Internal Exile

The road was long abandoned. At one time, it had been a farm road, straight as an arrow between the lake and the countryside. At the edge of a city now, just this little isolated chunk remained. On the one side, a modern warehouse, ablaze in light. On the other, the empty driveway of a lost home, the grounds overrun with returning nature. We stood there, leaning on his car, both of us clinging to a moment of timelessness.

The day had perished, but its heat still lived in the crumbling blacktop under my feet. But our attention was skyward. Here, you could still see stars. At least some of them.

We were only 25 or 26, and already, his marriage was over.

JB had a bottle. It was rye. Something cheap from out west. He took a belt right from the bottle and handed it to me. The angry liquid bit my throat all the way down. I passed it back to him. He looked at the label, noticing the town. "Wonder if I'll be passing through there," he joked.

"How long you think it'll take?"

"Four days, last time. But I can't stay at Nigel's this time, so... maybe three. I dunno. Five..."

"You didn't do anything to him," I said, as he took another drink. Passed the bottle back to me.

"Yeah, but he doesn't see it that way. Like it's any of his fucking business."

"You're his best friend—"

"Was. Was his best friend." JB jerked his finger, urging me to take another belt and pass it back. I did.

"I mean, all those years in high school. All those parties, the trips."

"Mmmnnn," JB grumbled. "You'd think it was his wife. Or... or that Beth was his sister or something. It has nothing to do with him." It wasn't just Nigel. Jay, Don... they would barely speak to him either.

I shifted against the car. It was a sensible car; Beth had long before made him surrender his beloved third-hand Z-28. When the baby came...

"What about Katie?" I asked.

He was silent. Gazed into the bottle. Sighed. "Shouldn't have happened," he muttered.

"What?"

He just shook his head. Whether his meant the affair, the marriage, or his paternity, he never said. Maybe he meant them all.

Suddenly he said, "Holy shit..." He nudged me with his elbow, pointing up. There, high above us, soft curtains of pale red and green were shifting in the sky. "Holy fuck, is that the northern lights?"

"Yeah, I think... I think it is!"

"Jesus," he breathed. They grew quickly wider, brighter. Dancing with slow undulations, as if beckoning. Living as far south as we did, I had never seen them; neither, I suspect, had he. Jaws dropped, we just stood enthralled. Finally, he took a swig, passed the bottle.

"That's fucking amazing," he murmured. "Hey... hey, listen... do you hear it? Do you hear that?"

We both held silent, craning our necks. Then I heard it. The gentle, hissing whisper. They actually made noise as they skated across our skies. "I can't believe it," I breathed.

"I know," he said. There above us, something eternal, something that had been going on for billions of years before our births, and would continue billions of years after our deaths. We were nothing. Mammalian fruit flies by comparison.

Suddenly, he began to softly sing the national anthem. We both chuckled, but I joined in. Our voices, fortified by whisky, grew bolder. Starring up into those shifting, whispering curtains of immortality, I had a lump in my throat. It stopped being absurd... we were sharing a symbol of all we would soon have in common. Soon to be half a continent away in British Columbia, he would be beyond the bounds of daily acquaintance, and lost to us... even those who had no quarrel with him, even those who forgave. He was cast out.

"When do you leave?" I said.

His gaze left the sky, and met the dark forest beside the car. "Rented the trailer this morning."

"That soon?"

"Probably Monday," he said. "Need time to pack. My Dad's coming to help. Gonna ride back with me."

"Do you need any help?"

He shook his head. I understood. He didn't want any of his friends there, closing out his life. Then he laughed. "Well, yeah, here, help with this." He handed me the bottle.

I took another drink. "We better take it easy," I said.

"Fuck it," he said. Then he added, "You're not driving. You finish it."

"I'm glad I could help," I joked.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Hey, remember the time..."

And so it went, as the northern lights writhed naked and beautiful before us. Memory piled upon memory until it was a sandwich neither one of us could swallow. Too much to digest, and too bitter. When the lights in the sky slipped away, fading to black, the asphalt under my feet was cold, and the bottle was empty. We got in the car and left the little lost road.

At home he dropped me off. "I'll give you a call before I go, okay?"

"Sure," I said.

Neither of us wanting to say it, he just gave a quick, short nod, and roared off, heading west.