Going Home
by Cameron L. Mitchell
Driving through the murky black night, I can’t help but wonder if I’m really here at all, awake at such an ungodly hour before dawn. It could be a dream. Suddenly, I’m sure none of this is real. I must still be asleep back in that cheap hotel room off the highway, missing the day’s one and only flight out of this place, the mountains I once called home. My hands grip the wheel tighter, my foot presses down harder on the gas, but I can’t quite connect to the movements my body seems to be making on its own. I feel untethered to the world just outside the window, flashing by. Like I might drift off and disappear if I’m not careful. Then again, I always felt that way here.
The windshield, wet with drops of dew, hardly offers a clear view. I switch the wipers on, but they somehow make it worse as they squeak back and forth, streaking the glass. A smudged darkness is all I can see. I plunge ahead anyway, unsure of where I might emerge.
And then, out of nowhere, a figure appears in the dark, set aglow by the narrow brightness of my headlights. Even though I’m about to crash into him, he doesn’t try to leap out of the way, he doesn’t move at all. He stands in place, staring me down. He looks to be about my height and has a similarly lanky build. There are other details, absorbed in an instant, but my mind isn’t working fast enough to piece them together. Still, there’s something familiar about him, maybe in his face or the way he stands. I manage to swerve around him at the very last second, just barely missing the fool. Once I have the car back under control and righted in the lane, I pull over to the shoulder. I can’t see anything in the rearview mirror, not through the dark. I take a few moments to catch my breath, wondering why someone would be out at such an odd hour. Poor bastard, I think. Probably stumbling home after a long night of partying.
With great care, I put the car in reverse and back up. Considering the deep, unforgiving darkness, it could be a dangerous thing to do, but I want to make sure he’s alright – or, perhaps I want to yell at him for not being more careful. It’s hard to say. As I look around, I realize I won’t get an opportunity to do either since he’s nowhere to be found. Where could he have gone? When a car approaches from the opposite direction, it startles me at first, but then I focus on the lighted path it cuts through the dark, trying to find him. Nothing, nowhere.
After the car is gone, I’m once again alone. I try to shake it off, but the image of this strange specter looming nearby already feels like something that will haunt me. I look around once more, but he’s gone, so I shift the gear and drive on, wondering what else has been lost to the darkness.
In the city, where I live now, we forget how dark it gets out here in the country. We forget so many things. It’s hard to believe the world could ever be as quiet as it is now. There’s always noise in the city, whether it’s a siren wailing in the distance, a too-big garbage truck barging down our narrow street, or a vagrant arguing with himself on the sidewalk below my window. I rub my eyes, take a deep breath, and again wonder if this could be a dream. I slowly open and close my fingers around the steering wheel, desperate for some sort of clarity.
And the man I just saw, he was around my age, I’m sure. He had straw-colored hair, like mine, though his was shaggy and long in the back, where mine is short and neatly combed into place. He wore a white T-shirt, loose blue jeans, and cowboy boots – he was dressed like I might dress if I still lived in the South.
I shudder at the thought.
Looking ahead, I figure I must be awake. The darkness before me is real, and the flash of pavement disappearing beneath the front of my rental car is as sturdy and solid as that of any other road. Should I make a wrong move in this muddled state, how long would it take to find myself swerving off the road and crashing into something I might not survive? Would I feel the pain, or would the darkness take me first? I must have already spent all my luck dodging that fellow a few miles back, so I slow down even more, intent on leaving this place in one piece. In the city, I never drive. Instead, I zip back and forth in trains, traveling miles through tunnels beneath the ground. Here in the country, one must drive miles before reaching anything at all. No mass transit, no walking even a few short blocks unless you want passersby thinking you’re a hobo. I hate driving, but here I am.
My body is still many paces ahead of my mind, carrying me forward despite the fogginess that won’t disperse. The early morning mist floating across the highway makes it even harder to see, which feels daunting since I can’t be sure of what’s waiting around the next bend in the road. I feel divided, neither here nor there. I think of life in the city, I consider this visit to the country that’s mostly over. Sleep-deprived as I am, it’s no wonder I’m having such a hard time distinguishing between what is real and what is not. Come to think of it, did I really see someone walking in the road at such an odd hour – and why did he look so familiar? This morning, assuming I did in fact wake, my body worked largely on its own: quick, quick, get up – no time to brush your teeth, no time for coffee. Having packed my suitcase the night before, I didn’t have to worry about that, though I tossed in a few last-minute items like the bottles of pills and the half-empty bottle of whiskey. Go, go, I thought. You must reach that ridiculously small airport with the rocking chairs lining the waiting area on time. This morning, last night – I’m stuck, hovering somewhere in between. The whole world is still asleep, and yet here I am, awake. Presumably.
Home, I’m going home. But this place I’m leaving is also home. My first home, though I never belonged. While trying to find my way for years, I finally realized I’d never fit in. So, I left, seeking answers in bigger, brighter places.
During my last visit, I didn’t see my sisters. One was in jail for some minor drug charge, the other was unable to get a ride over from Tennessee. My mother and I sat alone in the cramped, cluttered living room of her efficiency apartment, staring silently at the walls. This time, both sisters were present; they seem to be doing better at last. Three women left behind in the country were so happy to have me back from the city. They said I’ve lost my accent, that I talk fancy now. It’s because I enunciate, I told them. It’s because you use words like enunciate, they shot back. They laughed; I felt uneasy. They asked so many questions I couldn’t keep up, and they never waited long enough for an answer. Their conversation rose like a chorus around me; all I could do was nod along. They asked if I still hate getting my hair cut. You couldn’t stand it, you threw such a fit. They laughed, they teased, they conjured up the story of me as a little thang letting my hair grow long and stringy in the back but taking sewing scissors to trim the front, insisting I didn’t need any goddamned barber. I wanted to ask if I really said that but realized it doesn’t matter. I wanted to ask other things, like if they knew I hated the barber because he reminded me so much of our father. The suffocating smell of his cheap cologne, his slick, pomaded hair, his rough, calloused hands that forced my head this way and that as he cut my hair too damned short no matter how much I protested – he was boisterously aggressive, just like Dad. It was his way or no way, and I got enough of that at home.
The three of them chatted on and on, pausing only long enough to light another cigarette. I tried inserting my own joke, saying it was bad for them, but they reminded me that I once smoked too, and they continued smoking their cigarettes, blowing long plumes of smoke into the air; the space around us grew so hazy I pictured a thick, dark cloud forming right there in the living room, threatening to unleash its storm upon us all. For a moment, I panicked, imagining my lungs filled with smoke, the soft tissue inside blackening with the poison they blew my way. But that makes them sound so terrible, and I never want to do that. My eyes watered and I continued coughing, but they smoked on, smiling at me as they chattered on like long lost friends who haven’t seen each other in ages.
When we were a family living in the little red house, we never talked so much. We yelled instead. Well, they yelled – my mother and father, mostly at each other. We begged them to stop – we mostly begged him to stop. My father was a storm that never let up, growing more destructive with each passing day. I still remember the sound his boots made as he stomped across the floor, wild with a rage he couldn’t contain.
While in the country, I took a break from family to visit the tallest mountain around these parts. I hadn’t been since I was a child, when my father took us there to make amends after a particularly brutal night. Up so high, my mother had difficulty breathing; her nose was likely broken, but we trekked on anyway. It was cool like it is now. I have a vague recollection of mist, of feeling like we were walking through clouds on top of that mountain. I wonder if the fog surrounding the summit prevented us from enjoying the views we came to see. I can’t remember everything. So much has been lost.
This time, I couldn’t see much of anything by the time I reached the top. I had hoped the mist would burn off, but the early autumn chill was unrelenting, keeping the overlook shrouded in mystery. It felt so dismal and cold, like another world. I found myself short of breath gazing out, unable to see through the thick layers of mist. I thought of my mother on this mountain years earlier, struggling to catch her breath because of what he did. I thought of my sisters standing side by side, as silent and still as two dolls.
I consider the expectations of a boy. To fight with words or to fight with fists? Back then, I even considered fighting with something more fatal. Firearms were always around, loaded and ready to go. My father liked his weapons – he liked reminding us of who was in charge. Many nights I chose words over fists or firearms, yelling at him to stop before someone got hurt. Without realizing it was already too late, I yelled and yelled.
In the city people are always yelling, and I sometimes find myself cowering in silence while covering my ears. During this visit to the country, I saw that my mother never really made it out of the red house with all the noise. She talks about it like it’s still happening; in a way, I suppose it is, though he’s gone now, meaning we should be able to move on. He crashed on a night as dark as this, drunk as he’d ever been.
I never had to use a gun to make him stop. It never came to that. But I still think about it. All the time.
I’m almost at the airport now. All around, the darkness of the night is as thick as the molasses my mother poured over the pancakes she made from scratch my first morning back. I told her no, that it was too much, but she kept pouring. She added more butter, she shoved more eggs and sausages onto my plate, she told me I needed to eat more, that I’d gotten too skinny. That’s life in the country – too much fried food, too much drinking, too much raising Hell on a Saturday night because there’s nothing better to do. It’s always too much without ever being enough.
I bet that country boy I nearly ran over would love my mother’s cooking. And I’m sure he wouldn’t take any shit off a man like my father. I wonder if he’s still back there, trying to find his way home in the dark. I see him clearly, the haggard look on his face, the premature stoop of his shoulders slouching forward, the slow way he drags himself along. Everything about him is already blighted by an unforgiving life spent pounding the pavement, going from one job to the next, remaining so close to the ground he carries its smell, he carries its stain – he carries the dirt beneath his fingernails. Hardened by long, restless nights in the county jail after fights with strangers who happened to look at him the wrong way, he spends his life on the move without ever really going anywhere. I know him, I know his type. He’ll never straighten up, he’ll never change. My mother would defend him. She’d understand what he’s been through.
But then, I tell myself to stop thinking of him. His existence – the mere possibility that he could exist at all – has nothing to do with me or the life I’m returning to. Back to the fields, back to the trails up the mountainside, back to the road I’ve left behind, he’s long gone.
At the airport, harsh fluorescent lights force back the darkness of the night. I’m relieved to finally get rid of the car. Inside, I make my way through security, displaying the information that somehow proves I’m me. I walk by those quaint rocking chairs, I throw my hand up to say goodbye.
On the plane, coffee in hand, I wonder what it is I’ve left behind in the country, if anything at all; and what am I bringing back to the city? My phone vibrates in my pocket, so I dig it out and check the screen. Did you survive? A message from R, my partner. He couldn’t make the trip with me this time. On the plane now, I type back. Be home soon.
Once divided and unsure, I feel less so now, returning to the life I’ve built from scratch. A man with no childhood, a child that never grew up – the two sides come closer to reconciliation.
I’m going home, but this place I’m leaving is home, too. Years before, as a child, I remember spending a lazy afternoon rolling down the hill over a construction site near our red house. I tumbled down again and again, laughing like I was happy, despite everything. The dirt stained my shorts, it stained my knees – the dirt got under my fingernails and made its way inside.
We’re taking off now, flying high, leaving the country behind. I gaze out the window to see those mountains one last time, rising above the blanket of clouds. All the brilliant colors I see in the early morning sun that’s coming up at last convince me that I must still be asleep and dreaming after all. But even if this is a dream, to see those mountains in all their glory makes me happier than I ever thought possible.
Back in the city, skyscrapers rise above the clouds, revealing a different kind of beauty, one that’s waiting for me.
Cameron L. Mitchell grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. His novella ‘The Last Way’ was recently published by Querencia Press. His shorter work has appeared in Litro Magazine, the Queer South Anthology, Across the Margin, and a few other places. He lives in New York. Keep up with his latest work by following him on Bluesky: @cameronlmitchell.bsky.social.