In addition to his camera gear and computer bag, he grabbed one box from the back of the Jeep, to keep safe in the motel room with him and Sushi. The further he travelled from home, away from his family, the more Jerry thought about the odd little treasures left to him by his great-grandfather, and the more he felt the need to protect them. They were pieces of his own history, far more than silly knick-knacks, and definitely worthy of care.
He fed Sushi, drank a glass of cold South Dakota tap water, and climbed between the crisp, starched motel sheets. Sleep caught up with him almost as soon as he clicked off the mock-brass bedside lamp.
SOMETHING WAS CHANGED. She sensed warmth that had been missing. She stretched and moved out of the darkness, and found herself in a simple room. She couldn’t see clearly, but it seemed to have basic, blocky furniture devoid of any adornments, including a desk on which a small fish bowl sat. She watched the beautiful red and purple beauty swim back and forth as if it could see her. Eventually it settled down and relaxed just above the gravel on the bottom of the simple bowl. She found it peaceful to just watch the fins and gills move. Did it sleep? She had no idea. Drifting around the hazy room, she wandered through the bed and inadvertently passed through its occupant. She got a sense of a young man and backed away quickly, embarrassed to have invaded his privacy even in the dream. Her dark cocoon soon beckoned to her so she willingly returned to its familiarity.
EXCITEMENT WOKE HIM earlier the next morning than he’d planned, and an odd dream he’d had about a pretty girl watching over him in silence stuck with him as he fixed himself a cup of decaf, had a quick shower, packed everything up, and loaded it all into the Jeep. Eventually thoughts of seeing Rushmore pushed the dream girl into the background.
Despite a light dusting of snow, man and fish were off before sunrise in an attempt to make it across the state to the Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore by lunch. He knew Sushi didn’t give a damn about where they had lunch, but Jerry felt that if they could get there by mid-day, he could take some time to see one of the great man-made wonders of the modern world. For him, Rushmore was to be the highlight of the whole road trip. As he’d told Isis when they’d gone over his itinerary the night before he left, there were two reasons he was driving through the U.S.—to avoid much of the Canadian prairie winter weather, and to see Mount Rushmore. They’d spent an hour on her laptop looking up the mountain-carved monument on Wikipedia, and before they were done, Isis was so excited that she wanted to go with him just so she could see the faces of the four presidents carved into the side of a mountain.
“That is too cool, Jerry! Take lots of pictures and email them to me. Promise?”
“I promise, Kiddo.”
WITHIN THE INKY blackness enveloping and winding through her, she could sense motion again, as if the darkness was on the move. She lacked the energy to stretch beyond her prison again, and she wanted to cry out, for anyone, friend of foe, but she still couldn’t find her voice. Exhausted, she was isolated, suspended… lost.
Chapter Four
@TheTaoOfJerr: “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
JERRY DIDN’T ARRIVE in Custer, South Dakota until after lunch, but that was only because he’d spent an hour wandering around Wall Drugs—“America’s Biggest Roadside Attraction”. He bought a carved, lifelike, two-inch tall rattlesnake for Isis, and got the requisite free bumper sticker from the bin at the exit from one of the shops, but in his excitement to reach Rushmore, he was disappointed in the massive Wild West tourist trap in the simply-named town of Wall. Under different circumstances, he thought he probably could have appreciated the shops, galleries, and museums more, but the Jeep’s tires spit gravel and snow as he fled the parking lot and made his way back to I-90 and west to the turnoff south to the town of Custer and Mount Rushmore.
HE COULD HAVE spent years researching the mountain-tall memorial and still not been prepared for the thrill of seeing it in person, towering above him, beyond the Avenue of the Flags, the Grand View Terrace, and the amphitheatre. Someone back east had once told him that they were disappointed with how small the memorial was, but standing there, looking up at its immensity, Jerry had to wonder what the hell they were expecting if they considered this small. He was blown away.
Knowing that he couldn’t leave Sushi in the Jeep for too long without heat, he snapped pictures from every angle imaginable, walked the short Presidential Trail, ducked into the Lincoln Borglum Museum, and scooted through the gift shop in record time. He hated to leave the magnificence of Gutzon Borglum’s masterpiece of engineering, but the mountain temperatures were dropping quickly, the forecast was for wet snow out of nearby Wyoming, and Sushi, patient and sturdy though he was, deserved to spend the night in a warm hotel room.
He promised himself that someday soon he’d return to fully appreciate the human and natural history of the Black Hills, then Jerry reluctantly drove back north to I-90 and west into Wyoming. A roast beef sandwich and an orange Gatorade grabbed in Rapid City kept his stomach from growling too much, but just south of Sheridan, Wyoming, at almost 4000 feet above sea level, a headache hit like a bullet to the brain.
With one hand pressed against his temple to feebly try and suppress the chainsaw in his head, and one eye barely open, Jerry swerved off the highway and into a closed truck weigh scale. As soon as the Jeep skidded to a stop, he slammed it into PARK, staggered out into the snow, and collapsed, vomiting up the orange mess that had once been the sandwich and the sports drink. Gentle flakes of loving snow drifted calmly down to blanket him in a thin layer of cooling, crisp white, but it took plunging his head face-first into a snow drift to push the pain back.
The sword of agony was eventually supplanted by the spear of cold, so Jerry hauled himself to his feet and stumbled to the still-running Jeep. A quick look at his watch said that he’d only been there for ten minutes, but he felt like it had been years. He rinsed his mouth out with warm water from the bottle in the console, popped in some gum, and pulled back out onto the quiet interstate. Twenty minutes later he and Sushi were in a beige room in a beige motel somewhere just off the interstate. Sushi gobbled up the food flakes Jerry dropped in his bowl while Jerry nibbled a Subway tuna wrap and sipped Coke in a feeble attempt to resurrect his blood sugar. He fell asleep with Garth Brooks’ “The Beaches of Cheyenne” whispering out of the tinny clock radio, courtesy of Sheridan’s own KYTI 93.7, and slept until nine the next morning.
SHE SENSED A great deal of pain nearby and so stayed in her darkness. Although she was curious about the young man she had bumped into in that stark dream room, the great pain frightened her and hinted that something may have happened to herself recently that involved more pain than she could ever imagine. She curled around herself and pushed all thoughts of agony away.