Road Trip

Some things can't be outrun

The Buick was sitting desultorily in an old garage, an even older-looking man standing next to it. Doug l handed the man the five hundred dollar asking price. The old man said nothing as he put the money in the pocket of his old cardigan. The car was buried in a half-inch thick layer of dust— for some, it would have been buried treasure. For Doug, it was the beginning of a plan.

Three weeks and several car washes later, Doug sat behind the wheel and slid the cassette tape into the Regal's radio. It was rewound to his favorite song, the only important one on the album.

He gunned the motor and popped the top on his seventh can of Pabst. The guitar started, and he sprayed gravel from under his tires. The buckles and zippers on his studded leather jacket jingled as he dropped violently into second and blazed down the road in a screech of reeking rubber.

The Buick tore down Farragut Road at seventy miles per hour. Eighty. Ninety-three. He could feel the beer starting to work its anesthetic magic. But the beer was incidental tonight.

One hundred six miles per hour.

Doug's face twisted in a grimace; his eyes narrowed, tears of rage and desperation doubling his vision. He finally let the memories come: Dad and his fists; Holt Hauser and his velvet hands; Principal Hauser and his public shaming; the beating he took from half the football team in the locker room.

He let out a broken whine and mashed the accelerator to the floor.

As the giant old oak at the intersection of Balsam Avenue rapidly grew in the windshield, Doug sang in beautiful harmony with the song: "Now I will just say goodbye..."

He never even tried to turn the wheel.

(Word Count 299)