town. Little Stevie caressed Queenie’s head, and continued doing so until he arrived. Queenie licked his hand.

Misserville was indeed a long-forgotten town. There were a handful of houses, a single gas station, and a river which flowed through the centre of the city. Built along the river were the City Hall - an old Victorian building, a Catholic church with its usual extravagant domes adorned with gold, and a poor excuse for a school. This was a town of people that had nothing to see, and nothing to do. Their lives were dominated by a series of alcohol-fuelled evenings, and headache-filled mornings. Most people only left their houses in the afternoon, only to return in the evening, and once again, drink.

Little Stevie was both filled with wonder and disgust at this concept. Similarly to him, none of these people chased anything worldly (save of course, alcohol). All the same, these people lived for nothing. Nothing drove them out of bed in the morning, and nothing drove them out of town. The mentality they all commonly shared, had grown on them like a tumour, rendering them unable, or unwilling, to move. A life with no purpose is kin to a life filled with materialistic purposes. One must find a comfortable middle ground - a no man’s land in which they find peace. The green patch of grass that grows in the middle of a roundabout.

Little Stevie parked his car outside of the warehouse. The man that greeted him that morning simply muttered a “Stephen.” and nodded his head before unloading the trunk. Little Stevie waved at him, and turned back home. He parked outside the Misserville General Gas Station, facing east. He quickly ran in, bought himself an espresso, and returned to his car. He brought Queenie out, placed her on the hood of the car, and put on the song Santeria. He sat next to Queenie on the warm hood, and they watched the sun rise from behind the mountains. There was not a person in sight, and not a sound, aside from the guitar which came from within his car. Not Little Stevie nor Queenie made any noise - they simply watched in awe as the red disk began to rise, painting the clouds along with it. The moon and stars had faded from the sky, and a pink hue surrounded them as the early morning summer breeze ruffled their hair. The red disk turned into orange, and then into gold, until they could feel its heat.

The cat had already fallen asleep again, and Little Stevie closed his eyes. “My life is alright.” He said to no one.