He was not someone I would normally ask for directions. Actually, in a normal situation, I would never ask for directions. I use my GPS because I don’t trust my own sense of direction even one little bit, but my phone had died and when I went to plug the damn thing in, the little metal part that slides into your phone’s port broke off and I angrily threw the stupid cord out the window. So, essentially, I was lost.
I just needed to get to Chicago before it got dark. The light was waning, setting the Illinois sky aflame with pinks and oranges. The thing about driving through Illinois is there’s a lot of just… flat, plain land. You can drive for almost 100 miles on the same goddamn highway, looking at the same goddamn cornfields over and over – sometimes soybean fields, if you’re lucky enough to get a break from the corn – and still not reach your destination. It can get very old, and it can make you tired. So I had no desire to drive down these long, straight, boring as fuck roads in the dark.
Anyway.
I had pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a little gas station. To say it was nothing special would be an understatement. The storefront was paneled with slats of wood where the white paint had peeled in places. There was a small square window to the left of the door, just next to a payphone – and I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those. Above the door was what looked to be a handmade sign that read “OPEN” in carved-out letters.
Behind the counter was an old man, one of those men who look so old you think to yourself, “How are you still alive?” But not in a mean way, you know? Just kind of like… holy shit, you look like you belong in the ground.
Sorry. I guess that was mean.
“It’s not as far as you think,” he said, moving his mouth around in the way that some old men do. His skin was leathery brown, and can you blame him? It’s not like his generation warned him about the danger of skin cancer. They probably told him to put crisco on himself to get a better tan. I heard that from my grandma.
“Okay, so… I just get back on the highway?” I glanced outside, sighed heavily, and looked back to him. “And where do I go from there? I’m so sorry, I’m lost without my GPS. I appreciate the help.”
He smiled, revealing only a handful of teeth. Again, trying not to judge, but that’s just the way it is: he had less teeth than the average person. Far less, in fact.
“Yes, punkin,” he said, and he said it like that, where he didn’t pronounce the ‘mp’ and substituted an ‘n’. Punkin. “Just hop back on the highway, drive straight down towards the sunset, and look for the signs. You’ll find it.”
“All right, I will. Thank you so much.” I turned away from his counter and his mouth with very few teeth and for a moment considered buying something just to make his effort worth his while, but then decided against it.
Once I was in my car, I started the engine and felt the whole car rumbling beneath me. Oh, great, on top of being lost now my car was acting up. I waited a moment to see if it would putter out or start smoking, but it didn’t; the car just rumbled a little harder than normal. You have to understand, one of my major flaws is flying by the seat of my pants, and I just assumed I could make it to Chicago and get it checked out there. I definitely didn’t want to stop at one of these little hick towns and have a grease-stained mechanic screw me over just because he could.
I put my car in gear, pulled away from the little gas station, and got back on the highway. Driving towards the sunset.
As much as I hated the cornfields and soybeans, I did like the sunset. It reminded me of sherbet I used to eat as a child. All orange and yellow and, now, purple.
I drove for a while, hating the fact that I didn’t have my phone to play music with. I hated driving in silence. I started fiddling with my radio. I hit mostly static, but then a husky-voiced woman started to sing, some song that sounded like it was out of the 1960s with a lot of horns and percussion.
“Oh, how can I forget you?
When there is always something there to remind me?”
Fuck. I guess this would do. Better than nothing at all.
As I drove the long straightaway, trying to ignore the cornfields that had started to irrationally piss me off, something on the side of the road caught my eye. A bright yellow knapsack, covered in odd patches that were too far away to see what they read or what pictures were stitched on them.
I looked for road signs. I didn’t see any. Until –
A green sign loomed ahead of me. I started to slow because it was the only one indicating an exit. Except, it couldn’t be the right one, because that sign read “Sleeper,” and Sleeper was the exact same exit I had pulled off of earlier to talk to the mostly toothless old man.
My car rumbled beneath me, jingling the trinkets I had hanging from my rearview mirror. A keychain with a rose quartz crystal, a dead air freshener I should’ve already replaced, a poorly-made friendship bracelet from my boyfriend that spelled out my name: DINA, surrounded by various cheap plastic beads. They made an unpleasant clinking sound that irritated me so much I jerked the wheel and took the exit, pulling into the same gas station’s parking lot, seeing the same peeling white paint and antiquated payphone.
As I walked beneath the hand-carved sign I had a sense of deja vu, but is it really deja vu if you know you’ve been there before?
The old man behind the counter smiled at me, revealing his lack of teeth.
“Back again? I thought I told you it’s not that far?”
I was irritated but didn’t want to argue.
“I followed your directions,” I said tightly. “I went straight down the road towards the sunset and I ended up back here.”
“You must have got turned around.” He regarded me with the sort of look you’d give a child who’s lost their parent in a shopping mall. “It’s really easy. It’s not as far as you think. Just get back on the highway, look for the signs. You’ll get where you need to go.”
I gritted my teeth. This was the exact same thing he’d told me before. I said thank you, and this time when I left I didn’t feel obligated to buy anything.
Driving down the highway, car rumbling beneath me. It was probably rumbling because I hit a deer earlier that night. I had hoped since there wasn’t a lot of damage to my car, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal, but that rumbling was making me nervous.
All the stupid stuff on my rearview mirror clinking together. I didn’t appreciate the colors of the sunset now.
I just had to get to Chicago.
It was still dusk. Why was it still dusk? I looked at the clock on my dashboard and it said 9:08, which meant it should be dark by now. I banged my fist on it, thinking it was just faulty wiring, but no use. It still read 9:08, and the sky was still full of color.
After a few miles, I saw a dog on the side of the road. A dog with a rich brown and black coat. A German Shepherd.
I love animals, so when I saw he was limping along, I pulled over right away. It didn’t matter that I was trying to get to Chicago before dark, because I was obviously running late. But a stray dog on the side of a mostly abandoned highway? No, I couldn’t let that go. At the very least, I’d check his collar, or if he didn’t have one I’d take him to a Humane Society. Maybe I have more empathy for animals than people… I don’t know.
I slowed my car to a stop, trying not to spook him. The dog stood at attention as soon as I opened my car door, his ears perked.
“Come here, buddy,” I crooned, trying to coax him towards me. I also did that weird thing everyone does when they’re trying to get an animal to come to them – a motion with my hand that looks like you’re trying to scoop something out of the air.
He growled, immediately. And not the kind of growl that a dog gives because he wants to play. The kind of growl that means “Get any closer to me and I’ll bite your face off.” If it had been a West Highland Terrier, maybe I would have tried harder, because I know that kind of dog couldn’t truly hurt me. But a German Shepherd? No, they use those for police work, so no way was I ready to tackle with that. I’d seen plenty of videos online to know that German Shepherds are nothing to fuck with.
I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender and slowly, carefully, backed into my car. I started it up again. The car rumbled. My stupid trinkets jingled.
I glanced in my rearview mirror. The German Shepherd was still there, snarling at me.
The lady on the radio said again –
“There is always something there to remind me….”
Wishing yet again I had my Spotify playlist and my GPS, I got back onto the highway after carefully signaling left. Not like I needed to; the highway was strangely empty.
“Well, how can I forget you girl?”
I drove, kind of tuning out the song from the ’60s, trying to forget the dog I’d left in my rearview mirror.
I drove towards the sunset. I looked for the signs. There were no signs helping me on my way to Chicago. But I saw something stranded on the side of the road; a Cubs hat. A baseball hat. It was askew, stuck in the tall grass near a soybean field.
I kept driving. I saw the exit: “Sleeper.”
It shouldn’t have been there, because I already took that exit, but… what was I supposed to do?
I took it, because I knew that was the only place I could talk to anyone.
“Always something there to remind me…”
I shut off that damn song and went into the gas station, the same gas station I’d already been in twice. Of course, the same old man was behind the counter, and I should’ve known that because it was the exact same fucking gas station I’d already pulled into so many times before.
The sky was still the same goddamn sunset.
“I’m back,” I said as I walked through the white doors.
“Of course you are,” the cashier said, smiling without many teeth. Then he gave me a look that was almost fatherly. “You can’t find your way?”
“No,” I said, and I was on the verge of tears.
“Punkin,” he said, and this time it didn’t bother me because it didn’t feel condescending, it felt genuinely affectionate. “That weren’t no deer you hit. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I sobbed, and he actually came around the counter to hold me in his bony arms. I collapsed there, crying, hoping this whole thing was a nightmare.
“It’s not as far as you think,” he said, rubbing my back in soothing little circles. “Just hop back on the highway.”
I’m embarrassed to admit that I cried into this old man’s shirt, probably leaving mascara stains there. But when I was done I straightened up and said,
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he asked, still rubbing a comforting hand over my back.
“Okay,” I agreed, and I left, still not buying a single thing from his shop.
I got back into my car. I took the exit. As I merged, the trinkets hanging from my window kept clinking, so I grabbed them and tore them down, destroying my rearview mirror in the process.
No matter. I took the handful of junk and threw it out my driver’s side window.
It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But then… I saw the next exit sign. The first one that I’d seen since I’d seen Sleeper over, and over, and over. This exit was for another town.
Suddenly, my phone sprung to life. The GPS focused in on a location.
Right off the highway was a police station.
I knew what I was supposed to do.
So I hit my blinker and I took the exit and I prepared myself to tell them about the hitchhiker with the dog that I had hit with my car earlier that day because I simply wasn’t paying attention. The one I left lying in the road miles back, probably a few miles before Sleeper, because I was too scared to tell anyone.
But I knew if I didn’t tell anyone, if I didn’t turn myself in, I would be stuck on this road forever. Going to the same gas station forever. Always being told “It’s not as far as you think.”
And as I barreled towards the exit, my car rumbling, the front of it beaten and battered and covered in blood, I saw that the dusk was finally fading.
The sun had gone down and it was finally getting dark outside. Finally. Finally.
I let out the breath I’d been holding in and carefully, slowly, exited the highway, ready to tell the truth.
Because it’s not as far as you think.