Driving

The road was confident and kept a steady murmur going through the miles. But the wind was brash. It seemed to bite me to get my attention.

I was invited to a party by a friend of mine named Wayne. It wasn’t going to be a big deal, he said. It was just a few people and some food and beer. He had built a fire pit in his backyard and wanted to break it in.

Wayne lived about an hour away. I liked the drive. I could follow gently curving rural roads most of the way to his house. He lived in Delaware, and the road I planned to drive cut through corn and soybean fields until a junction with a more trafficked road forced me to turn and then cross from Maryland into Delaware.

It was June, and the green scents of fields bathed even the gentlest breeze with a rural perfume. The mineral smell of damp ground traveled with me. It was humid, and the warm, heavy air was dense and even seemed to slow my truck as it pushed its way through the glowing twilight.

I rolled down the windows to let the smells and roaring air surround me as I turned the knob to click the radio on. Reaching down into the small shelf under the dash, I grabbed a cassette, dexterously flipping it over in the palm of my hand. I found side one and pushed it into the door in the face of the radio.

The songs kept me company like uneasy companions. They pushed me faster or forced me to move slower. None were ever at ease with my pace. I clicked the radio off.

My headlights glowed, illuminating yards ahead and highlighting patches and imperfections in the cooling blacktop.

Road noise rose to meet me. Tires rolling over sun-bleached asphalt made subtle humming music. It swelled in volume and fell in pitch with uncertainty. It sounded like a softly hummed, long, stretched-out song I had never heard before.

The road was confident and kept a steady murmur going through the miles. But the wind was brash. It seemed to bite me to get my attention. Gusting swirls chewed my hair and shirt in its own rambunctious way. I didn’t mind. It was like playing with a friendly dog.

Finally, the darkness swallowed the dusk. My headlights glowed, illuminating yards ahead and highlighting patches and imperfections in the cooling blacktop. The surface flickered by while green corn growing close to the side of the road blinked by like a fence.

The sky darkened to ultramarine. A damp coolness crept into the breeze. The air grew heavier with dew. My arm, resting on the door and my elbow protruding out of the window, felt the dampness. A film of moisture clung to my skin.

Sometimes, a car would pass me, heading in the opposite direction on the gently winding two-lane road. Each one was a disruption, an annoyance I couldn’t control. I would see the headlights looming and growing nearer. The surge of wind pushed by the oncoming car shook the beauty I moved through. The night and its saturated deepening color seemed like it was only for me. It swallowed everything around me, only held back by the gray ribbon of the road curving through the fields.

I drove for another 20 minutes. My breathing slowed but grew deeper in the darkness. I concentrated on the clover smells that arrive with spring and fade with the meanness of summer. As I passed a dairy farm, the heavy, sweet smell of cows even seemed pleasant under the newly sparkling stars and the throbbing noise of the road. A different world stretched out around me. My headlights were dim, puny, yellow reminders of my place in the vastness.

I crested a slight rise and followed the gracefully curving road in a sweeping left. In the darkness, I saw my friend’s house and the lights in the backyard mingling with a fire in a pit surrounded by people. Cars lined his narrow driveway, their windows flickering as my headlights grazed them. I lifted my foot off the accelerator hesitatingly, only to mash it down as I raced by.

In another mile, I came to a stop sign. I sat listening to the engine idle and crickets chirruping in the grass lining the road. I waited only a moment, then turned and began a wide loop, heading back through the night toward home.