I spend a week looking like an idiot- cutting the engine at stoplights, struggling to change gears on the highway, suffering breakdowns and walking like a saddle-sore cowboy into strange, suburban grocery stores. When things are going well, my tooth rattles about in the broken speedometer. Stalled, the broken molar settles, morose and inconspicuous to all but the closest observers.
I keep the radio wired into the dash, held up on a custom mount I bought with candy bars. It looks absurd and only works when the voice inside wills it to.
It crackles nervously now.
“Traveler?”
I pretend not to hear, that the helmet I’m wearing is too thick, that the wind is too strong. When I turn off the interstate it tries again, too loud to ignore.
“TRAVELER?”
“What?”
“Where are we going?”
“Any guesses?”
“Boone, North Carolina is not in your book. There is no reason to go there.”
“You can read now?”
“It’s unlikely to be…”
“Well, now you know what’s scary about this book.”
‘There is a humming in the air outside of Boone, a noise that is, to the ear, what shadows are to the eye. In the gray static there, it becomes difficult to concentrate, a visitor feels their mind slacken and droop. Muscles weaken and inhibitions loosen. Long exposure is, in many ways, like an opiate high.
‘The Boone County Music Festival’ is hardly a leap considering the circumstances. Scheduled annually for two days, the festival tends to drag on for nearly a week before the hosting venue has the whole lot of people removed. Sets are plagued with technical issues and silence is increasingly common as the days wear on and attendees lose motivation to move or speak beyond what is absolutely essential. Music is replaced with bizarre art installations and performances that represent the very fringes of interpretive dance. Radios in the area will pick up quiet laughter and a voice that thinks it knows more than it does.’
“Sound familiar?” I ask, pulling off onto a dirt road. The radio does not immediately respond.
I arrive at a small campground, closed for the season. I have missed ‘The Boone County Music Festival’ by a month or so, meaning even the most stubborn attendees have long abandoned the site. I pull a sun-bleached poster from the trunk of a tree, the only obvious relic. It rustles impatiently in the wind.
My fingers buzz with numbness, with thick, lazy blood.
“Is that you up there?” I ask, pointing to a radio tower up on top of a hill.
“If it was?”
“If it was, would you want me there?”
My bones rattle, suddenly, as though witness to some deep, unheard bass. After a few seconds, it raises into the realm of audible sound:
“Hmm….” the radio wonders out loud, “No, I would rather you stay.”
“Do you know the stranger? The author of Autumn by the Wayside?”
“I do not.”
“Has he been through here already?”
“He has.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“You did not ask about the stranger. He seems like a skittish man.”
I shake feeling into my hands and blink, slowly. I struggle to open the clasps on my bag. Wrapped in cloth, there, is a mason jar. The fairy fern is crushing itself against the glass, its tendrils sneaking out from below the rim, raw where I’ve snipped them away.
“I’m going to plant this here,” I tell the radio, “I’m tired of carrying it around. I wonder if it wouldn’t keep people away.”
“That would be a welcome change.”
“Should I plant it near the tower?”
The voice on the radio is silent as it considers the possibilities. I feel a brushing on my hand, where the fairy fern is trying to find a hold, and I realize the numbness has passed. The thrumming in the air has lessened some.
“Yes,” the voice says.
I take the bike up a dirt road toward the radio tower. It’s slow going and I turn over, once, on a thick patch of gravel. I dust myself off and keep at it. The radio occasionally screeches with feedback. Eventually I park and duck under an old barbwire fence, carrying my pack but leaving the radio on its mount. It says something, but I pretend not to hear.
There’s not much to the tower- it’s an old thing, paint coming off in great peels. Rust beneath that. The fairy fern is squirming in the jar, reacting to the sudden dose of sunlight. It will be happy, here, and maybe safe.
I’ve been thinking, reader, about the stranger and the author and me. I’ve been thinking about the path and about circles and eyes. The author is publicizing the path, the stranger seems to be walking it in circles. I am tailing them both, thus far just a witness.
Maybe there are others.
-traveler
