The Eternal Road Trip

The odometer read 194,885. The car still smelled of retired FBI agent and artificial cherry. Its exhaust rattled. Its brakes squealed. Its transmission leaked. But Old Major still turned over.

The Eternal Road Trip had begun.

As Major reversed out of the driveway, I double-checked the backseat to make sure Addie Bundren was still in the car. There she was. Still packaged as neatly as she had arrived from The Organ Harvest in Portland, Oregon; in an 8x10 inch USPS box.

Before then, Addie had never been to Oregon...the west coast for that matter. In fact, Addie had never gone anywhere. So naturally, I had to invite her to see The United States with me. I remember the exchange:

I said, "So, what do you think?"

She wrote, "YOU SHOULD BE GOING." (I have a picture to prove it!)

I wrote, "Okay."

I pulled her down from the shelf of my sister's old closet, lodged between a Virtual Boy and The Game of Life, and I looked her square into her peeling Priority Mail label,

"I love you. You're coming with me."

The Eternal Road Trip--Detroit to Wherever. Whenever. Forever--was borne.

Clank! Clank! Clank! tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...Clank! Squeeeeaaaakkkkkk went Old Major, like a show-pig in revolt, charging down I-94 West. Living up to its Orwellian namesake, the wise, outspoken '89 Volvo 740 barely had the strength to reach 70 mph, but kept the horses rallied from Michigan to Iowa.

"Solidarity!", Major cried.

Every part of its machinery had a specific function. Every part did its job.

We waited out a severe storm on the outskirts of Des Moines, at a Pilot gas station parking lot. The old boy was getting pelted by hail while Addie and I slept to the soothing sounds of thunder and sirens. I gave her a glance in the back seat; because of the darkness of the night's storm, the only thing I could make out was one word printed on her facade.

"MOM."

Yes, my father had written "MOM" in black marker on the box. You know, in case there was ever any confusion.

But I knew who my mother was.

I reflected on her 7*1027 (7, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) atoms dispersing; guessing how many were still in the box, if any had made it into space, how much of her had already fused with other life-forms. Then I thought, "three cups of coffee and I've only pissed once."

She was a tyrant.

Her atoms had been excavated from totalitarian royalty. Addie was part Caesar, part Hitler, part Stalin, part Napoleon. She was condescending, paranoid, and stubborn...the worst kind of stubborn. She was brilliant and knew it...the worst kind of knowledge. She preyed upon the weak, and reigned over the rest of us. But Addie Bundren never had an army.

We were lucky.

And of course, she would never attain one. For my mother, the tyrant, was dead. Reduced to a collection of ashes in a container, packaged in a box. Pandora's Box redux. A sliver of hope and a whole hell of a lot of problems...sealed with packaging tape.

"We are not our bodies", I could hear Addie plead.

"Then what are we?", I asked.

"Not. Our. Bodies."

"Thanks for clarifying that one for me Addie. Like that time you helped me convert feet to miles..."

"J____..."

"...Of course, you didn't actually tell me how many feet were in a mile. But you...

"J____!!!!"

"...you laughed at me. Oh, and then there was..."

"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE PAST!"

She was pretty pissed. I sat still and let her calm down. The hail had dissipated. The sirens stopped completely. Finally, I spoke:

"Well, we're kind of limited...only one of us is making memories anymore."

"You don't know a thing."

"I don't know a thing?"

"Yes. You don't know anything."

Well, I would never open that damn box. That, I knew.

I sighed. The storm cleared. The sun returned. Morning had come. I shrugged off the night's discourse between Not My Body and Not Addie's Body and sipped at free gas station coffee. My mind wandered. Wandered past exits and mile markers...world's biggest truck stops and the birthplace of John Wayne, while Karl Marx, as a pig, as a car, cleared the Missouri River into Omaha, Nebraska.