He looked at the lit numbers on the digital clock beside the bed. Its red numbers displayed 3:27. He had planned on getting an early start, but this was ridiculous. He briefly thought through the dream that he had just had. The flying, the woman, the wind, the freedom; it was all so real and yet, not real. Hoping to return to it, he settled back into the overstuffed pillow which made his neck hurt. Motel pillows always made his neck hurt. He had intended to bring his own, but had forgotten it in the rush to get out the door.
He closed his eyes and tried to draw the painted pony back into his mind. When that failed, he attempted to place the face of the woman back into his consciousness, but that wouldn’t work either. He finally turned to look at the clock again. It had changed to 3:31. He had set it for 5:30. If I go to sleep right now, I can sleep two more hours, he reasoned. He closed his eyes and tried to force sleep to come.
When he looked at the clock again, it read 3:47. He quickly did the math. An hour and forty-five minutes of sleep. That’s not too bad. He tried to force sleep again. He saw 3:53 pass by without sleep; 4:03 and 4:17 as well. Frustrated, he finally tossed back the covers and slipped out of bed. He glimpsed out into the darkness of the canyon below the rim where the Kachina Lodge was perched. The grand view that was there during the light of day was eerily absent when covered in a shroud of darkness. He turned toward the table and took a seat in front of his laptop; trying not to awaken his wife with the light of the screen, he turned it toward the window and repositioned himself in front of it.
He opened the web browser and clicked on the bookmark for the Dreams Dictionary. He’d been there before and found that often times; he gained insight into things whenever he visited it. He typed in a search for flying and read the interpretation; in general, it meant that he had a positive feeling of freedom in his life. As he typed in each of the other things that he could remember from the dream, however, the interpretation became much more confusing.
He closed the laptop and considered slipping back into bed, but noticed that the clock read 5:08. Not much point in trying to sleep for 22 minutes. He looked out the window again. This time, he saw a tiny glow from the rising sun, beyond the eastern horizon, though it would still be nearly an hour before it made a full appearance.
He sat once more and looked over at the sleeping form. He loved her, but it was becoming more and more difficult to like her. He had hoped that their vacation to the Grand Canyon would help them restore some of the vitality which had long passed from their marriage. Initially, it had, but as the days wore on, she began to complain. Backward people, cheap motel, too dry, too dusty, the mules stink, the damned wind never stops and she hated motel beds; these were only some of the complaints that seemed to be repeated the most.
She simply wasn’t used to a simpler way of life. She was used to being catered to by everyone. She was used to the sharp, rectangular lines of the business world in St. Louis and the predictable logic of spreadsheets and monetary facts that never changed. She hated change. He had caught the brunt of her hatred of it several times. He had aged in the past 15 years of their marriage and, like every other male in the world past the age of forty, his middle was attempting to match the width and depth of his chest.
There was no doubt in his mind that he had become fat, old and boring. Maybe that was the real problem that she had, though she would never say it out loud. She was constantly critical, but never enough to come right out and lay out the whole truth. It was like being picked apart by ants rather than being fully devoured by a wolf. In many ways, he’d rather just be devoured and get it over with.
He was not helping the situation, either. He simply pressed it all down inside of himself and refused to confront the obvious issues which had come between them. He hated conflict and would rather wait for things to settle down. They always did after a while, though in the recent past, his waits had been longer and longer.
So where was the freedom that the dream interpretation had given him? He certainly could not see it arriving any time soon. The chase scene of the dream was much more accurate; it and the crying woman. His mind tried to retrace the features of her face, but failed. He wanted to try to remember her face for one of his paintings. Frustrated by his attempt to recall her, he looked at the clock once more: 5:28. That was that. He headed for the shower.
“Let the alarm wake sleeping beauty,” he muttered to himself.
He turned on the water and let it cover up the sound of the annoying beeping of the alarm clock. He hated the damn things and only used them on the very rare occasions when he had something pressing that he needed to start early in the morning. Today’s pressing event was their return to St. Louis.
He stepped into the shower, ignoring whatever tirade was coming from the other side of the wall. She was very likely pissed that she had to roll over and turn off the alarm. The water flowing over his body washed away the sound and he relaxed into the feeling of its warmth. It was almost like the way that the wind had wrapped itself around him in his dream. Again, he tried to pull up the image of the woman and feel the weightlessness of flight, but it had all disappeared. The opening of the bathroom door killed it completely.
“What time did you get up?” Melissa grumbled.
“5:28,” he replied, just for spite. He knew what would follow, but somehow the stab seemed to give him a little bit of satisfaction.
“Why the fuck didn’t you turn off the alarm?”
“I thought I’d let you sleep a little longer.”
The smile spreading across his face was hidden by the shower curtain.
“Bastard,” she mumbled, closing the door behind her.
Chapter Two
They were on their way, but a little bit behind schedule, according to Melissa’s reckoning of things and, like always, it was Parke’s fault. He had taken too long in the shower, lingered over breakfast too long, was too slow getting the car loaded; it was a never-ending rant which he simply ignored. The final straw came when he pulled into the 24-hour convenience store to gas up.
“Why the hell didn’t you do this last night?”
Her penetrating glare held a particular sort of venom that burned through his skin in an attempt to consume him with fire.
“What the fuck difference does it make if we leave at 7:12 instead of 6-fucking-59?”
He slammed the car door as hard as he could and moved toward the handle on the pump, turning to fill the car with gas. He had finally taken all of her shit that he could handle for one morning and snapped. It would shut her up for a while and might actually make the morning drive more pleasant.
He had mixed feelings about leaving the Grand Canyon behind. He had plenty of new photos, memories and concepts to incorporate into his paintings and was eager to return to his studio, but he could also feel the tension which had been conspicuously absent while he was enjoying the sunshine and breezes of the southwest.
A rather sharp breeze came up suddenly and swirled around him as if it was doing a scan of his body. He let the feel of it move over him for a moment, closed his eyes and let it cleanse the tension in his soul. The wind back in St. Louis had never been able to do anything of the sort. In St. Louis, it was just another irritant to go along with the noise, the smell, the humidity and the penetrating flavor of toxic smoke in his mouth. He had escaped all of that for a while. Something had to be wrong, seriously wrong with him to want to return to it.
His mind would have wandered further if the smell and sound of fuel overflowing from the filled tank had not brought him back quickly. He fought with the pump handle to get it to shut off, but not before a fairly generous stream of fuel spilled on the concrete and created a small stream around his shoes. His hands were soaked in it as well. He swallowed the expletive that had formed in his mouth and finally put the handle back in its holder and started into the store.