Entry no.0

(this is the only one that won't be on paper)
The County Line.
I'll be writing the rest to you in letters.
 Fine. Auvey Adventure: Test Run.
Pay attention. Copy and paste this. Print it out. Whatever you need to do to remember.
Hop on 40 east, like you're coming to me.
Get off on the Sharon School Road exit and turn left. You'll pass a gas station and a bunch of residential stuff. Eventually you'll come to a place where the road forks. To the left is a sharp curve. To the right is a straight road that goes by Sharon elementary school.
 Take the left, around the curve.
Here, I will point out that my father went to sharon elementary when he was a kid.
Once you get around the curve, there's another gas station.
The Sharon Supermarket.
My grandma and grandpa ran that store for years.
They let people pay on credit too. Like I said, some people still owe my grandmother money.
Keep going.
You'll pass a white house on the right with a confederate flag flying or hung up somewhere.
The next house on the right, sitting on the hill, with the long driveway and blue shutters. That's my grandmother's house.
I spent nearly every summer in that pool or running around in her front yard.
Everything that's planted there, she planted herself.
My mother and father got married there.
hat's where my dad grew up.
As you go past (slow down and take a look. Screw the people behind you.), you'll see a big field beside the house. My grandma owns all that land.
I used to run all over it in my fourwheeler.
Past the tree break, there's a big tree that's ancient.
You'll know when you see it. It's the only one.
If you look to the right of that tree, there are targets. My dad and I spent a lot of afternoons shooting down there.
It's one of the few things we bonded over.
The next house you see is a brick house with a red roof and a pretty yard. That's where my aunt and my cousin live. You met them.
 I spent a lot of time over there too.
But until recently, our family was a sort of secret society that gathered in my aunt's house.
The man my grandma married after her husband died was a mean sonofabitch sometimes. My grandma always liked to give all of us money for christmas, but he didn't want her to do it. So every time we came to visit at christmas, she would come to my aunt's house and sneak us money and remind us that it was a secret.
 Between my grandma's house and my aunt's house, on the left, a woman named lois lives there. She's my grandma's younger sister.
Makes damn good biscuits.
But if you keep going, you'll eventually come to another fork in the road. To the left is another sharp curve, to the right is a new road. County Line road. Go right.
It's a beautiful road to drive, especially at sunset. You can barely see the mountains over all the farmland.
If I had a bad day, or I just didn't want to go home, that was the road I would drive.
Windows down and good music. It always made me feel better.
So do just that. Find a damn good song and enjoy the ride. You'll feel better. You'll feel me, I hope.

~+~

The clouds had just begun to peel away from the sun as I pulled off on the Sharon School Road Exit. It had been raining all afternoon and the pavement was dark and moist looking in the fresh, post-precipitation kind of way. I took the left as instructed and crossed the bridge that went over the highway and began to drive down the road.

In my one hand was the steering wheel and in the other was the print out of my directions; I struggled to keep my Ranger on the road as I attempted to drive and memorize her words so I wouldn't have to endanger myself and fellow drivers like I was doing at that moment once I got into the thick of my journey. I know I could have pulled over and saved myself a heap of trouble, but dammit, I was on a mission.

See, this is the first of a series of adventures assigned to me by girlfriend who is away at university. I'm left here to work and save up to see her when I can. To fill those gaps of time when we are apart she has devised to leave me missions in the form of 'Auvey Adventures.' These tasks are her way of letting me know she's still around and to give me insight into her life, the one she had before me and before college.

These quests are to me as if the president himself handed me a self destructing letter that contained information with the tagline "THIS IS A MATTER OF NATIONAL SECURITY" and "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION," "TOP SECRET," "TERRORISTS ARE BAD!"
"I won't let you down, Mr. President," I would say as I took letter.
But this is not the president. This is from my woman who is more real to me than the idea of our nation's leader in ever single way. So I simply smile to myself and continue down the road, inches away from driving off into a ditch and praying no one else on the road is as stupid as me.

I got to the fork and took a left. The gas station was on my right though it was not the Sharon Supermarket, it had been changed to the Sharon Express. I considered stopping to buy a drink but by the time the consideration reached my brain it had already given me the go-ahead to keep driving and that's what happened. Down the road I drove through country miles of twists and turns. I was on the verge of wondering if I had passed what I was supposed to be looking for when a faded confederate flag appeared over the next hill, waving gently from a steel poll next to an old garage.

Past that house, down the road, and up on hill beyond manicured lawns and flowered trees was the house in her description. It was a 'nice' house and I don't mean that lightly. Nice in every sense of the word. You can tell who lived there lived there and cared for what she had. I winked as I drove by, imagining what it would be like to meet her grandmother. Down the rolling field and almost hidden by the curve of the earth was the ancient oak standing alone in a sea of tan grass. The targets were almost hidden in the colors of the country setting but I saw them and remembered the story of this place. I could see her riding her four wheeler down the paths and up to the tree, see her climbing the branches and smiling at the land around her. Being a part of it.

I realized I had stopped in the middle of the road and there were people behind me. I shrugged and once more began to move. The other houses were there with their other stories but after that first one there was nothing else that had the impact I had felt. I was drinking watered down whiskey in a warm glass after you already had the experience of the first shot when it was still chilled on the bar.

I came to the fork for County Line Road and pulled over. I put on our song, took a right, and started to drive. To my right a group of horses had their heads over the fence and watched me pass. I waved to them but they didn't seem to care because they were horses. The road was about as country as they come without being made of dirt and gravel. Farmhouses and barns peeked from behind lonely trees. The treeline opened to vast expanses of vista views over cabbage and corn fields. I sang to the radio as I drove. There's a part in the song where always, without fail, I have to turn and see her. She knows this part too because she's always looking back. I turned my head and there she was, long red hair blowing in the wind being sucked through the rolled down window and that sweet smile upon her lips as we sang together.

"In a world, that gets lost in making plans, just be my woman, and I will be your man. Yeah..."

Then the words were gone and so was she but for just a fleeting second I felt her there with me. Heard her quiet voice. Remembered.

Then a strange thing happened. Cold set in. It seemed a betrayal that I should have to feel something like that after experiencing something so beautiful but these things don't pause to consider what you think you should be feeling. I remembered our story and not in a good way.The people involved, how I'm viewed by her parents, the darker side. I cringed. I didn't see the roads anymore or the sunset. I just saw the cold. The jealousy. The hurt.

But then like a wondering angel came a tap on the back of my brain.
And in a simple voice came one word. "Why?"
Why?
But...
I failed to produce a reason. I failed to produce a solid, legitimate reason why I should feel the way I did. There was no reason for me to feel that way. There never was I had struggled with that cold like a fish would struggle with a net for a long time and it had held me back from her. But why struggle with it? Why not cut through? I had the knife all along and the blade was that single word. Why? The answer is clear. That cold can go fuck itself. The past I resigned to leave as just that. I had my woman, I had every reason to live this life and be happy and she was waiting for me to see her seven days from now. Me. And I would be there. I would punch the gas pedal to the floor and tear the road up behind me and when I got to her I would wrap her in my arms sing those words that made us pause into her lips and that's why I am her man and she's my woman. It's that simple. We are ours.

When I came to I was back at Sharon Express. I didn't remember clearly how I got there but I do remember what I was feeling. Release. And it was good. This time I stopped and filled up my tank, even though it didn't need it. I got back into my truck with the windows down and started back towards the highway. And she was sitting next to me. Smiling.