Marshall Road; Warning: Road May Flood
Simpson Lake: Damn, I am already behind schedule…
A girl in black sweatpants and a blue hoodie, curves bulging, smoked a cigarette and thrust her hips to the sound of country music. Smoky brown hair shaded golden hoop earrings—I want her. Yearnings. Keep moving, you’re on an aesthetic quest, a literary mission. A Trovan literary gox. Fork in the road moment. Don’t be that guy, that cheat, that male stereotype. Don’t be a male, be a man.
—What goes around, goes around, goes around, comes all the way back around, yeah…
Radio click:
—Round and round, with love we’ll find a way just give it time; round and round, what comes around goes around.
Beware:
The Sewer District of Valley Park. Matt drove through the rundown city. He saw teenagers, near adults, idling their lazy Saturday in the city park, nothing else for them to do. A complete contrast to the idealized view of West County.
The valley sang a tune, deep down low in her bottoms:
—Rolling in the deep (Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep.)
The road bottomed out, deep down, and then the deep reversed and streamed upward into further woods and hills, westward, westward ho. Car sineing; then, a sign signifying deer.
Deer
Xing
Matt and his car-stead drove more west and felt sympathy for an old man struggling up the hill on his bike: Poor old man, keep pushing, you’re almost there.
Matt’s next derivation was coming up, and he knew the old man would go the opposite way.
—Oh won’t you stay with me? Cause you’re all I need.
Sad, Matt veered away, sorry to be leaving the old man on his journey. Everyone has their own journey to travel, alone.
Down, down, into the valley of life, road Matt. He entered Castlewood State Park.
And then, out into the wild. Into the wild suburbs of Wildwood. Not so wild. Matt, fascinated, gazed around him at all he was seeing; the suburbs of the rural; the country suburbanized. The subrural exurbs. Contrasts and dichotomies to be seen: poor dilapidated farmhouses opposite from lush gated neighborhood mansion subdivisions. Asymmetrical. And also: stately farm estates sitting high above poverty-striken broken family homes. Suburbanites and landed gentry. Poor white trash and rednecks. This was the nature of all cities, a separation between people. An us and them. Two separate radii; a diameter too wide. A bridge too far. Political economy was more prevalent than simple urban ecology. West County was a study in contrasts: the disparities of the suburban wealthy and the rural poor. No unitary urbanism.
—And we’ll never be royals (royals). It don’t run in our blood, that kind of luxe just ain’t for us. We crave a different kind of buzz.
Matt drove down the busy road and looked for the infamous Zombie Road, appropriate for the Halloween atmosphere.
He parked the car after giving up the search in an abandoned parking lot. It was 3 pm in the afternoon.
I have to piss, he thought.
*
Russ lay passed out of consciousness, exhausted tired in his bed. The fan continued to whirl swoop slightly and slow, like a kid riding merry-go-round, round and round rotating, casting a chill cool breeze to the sleeping computer specialist and gamer.
Below, in the kitchen, his mother grabbed for her keys before entering the spacious suburban garage of her home. She paused and walked to the stairwell.
—Honey, I’m going to the store, do you want anything?
—…(snore)…
—Ok.
Guess he’s still sleeping, she thought as she walked out into the garage, opened her SUV door, and drove to the grocery store.
Edwina, finally off from her own shift, lay napping as well, sleepy and tired in her warmy warm bed.
Charley sat at his personal computer desk at his home, also off work. He viewed his genealogical research and also added legal pamphlets to his Amazon Wish List.
Louise sat in a big arm chair, watching an episode of Futurama, one of her favorites, wherein Fry, the protagonist of the futuristic series, reintroduces the common cold into the 31st century.
Matt stood stretching before his automobile, his legs tired from sitting. He texted his friend Earl, asking him what he was doing.
Earl, currently eating a buffalo chicken wrap and talking with his boyfriend, in his boyfriend’s apartment, immediately texted back to Matt that that was what he was doing.
It was 63 degrees outside in St. Louis.
*
↑
Matt set out again and immediately saw a vanity plate in front of him that said:
JT-Fire
Wow, Louise would find that pretty funny.
Matt, using waymarkers, took a side road called Wild Horse Creek Road and entered into a deep wood. This road straddled along the great Babler State Park. He drove up and down the winding curvy road in a sine-manner, like a Catholic soul in sin, ever sinning, ever repenting, leaving curvy zigzaggy skid marks in his way, grievous vices on his soul; he accelerated and decelerated, revved and braked, up and down the sin. He felt like a jumping madman, up and down, round and round. He saw the signs.
—But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas. But it’s all right now, I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash, It’s a gas! Gas! Gas!
Kinesthesia art, a kinetic aesthetic; artmaking in motion. Art for art’s sake.
Pollution pumped forth for art’s sake. My smogsteed. Guiltmake while artmake.
Following in Lucia’s dancing wake.
Matt continued driving, knobbing the radio louder and louder, until he suddenly escaped the repetitions of the wood and came out into the Chesterfield Bottoms near the airport. Not wanting to stop too long, but because of the urgency of nature, he parked behind a giant megachurch parking lot and relieved himself in their tall grasses.
Ahh, thank god. Haha, God, I mean.
He continued on his way, psychogeographically, weaving up and down the rivers and woods, fascinated at the horse farms around him in the so-called suburban county.
The car took him north, past the mall.
Chesterfield Parkway, East and West, east and west:
