collects_strays | we are not sure of sorrow

These are the rules for leaving.

Live in each room like you know you'll leave. He'd never moved anything into the second floor, had only used as many rooms as he absolutely needed. Things had accumulated in the front room, but his cupboards had always been half-empty. Don't take up space you don't need, don't keep more than you can carry. Many of his things had never been taken out of those evidence boxes. For months, he had known he would be leaving, one way or another.

Take only what you need. First, clothes. Then tools. The dogs' beds. An overnight bag. One pillow, one blanket. Enough to fill up half his trunk, and the floor along the backseat of his car. Never be afraid to sell, to barter, to leave things behind. Eventually something will come to reclaim it.

Don't linger. He leaves before dawn. He knows he should get more rest, but he can't bring himself to spend even a few more hours in that house. He'll pull over once he's out of Virginia, sleep a few hours in the back of his car.

Don't talk to anyone. Not your landlord, not your boss, not your neighbors, not your friends. Don't talk to anyone, just disappear.

At the end, he breaks one rule. Graham leaves a note, four words taped to his door.

I'm not coming back.

He drives inland, away from Baltimore. It's the first choice he has to make, and he delays the second as long he can. But after a little over an hour of driving, it's no longer avoidable: he can go on, through West Virginia; south, toward North Carolina; or north, toward Pennsylvania. Each direction flashes different paths in his mind. South, he could keep driving, back along the coast, through to Florida. The weather would be warmer, the travel would be easier, the salt water and the sound of waves rolling up were always sweet to him. Continuing west, toward the Great Lakes, he could keep driving until he reached the loneliest stretches he could find, forests and deserts and prairies, land so empty that it could fill him up, and it wouldn't matter what he knew. And north –

It was a sense of freedom Graham hadn't felt in years. But in time, he would look back on his choice, and see another puzzle piece that had neatly fit in place. Everything that followed would flow from that choice, and everything that followed would flow back into it, as though only this could have happened, as though he hadn't made any choice at all.

Graham turns off, onto I-81, and heads north.

It doesn't have to be like this. He can afford to keep driving now, could afford to rest in motels and take a long time to decide if and when he wanted to stop. He doesn't need to scope out infrequently patrolled parking lots, camping grounds and truck stops with showers. Maybe it's because it comes naturally to him, maybe there's comfort in sleeping in the now much more cramped backseat. It lets him go days without speaking, sometimes without seeing anyone else. The world can become a quiet, predictable series of rustling and clicks, the repetition of it making each road sign, each town, each state slide into the other. He doesn't drink, eats sandwiches and coffee from rest stops and gas stations, stops at intervals that become fixed and unchanging. Locks the car doors, closes his eyes.

It takes time for him to see it. Rain taps on his windshield, the florescent flash of streetlights hang above him. He walks along hard concrete floors, walls and tiles and metal sinks that smell like bleach and disinfectant, showers and eats and listens to the click of the lock before he falls asleep. His voice feels thick with disuse and then –

I got so close to him.

Graham's asleep on his cot in the hospital again, but wakes up in the back of his car. And he sees it then, how he's locked himself away, how he's let this become not about leaving, but longing.

He stops driving that night. Graham spends the night in a hotel, reads the local paper the next morning. In less than a week, he's in a cabin. One-room, with a wood-burning stove, here there's still snow on the trees around it. He can drive to the river. The empty dog beds are scattered across his floor. For the moment, he lays down a blanket and pillow, and sleeps there with them.

"You've been looking at it for a while."

He startles. She's standing a few feet from him, with a curious sort of smile, one hand on her hip. "I'm sorry," she says. "You don't really look like you need help, but…"

Graham looks from her, back to the row of reels, hard light shining along steel painted deep shades of red and green. He had been looking at them for a while, making up his mind, balancing his disinterest in all of them against just wanting to make a decision, having it finished.

"Do you have a recommendation?"

He knows he doesn't care about that, either. Maybe he just wants to speak. The woman tilts her head.

"I'd need a little more to go on."

He folds his arms, not looking back at her, eventually tightening his shoulders into a shrug.

"I'd build it myself."

"Really?" This time, he hears her footsteps, soft on the shop's laminate floor. "And you don't have what you need?"

"I was hoping to start over."

Unfazed, she answers, "I think I can find something to help you."

Not long after, she's pressing her fingers along a set of white paper bags, ensuring each has a crisp fold over the top. She stacks these on top of one another, then puts her hand on the cash he'd placed on the counter. He considers whether to say it as she's ringing up his purchase on the register, as she collects up his change.

"Thank yo-"

"Molly." She gets that smile again. "I thought maybe you were asking."