Highway 53

Picture courtesy of ze Great and Powerful Google

There is a stretch of Highway 53

that God forgot,

hell wouldn't have,

and I called home 

for a lost year or two.

The half-mile that optimists claimed as "town"

wasn't much to speak of.

Meth cooking up in the weeds.

Jesus preached behind stained glass.

A single, screen door store

where you could get a beer

if the other two didn't suit you.

All of it strung together by the highway

that rolled out either side back into Nothing to See Here.

Except in the summer.

In the summer,

the sun baked that blacktop

until it was blister kiss hot.

And, for some reason, that burning blacktop

drew tarantulas.

Lots of them.

You'd start seeing them four or five miles outside of town.

Just a couple, at first.

Then, suddenly, you'd top a hill,

and they'd be so thick the road was moving.

And, someplace in the back of your brain

would just convulse.

Now, logically, you knew that those things

couldn't crawl up into the undercarriage of the car,

couldn't scratch through the windows,

couldn't get to the tender flesh of your thigh,

but the terror was pure and silver
and your foot was stomping the accelerator

and logic was drowned

in the rush of your adrenalin

and drowned out

by the crash of your heart.

Until you hit the town line,

and they were gone.

Just . . . gone.

And, meth, Jesus, or a cold beer

sounded pretty damn good.

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