Straight to Steemit Novel: Sojourn - Chapter 1: The Road
Preamble
This is the first chapter in my straight to Steemit Novel Project.
A new chapter will be added in six days time. The cover image may change from week to week. All images used in this project will be captured by myself as original photographs.
1 - The Road
She sat in the driver's seat, peering out into the world through green eyes. Beyond the thick frame of her glasses, the vehicle's gauges expressed our velocity, the rate of engine revolutions, and most importantly its history, unfairly documented through a number on the odometer. Those miles surely had more of a story to tell than the number suggested, 98763, it read.
I looked at the woman behind her glasses. I didn't know how many miles she had traveled. She had an Amazonian build, tall, slightly stocky, with a long face. The tip of her nose was like an elegant chiseled point. He nostrils flared slightly as she inhaled.
A light appeared on the dashboard, reflecting in her glasses. She sighed, keeping her eyes on the road. “We are going to need to stop for gas.” The statement sounded odd right from the moment it left her lips. I still hadn’t gotten used to it. Her name was Violet, and we’d known each other for six months, following a meeting online. For an American, she sounded more British than I'd expected; having traveled all the way from Australia to be a passenger on this journey.
“I saw a sign back there,” I stated as the tyres of the vehicle rapidly rolled against the rough road surface just below my feet. The car was low to the ground, laden with luggage. The road continued to travel underneath my feet. “It said left at the next exit for fuel. We could also get something to eat while we stop?” My stomach liked this idea.
She flicked the steering wheel with grace and ease, positioning the vehicle into the lane marked EXIT. A thin gold bracelet on her right wrist rattled against itself, barely audible. There was a tattoo on her wrist, a simple silhouette of a bird. “We can eat when we get to the Lighthouse.” My stomach didn’t like this idea.
A few moments later, we were at the gas station. It was unremarkable, the same as every other I’d ever seen in my life. I took a photo on my camera anyway. I was a tourist. The shutter clacked. I packed away the camera, got my wallet off the dashboard and entered the store to pay for fuel, while she got out to stretch her legs.
I took a second glance towards her as she started to unscrew the fuel pump with manicured hands. I could feel that there was an attraction there. She smiled at me. She seemed to have lots of those for me. I wonder if it meant she felt the same way that I did, but hadn’t yet expressed?
I paid the attendant in paper money. US currency felt like it was fake from the moment I had exchanged my Australian polymer bank notes for it. The attendant remarked something about coming rainstorms and to ensure we put the top down on the convertible. I thanked her with a smile, and a single word “Thanks!” I'd only been in America for a week and I still took joy in people's expressions when they heard my cultured accent. I also left a tip of a few dollars, Americans seemed to love those too.
I returned to the vehicle, and the fuel pump was engaged. It rumbled idly, filling the tank. She was pacing back and forth, stretching her legs, cramped from the driving position. “They said there's rain coming. We should put the top back up.”
I motioned at the vehicle, and she smiled at me from the corner of my vision. “Come now, Walter; this needs two people.” She was right. It was easier with two people. To me, it seemed over engineered and at the same time, flimsy. Perhaps she was so used to having nobody willing to help her with such a task, that a hand would help. I tried to etch the process into my memory, as I envisioned I would be needed to open and close the top of the cabriolet many times over the course of the journey.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sudden jolt of the fuel line behind me. The pump had stopped laboring as a loud click indicated that the fuel tank was full. For a moment, the world was silent. Then, it started to rain. Lightly at first, then with some considerable force. It came from all directions, and the once clear world was cast over with sheets of grey. The wind had picked up, and started to rattle the neglected iron roofing above my head.
A few leaky spots in the roof became evident, as a trickle of water started to splash down onto the convertible’s canopy. It was a good thing we had gotten the cover back up, or we’d have very uncomfortable seating for the rest of the journey.
“I guess that’s the rain you were warned about,” She smiled. Her face had a sudden youthful spark to it. “Do you remember jumping in puddles as a child?” I did. I also remembered the scolding I’d gotten once from the school principal and my parents about such things. “I got yelled at every time that I did!” I don’t know why, but it suddenly felt like a good idea to go puddle jumping. Everything seemed like a good idea around Violet.
“I won’t yell at you.” She suggested, with a smirk. It was as though she wanted an excuse to trudge about in the water as the rain continued to pelt down around us. “I wouldn’t want to get the inside of your car wet.” I really wanted to jump in some puddles, even though my twenty-four-year-old brain wanted to let go and continue to be a child. No. I’m an adult now. Sense must prevail. No one wants to deal with damp upholstery.
Before I changed my mind, I needed to change the subject, thinking of our destination, the lighthouse. We were about fifty miles away, and didn’t have much daylight left, as the storm had decided to take most of that away from us due to a thick blanket of summer storm cloud.
“Shall we set off, to the coast?” I said.
“I suppose… I hope the windscreen wipers will deal with this rain, though,” she seemed slightly worried, as though driving in the rain wasn’t a particularly enjoyable experience in her car. “Only one way to find out,” I enthused, placing the fuel nozzle in the pump; and settling back into the passenger seat, enjoying the sound of the rain.
She slipped back into the driver’s seat, spurring the engine back into life. “Tell me again, why did you come all this way just to take a road trip with me?” There had been some sparks of romance in our conversations online, and I genuinely felt that the spark between our minds could blossom into something more. I hoped that this was the case, but if not, I was definitely going to have an experience I would never forget.
The real reason was that I just wanted to get away. “To see if you were an axe murderer or not,” I joked, then continued; “but I picture you as the sort that would use knives instead.” She laughed.
“I’d probably use poison, or some sort of firearm, I don’t like blood.” It was hard to tell if she was being serious or not.
I took the conversation further, “The only difference between poison and medicine is the dose.” As a pharmacist, her eyes showed understanding, and an appreciation of the morsel of wisdom I’d added to the conversation.
She smiled. It was dark overhead. A short silence. The sound of rain against the windshield was interrupted briefly as we passed under a bridge. The sound came back again, then disappeared as we passed under the highway. I could see the ramp to the right.
“It isn’t my intention to kill you, you know.” I know what she’s going to say next, I thought. I hate these sorts of moments, where you want someone to say something, but you’re afraid of hearing the words come out of their mouth. “What exactly are your intentions, then, Violet?” I didn’t expect her to give me an answer. She was flirtatious in her original statement, so I’d likely get a deliberately vague answer.
An electronic voice chirped out from the GPS unit. It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “Approach the intersection and turn right onto Tide Water drive.” Obligingly, she moved the steering wheel to the right. It was a blind turn. “To jump in puddles, mainly.” There was a playfulness in her voice, as the car began to rev up onto Tide Water drive.
She swerved toward a puddle as though to illustrate her point, and the car splashed water across the road surface, a million molecules displaced and moved to another location. That’s probably what is so cathartic about jumping in puddles, I thought. The rain continued. “We could always stop to jump in some puddles,” my suggestion was disturbed by a splash then the dull crash of another decimated population of molecules that were once a puddle coming back down to hit the tarmac. That puddle was longer and deeper than the last.
A drop of water landed on my shoulder. “Does your car normally leak, Violet?” I got the feeling that this may be where her concern back at the gas station may come from. I also had the suspicion that the passenger seat was rarely filled. “Sometimes, a bit of oil, but no... not my knowledge….”
“I felt a raindrop on my shoulder, that’s all,” It was no jumping in puddles. The rain was starting to ease, and the sun was just starting to crack through the clouds. We progressed further along Tidewater Drive. “So, are we stopping to jump in puddles?”
We had stopped, but not to jump in puddles. It was a set of lights. She turned to face me. “We could stop to jump in puddles, but then we wouldn’t catch the sunset at the lighthouse.” She had spoken about this picturesque lighthouse at length, the way the bay swept around at just such an angle, the way the tide crashed at the rocks, as it had done so for hundreds of years.
“Maybe there’ll be puddles AND sunsets?” I made the suggestion; almost romantically, perhaps too keenly. It was a possibility – what could be more fun than jumping in puddles and then watching the sunset? Behaving like a child then seeing the typical romantic adult thing that real adults don’t ever have time to do. “Perhaps,” she mused.
The light turned green. We continued. The GPS spoke again. “Turn left.” The wheel turned left, the car obliged. That’s the moment that everything changed. That is a lie. Everything in my mind changed. The tone of the situation did, and so did the urgency. That same thunderous splash and clap of water hitting tarmac was back, but this time it was very different.
The hood of the vehicle was suddenly underwater, and the car had stalled. Somehow, the simple action of turning left had landed us in a flash flood, just deep enough to engulf the low laying engine block. Water flowed half way up the long hood of the car. “Oh fuck!” She hit the steering wheel forcefully, causing me to jump a little. It wasn’t a behavior that I expected to see from her; based on the conversations we’d had the six months prior. Maybe she was an axe murderer after all.
“Violet,” I said. “I'm so sorry. We will survive this. The car will be okay.” My limited mechanical knowledge betrayed the statement that I had just made. The car was probably screwed, as it definitely wasn’t engineered for water crossings like a rough and ready truck.
I could see that she was holding back tears, on the verge of breaking down. I needed to do something to try and make the situation better. I didn’t know what to do. She tried to start the vehicle again, the audible sounds of the engine failing to turnover punctuated the level of distress that the car, and Violet were experiencing. I wasn't too far behind.
“Oh shit, shit, shit!” I heard her exclaim, as I felt the pressure change in my ears. Something was going on that wasn’t normal. “My fucking foot, its wet!” I looked across, and the driver’s side of the vehicle was starting to fill with water from the under carriage. She was already in a panic.
That’s where I started to also panic, especially as I realized the pressure change in my ears wasn’t my mind melting away into the sheer unlikely-ness of the situation. The scenery in my periphery suggested that the car was starting to float. It had taken momentum into the body of water before stalling.
Violet was terrified, and it was clear that the adrenaline had overtaken her apparent, earlier desire to break down. It was my turn to start to get terrified, as my side of the car started to fill with water. I was frozen.
“Walter,” She said urgently. “Your camera.” My camera. It was the most expensive item that I had brought with me on this trip. My camera. Where was it? It was resting on my right leg for most of the car journey, inside its sling bag. It was on the floor of the car, perilously close to the growing volume of water. I snatched it up quickly.
Adrenaline surged with the sound of her seat belt clicking open. The radio in the vehicle had stopped working, and she had given up on trying to start the car. Sparks and smoke started to flow out of the air conditioning vents. I wasn't too sure, but there was the trickle of a little water as well.
It was clear that we had to get out of the vehicle, or at least, that was her strategy. The vehicle wasn't going to take us to the lighthouse after all. There was also the fact that floating off to the mercy of a flood-tide wasn’t something that I had planned on doing when I wanted to get away.
I wasn’t keen on seeing where we would float off to I wasn't a sailor, and this wasn't the sea but it certainly felt like that at first. It was just a rather large, car shaped puddle. I wouldn't be floating anywhere, just getting rather wet. Not much of a strategy really.
I felt the soft upholstery of the passenger seat of a now useless cabriolet. It seemed more comfortable now, despite the water starting to slowly fill the cabin. She wouldn’t add any more miles to her odometer. 98737. Her journey was over, but mine was not.
At least the rain had stopped.
I clicked off my seat belt, took a deep breath, and grabbed the door handle.
Top effort, mate.