Who is Driving

On my way to work one dark morning I was nearing my exit. It was dark because I go to work before the sun comes up which is a plus because I don't have to deal with traffic. This luxury allows me the opportunity to experiment with routes, carefully measuring my time, distance, counting lights etc. Like so many of us when we find our route it becomes embedded within us like a slot car working itself around a track. So much that even sometimes when we are not going to work we find our selves going that way with out any awareness. After seeing the man on the tracks so many times I kept my route going over those tracks. I just had to drive past the cotton square mall. Until it was torn down.

Then it was gone, a route that I had deemed the quickest and with the fewest lights suddenly became a mile longer, and took longer to navigate and was not a good route at all. So here I am sitting in the White Pony, the name of my truck, getting ready to exit onto my new route. Until this point both were the same, this is the point of deviation. Oddly enough the exit is on the left hand side of the road which at this point is more like a parkway. Then I am hit with the urge to regress to my old route. Something is calling me there, well actually I have a name for it. I know it is best if I just listen. So just before the road drops away I veer right and cross over three lanes of traffic. It is all effortless because it is right. There is no kick up of dust or erratic driving just a little white pickup merging all the away across the parkway, like a lost tourist who can't decide what exit to take. It all goes unnoticed because nobody is there to see it. In my minds eye I see the taillights of my car tracing to the right and picking up speed for my course rings true.

Driving on my old route I start to think about the old factory that was recycled into the cotton square mall ant then recycled again into building material and crushed brick. Sometimes I wonder why I think about this building so much but I keep trying to figure it out. All that is left is a several acres or red mud. It is that red clay soil that once you walk into it is starts to stack up onto your shoes and pretty soon you have four or five mud pancakes and you walk changes more into a skate. Every step releases a pancake or mud only to be replaced by another. You cringe at the thought of this goo creeping up the side of your shoes knowing it will stain them for weeks at a time. I wonder if I will See the man in the tracks. I haven't seen him since they tore the old factory down. That was a divergence for us as well, just like I changed lanes earlier so did the cotton square mall. It is not there but it is, just like the man. I have come to believe that in his world the mall is still there, and it is waiting for me.

Pulling up towards the light all of this dances inside my head plus so many other strings that dangle around way in the back wanting to be explored and tied together. That is when I see him but he is not under the steel framework like usual he is running across the street. At first I take it for a apparition because I can not make anything out and I keep driving towards it, with the chance to run into or would it be through it. Socks, I see socks running across the street, it is not him at all it is just some dude dressed all in black crossing the street after stopping in at the convince store. Luckily for him I see the socks because that is all I can really make out, socks tells me that this is a person that is here and now. I brake so I don't hit him, I brake just a little to hard as I am snapped from my trace over the man and the mall. My brakes slow me down and there is no note that I was a little panicked. My tires don't lock up, I don't brace myself or even through my lunch in the seat next to me onto the floor but it does roll forward a little. The man with the white socks that saved his life takes one hop up in a effort to pick up his pace and then steps onto the curb. What a dufus I think, wearing all black like that. I quickly check my review mirror to see if any other cars are close behind. It is all clear, I didn't feel like taking on in the tail over that guy.

Later that day as I keep thinking over and over about how it all played out there is only one think of again and again. It is going to happen again, but it is not going to be as nice.