I’ve lived far too long in this flat, boring, uneventful farmland. I know it far too well by now. Traveled every dirt road, wandered every overgrown path, and seen every mundane site. Decades I’ve spent in the lurch of my unfulfilled desire. I crave new lands to explore with meandering hills and titanic mountains, and taste the salt of the ocean in the air. To wildly careen through the underbrush of some untamed jungle. To fear its tooth and claw, feasting on its bounty and splendor. To discover its wonders and novelties. I crave adventure. Yet here I stay, in the familiar. The same flattened pancake of countryside that my grandfather’s father farmed.
But this morning…this morning is different. It didn’t feel special or new when the sun came knocking, nevertheless, something is about to change. The early morning is sweet with its crisp autumn air. The dew, still clinging to the bluegrass, dampens my jeans and wets my boots. My attention is on the world at my feet as I brood over the wonders I’ll never witness. I take my regular morning walk before the chores of feeding all the cattle and various critters. I round the corner, onto a dirt road, with a number for a name, that separates two farmsteads. There, I look up and, between the double rows of windbreak trees, I find something new.
Framed between the two lines of evergreens that stretch to the horizon, is a towering hillside climbing up from the farmland ahead. I can just make out the lumpy top line of what has to be a magnificent forest. I stand, slack-jawed in disbelief, taking in every detail. I have traveled down this straight and uneventful road countless times in my life. It was as if there was a mountain I had never bothered to notice before. I can almost discern yawning meadows towards the lower half of the enormous beauty.
I don’t even notice my feet have already started me toward my new destination. My pace quickens, along with my pulse. I’m at a steady clip, almost running now. What if it disappears again into the mists and vapors? It might evaporate away like the morning clouds, baked into submission by the sun.
As my legs churn and my heart pumps, a desperate sort of fear stabs deep. What if that’s all this is? What if this is just a morning cloudscape that started below the horizon? What if it is just a tantalizing illusion? I had imagined all manner of things in the clouds before. Some of them were nearly believable. I try to put it out of my mind as I jog faster. But the question is there, nagging my confidence, chewing at my resolve.
“No!” I shout, between raspy breaths. I shake the dreadful thought out of my head.
Just then, I’m interrupted by sliding tires on an intersecting dirt road. The elderly driver pulls his look of surprise into a grin.
“Hey there, old timer, ain’t the two of us a bit long in the tooth to be running around here so foolish like? I nearly sent you to meet your maker with the grill of my truck,” he says, with an unearned superiority.
“Got no time for ya, neighbor, so g’day” I wheeze out as I step around his vehicle.
“Don’t act so uppity with me, you old codger. I’m just trying to save you being run down is all,” he barks.
I turn to look back at him over the hood of his own truck. Then it clicks.
Moments later, I’m leaving him behind, sprawled out on the road. I see him through his rearview mirror, staring dumfounded at the rooster tail of dirt and dust his truck kicks up. This is my moment, my only opportunity to escape these bland and boring backroads. Surely, I’ll reach my destiny now, before this dreamscape dissipates with the daybreak.
Richard Garcia is a writer living in Wichita, Kansas with his life partner and their three daughters, two dogs, and cat.
Modern Flash Fiction 