Heading out of town they saw zombies dancing about the foot of a barn aflame. They saw at sun up a truck with a shark in the bed being parked at the lab. That was when the traffic got thick and they could see much nearer and in greater detail and suddenly they sensed that the birds were following.
On the shoulder, a porcupine appeared to them crumpled, like an ancient pincushion or sea urchin far from home. The animal had been ill-used. It reminded them of philosophies that once tried to explain the clouds for if people know nothing about clouds, the clouds will become a porcupine. And if people, say people ignorant or cars, come across a lifeless porcupine on the road, they’ll speculate about it and say, “It starved, of course. It had eaten sand and sand will dry you up on the insides. Remember that the next time you’re a porcupine and wake up with a sudden craving for the other side.”
They saw a man on a horse. The man on the horse looked like a scare crow for all the bird shit on his arms, and the horse grew smaller with each step till both assumed a likeness of distance.
The girl said, I want to go with him.
They stopped and took photos of the valley that opened beneath them, this valley that stretched between black hills and at the bottom was a river that curved like an S and sped beneath the highway. They saw canoes on the river, ducks and other water dwelling birds. From out of the forest canopy golden leaves fell in drifting bursts.
They wanted to see what the world looked like from the river so they rented boats and started off with the current, and from the river they saw the bottomland open up and soon hills rising and ringed by camps and the long smoke of abandoned cooking fires.
Is that an alligator? the girl asked.
They left the boats and began their journey back with the typical misjudgment of distance. One of the children pointed and said what’s that and what’s that and what’s that and the grownups said, we’ve never seen that and we’ve never seen that and we’ve never seen that and so we can’t say. But they were big, whatever they were. The girl said, “I know what they are.”
Back at the car, they saw muddy shoes and shoulder burns, the sun growing smaller at the height of the sky. And on the road again the wind crashed into the opened windows and again they saw the flat countryside bend to the edges and the car just felt lighter.
I see fence posts, laundry flapping, birds in single rest on stones, watching, said one. I see broken castles, turtles, and that cloud chasing like a kite. I see home, another said, or no, we still have hours in this heat and to stop here would rile the zombies, and someone responded, Wake me if you see my eyes grow weary because I don’t want to miss a thing. Then someone said, Where’s the girl? When that question was asked, the children and grownups scrambled back and thought about it. The river, the road, the sky, swimming, and alligators. Or zombies. Most likely zombies.
Could be all those things, one of the wiser grownups in the car said. Still, it would be wrong to go back. We are so far from the river now and closer to home.
