Bearing Down the Interstate

The concaving space up in my rattletrap caboose of a head is filled with methamphetamine, and so I’m trying to extrapolate and explain my way out of it. This guy — the burly, hatchet-faced dude I’ve been rabidly motor-mouthing in the seat next to me — is asleep. I’ve literally talked him to sleep. Not even sure when he stopped listening, or if he ever was. So, well, now, at least, I’ve got time to myself on this here all-nighter Greyhound bus. Pretty much the whole bunch of these road-weary sons-of-bitches is bleary-eyed, dusted, or conked out. Preternaturally speaking, I’m the only one here within reasonable expectations of wakefulness. Oh, and, well, the driver — I’d hope at least. White-knuckling it through the wee hours, I’d venture. Maybe in a similar shape to mine. With all the fixings and trappings, as they say, of a small-time operator who’s lost a few teeth and more than a few brain cells along the way. And so we ride, up and at ’em, pushing 70 probably at this time of night, with the highway basically abandoned except for a few stray godawful night owls who make it their business to hoot prayers for prey in the off hours: them times when the wind’s howl is a subterranean wisp of its own…and yours…and mine…my volition’s shot. As you can’t be sure of your of even your own facial features staying put around here. Around now. This pinched and gluttonous time in my life that I am so unkemptly parading my way…