Snow sat in the seat, in the dark, with the door open. One leg rested on the floorboard and the other foot hung out the door touching the ground. After awhile he brought his leg in, reached over, closed the door, yawned, adjusted the seat to give himself a little extra leg room then rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead into the stygian gloom that makes the darkness of the night in the tangle of an unchanging jungle so recondite.
His fingers felt around for a button then pressed it. A noise sounded, like the hum of a humming bird. Air drifted in, cool to the skin, and he leaned back in the leather seat.
He liked being alone in the dark, in the car. It no longer ran but the electrical system functioned and with a solar panel he kept the battery charged, charged enough to open and close the windows, to let the air in or keep the rain out, and to listen to the radio on nights like this. Reception was non existent except now and then. On certain nights, when the clouds or the atmosphere were just right, signals from far away places would come in and he'd hear a snippet of a song or a voice speaking an alien language.
He turned the radio on. Static. Turned the dial back and forth along the bandwidth. Nothing but static. He turned the radio off.
He had an urge for a cigarette and sighed.
The urge possessed him now
and then even after forty some odd years. He missed the ritual as much
as the smoke itself. It was the completeness of the dark that seemed so
often to bring him to this place and then take him to other places he didn't necessarily want to go and it was his body
that remembered things as much, if not more, than his mind.
If he could he would lean over right now. He would open the glove compartment and take out a small cardboard box. He would peel off of the plastic film wrapper and listen to the crinkle. He would pry back the top, and if he was not distracted by his thoughts he would notice the sweet faint scent of tobacco.
In the press of the night, and barely aware of the sounds of the night, of reptiles and insects and the occasional cry of some creature hunting, or dying, his fingers would feel the little tubes all packed in like good little soldiers and he would choose one carefully, sliding it out with his thumb, tap it once or twice on the box or the dashboard, and place it exactly so into the corner of his mouth like James Dean or a young Brando.
He would lean to one side and straighten his leg so he could reach into his pants to get hold of a lighter buried somewhere in there. He would rub one hand through his wavy hair, the epitome of Dean, and then the lighter would flick and a yellowy flame would illuminate his face and the interior of the car, and then there would be the dark again, and he would be invisible but for a little orange glow that moved this way and that and brightened and faded now and then.
And smoke would swirl and curl and float out the window in the dark.
But cigarettes were no longer a part of who he was so instead he sat stiffly clutching the steering wheel, and after these moments of longing had passed he relaxed and imagined himself driving, as he once did, along the old 66, somewhere, anywhere, between Gallup and Albuquerque. He could see the eastern sun rising up over the edge of the dry desert and its pale orange light revealing New Mexican scrub and sand. The desert wind blew through his hair and he felt free to go anywhere he pleased.
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