Over Troubled Water

 

"Next right to McMinnville. Exit 87"

Driving in the rain, as if through his own life, he kept counting the exits he flew past, like an old man remembering every time he hung his hopes on a lottery ticket and lost. Every exit was not a lottery ticket he lost, it was one he never bought.

"Just one more. Exit 88"

He knew he could not stop or slow down until he reached home. Until he found it. But the road was still far stretched into the horizon and the sky somber and unforgiving. Under the yellow-grey steel and concrete bridges, he felt safe for an instant before the fleeting shelters rapidly faded in the saggy pocket of the past.

That was it. Next right to McMinnville. The last exit he will not take. Or the first and last one he ever will.

McMinnville. Yes. But not this name. From then on, he was going to call it McKinnville. His ville, the place where he found himself, where he could stop on the curb and take a walk, his warm trembling shadow thrown at his feet one mile away from the setting sun.

McKinnville was to be where he would calmly stand and contemplate the murky rain water flowing under the bridges where he used to be, and where many still were, stranded in their cars, driving towards a meaning and a destiny of their own.

His destiny was to be here. Not because it had to, but because it could and because it was time.

Also because now, he could finally feel it in his skin.