Member-only story
Falling off the Wagon
Wheels turned, days passed, and I was still dying of dysentery. Illinois, to Oregon. Would I die before I saw the Pacific, or the moment it’s blue shimmer caught my eye? Timothy always said I had, “a fear of missing out.” What did that mean? Not dying of dysentery like everyone else?
We started with 5. Maybe 6. Now, down to 3. Ragged, of a singular mind. Perhaps only one whole mind between us. We begged our bodies, our hearts to pump as constant as these 4 wheels rolled along mud. They grew dull: our wits, ventricles, the nerve endings at the tips of my toes and tops of my ears. Blood did not course, it sloshed. Made it’s way through a bodily path of least resistance.
Some mornings I would peer out the back. I would crawl to the edge of the carriage, and pull the flap an inch. My left and right eye would attempt to adjust to true sunlight, as synchronous as a piano in the hands of a clumsy teenage boy. Mainly, I stared at the 2-track trail we followed. A rut I could not bother to escape. I did not fear the land already paved underfoot, green grass without hope or smile.
