‘[traveler] was a sales associate at ‘The Tchotchke Closet’ when he departed, suddenly, on the narrated road trip that would eventually become the collected ‘Autumn by the Wayside.’ Though presented here as a simple travel guide, his unpublished musings reveal the tumultuous journey that occurred behind the scenes, including a battle with addiction and a near-fatal accident just months into his travel. He contributed to several other guidebooks from the road, among which are ‘Dark Games to Play at Your Local Buffet’ and the critically acclaimed ‘DEAR GOD DON’T DRINK THAT.’
‘Autumn by the Wayside’ is published with the blessing of [traveler]’s parents, who forgive his wordless departure, and of his sister, who does not.’
I read this all the first time I was handed the book and I’m sure I must have read it again in the meantime but it is, admittedly, a crisper page in a book that is dirty with my fingerprints. I did read it again after the accident, sometime in that hazy month of mending bones and physical therapy. At that point, when it confirmed there was an amount of my own destiny between the pages of Shitholes, I assumed the passage had given up the few secrets it contained and, like an idiot, I hung the last line on a wall in the living room of my soul:
‘Autumn by the Wayside’ is published with the blessing of [traveler]’s parents, who forgive his wordless departure, and of his sister, who does not.’
I assumed it meant there would be an end to this, an end in which I would return home, having paid for a conservative haircut and a truck-stop shower, to sheepishly greet a family that would cry and yell and eventually embrace me and welcome me back into the house I grew up in. I worried about my sister, of course, but it would be like her, like us, to agree on the line as a little nod to the months it would have taken her to speak to me civilly. I would have apologized a thousand times by then over a thousand cups of coffee and she would have said, finally, that she was still so sure I would disappear again and she would make me promise I wouldn’t, that my traveling days were over. I would make that promise and we would write that line together, a line like a scar, that would heal the hurt but serve as a reminder that the hurt once was. We’ve always fancied ourselves world-class writers.
I read, somewhere, that an editor helps a writer understand their own work and, now that I’ve met my own, I couldn’t agree more.
This passage is an obituary.
-traveler
