25 Hour Watch

Pt. 1 – Charlie
Pt. 2 – … goes to Canada, sort of
Pt. 3 – … and the Big Blue Ox
Pt. 4 – … and the Big Blue Ox pt. II

Charlie looked down at the shiny face clasped around his wrist, and squinted his blue eyes against the circular, blinding glare that stared back.  He searched for mounted hands on the face of his timer, and found both long and short directed their fingers to the sky.  Friday held the lead on Saturday by twelve, and Charlie was just a fistful of miles outside his Canadian destination.  For him, no trumpets would sound, no petals would fall, and no one would gather for his arrival in the city, but still, Charlie would ride his four wheeled, 98 horsepower chariot into town.  Like a champion who slayed the giant, or a king retuning for his throne, Charlie was the hero, who called in sick to work.  Somehow, Winnipeg had become his reward.

Cruise controlled and stereoed, steady at 75, the soundtrack of his journey told him to keep belief alive. Pounding away with fists like mallets on his steering wheel drum, inside his tan Toyota, his vocals were spot on.  Verse into chorus, electric affected sound blared through treble heavy speakers, and Charlie gripped invisible projection and went on and on and on.  Strangers, streetlights, down across the boulevard, shadows stretched out far away from sun, and Charlie once again, was singing at the top of his lungs.

He entered Winnipeg just as the radio went to the next song.  Charlie checked with the reliable Rand McNally for directions, and adjusted his eyes to the bright, white edges, on a spiral bound page.  The mile markers and the numbers in Rand’s directions were nearly a perfect match, and Charlie cruised on, for a few more miles on the Manitoba road, admiring the calm of another day away from work.

Canadian sun climbed high from the east of the Manitoba sky, and from its position, blanketed the land in humidity and ultraviolet heat.  White clouds gathered and sparsely spotted small sections of an otherwise unadulterated, blue expanse, and far above ground, a flock of flying, v-shaped coordination, squawked past.  Charlie admired their synchronized momentum, carrying them north faster than the tan Toyota could legally carry him.  In moments, the multiple squawks were dots in the distance, and Charlie came back down to earth, back down to the steering wheel and the open road.  Riotous trees lined both sides of the asphalt.  Their pale, knobbed and knotted branches bowed and bent; they stretched across the road.  A green existence a thousand leaves curved and hung, twisted and furled; the forest hugged the very edges of the roadside with gnarled roots, curled up above ground, breaking away pieces of blackened foundation.  The gathering of knotted trees grew restless, and swayed in the air above him.  Moving, positioning, posturing at the roadside, as if planning an invasion, to take back the land from asphalt; to exact revenge one pot hole at a time.  The rabble lined relief from the bright bulb in the blue summer sky.  They provided Charlie just enough cover to escape the yellow orb; which had threatened to gruesomely melt off his left arm through his driver side window.  His flesh had warmed, his skin warned him there was burning.  Red prevailed, and were it not for the rising power of the trees, Charlie felt it certain his arm would have been dissembled to a malleable ooze of flesh and bone.  He considered this fate, and lost in his imagination, Charlie nearly missed his turn.

He forced the wheel clockwise, and the front two wheels turned in sharp response.  The squall of rubber rubbing road wretched its sound inside the car, and Charlie’s tan Corolla bumped, thudded, and thumped across the asphalt, down into the exit, deeper into the city.  Charlie gripped the wheel, two armed, white knuckled, red faced, he checked the mirror.  Behind him, only the trees waved their disapproval of his abysmal driving.

“No more daydreams,” Charlie thought to himself out loud.

He returned his focus to the road ahead, and traffic gathered with him to a stop at a red.  Awaiting green, Charlie sat beneath a cloudless, blue expanse, and he admired the geometry of the jagged cityscape skyline.  Down into the avenues, the alleys, and the ways, the windowed towers of the city brightly reflected day.  His eyes followed the road to its vanishing point, where high above the dashed blacktop, Winnipeg spiked and towered, and smiled against the sun.  A lazy river surrounded the city, contrasting the light, and a certain kind of calm filled inside the tan Toyota.  Charlie felt relief.  Satisfaction, accomplishment, a tangible sense of pride.  After two straight days of driving, Charlie had arrived.  Checking with the face again, strapped around his wrist, Friday’s lead had been cut to ten, and Charlie wondered what he might do.  To him, it didn’t seem to matter.  He had arrived.  The road, the towers, the skyline, and the sun; Charlie somehow felt like he’d been away from home.