Walk to the Meeting House

These walks to the meeting house are a lot quicker now that I don't have to stop every ten feet while Girl sniffs the leaves. You couldn't really call those walks exercise. I walk past the house with the for sale sign in the front and the overturned rabbit cage on the lawn. A pet long gone? The house next to it is not empty, an ornimental wheel barrow with a fresh coat of red paint adorns the lawn, a ceramic turtle sits in the flower bed waiting for full spring. He'll sit there all summer among the flowers till fall when he'll go back into the house to sit out another long winter. The only company I have on my walk are the birds who have the run of the town because normal people are at work by 8:30.
Up the hill past the cemetary gone to riot to the old meeting house among the oaks. This was our favorite destinatioin, Girl, Terri, and I. I know Girl is a terribly unimaginative name but it was all she would answer to when she came running out of the woods that day skinny as a winter starved deer. Girl loved the oak filled field in front of the meeting house, full of acorns and squirrels. Terri and I would sit on the ruined steps and watch her root through the leaves. As I sit here now, in front of this abandonded relic the crows are turning over leaves looking for the springs first worms. I feel suspended in time in this decaying town, the past is close and the future doesn't exist. All there are is last falls leaves, and memories of things that will never come back. The whole damn town is like that, every where there are huge airy houses slowly falling into decay, or converted into multiple unit apartments. These are even worse, once the abode of the afluent, now Dallas Cowboy blankets cover the windows and 12 packs of Bud Light empties crowd around the doorways. The river walk constucted as a place of beauty and exercise is littered with old rotting piers. A reminder of when this was a thriving community instead of a corpse waiting for the mill to shut down so the embalming fluid can be pumped in.
On the way home I walk past the spot where it happened, I always do this to myself. I love to wallow in my misery. Wallow, wallow ,wallow, like a pig in his pen. Perhaps appropriate since the pig is waiting to be slaughtered and what am I doing but waiting to die.
Terri and Girl were walking the hill when the yellow cat ran across the road, Girl leaped after it, Terri after her. The Buik was speeding over the hill fullfiling Terris' worst fear, only it was two for one day on Oak Hill. Instead of seeing her dog killed she joined her. I've since met the driver, biggest, toughest son of a bitch you ever saw. The police said he was crying like a baby when they arrived, he wouldn't look into the road where my wife and dog lay. It was a week before the blood stains washed away, I still see them though, every day.
It was an hour later when Terris' mother came to get me at work, the moment I looked at her I knew. So I went to see my family, my life, and made arrangements. James from next door helped me bury Girl in the back yard. Terri was cremated per her wishes. Never thought I'd have to carry out those instuctions being ten years older than her.
I haven't worked a day since, just kind of drifted away from my job. Terris' insurance money has kept me unemployed and drunk. Despite my drinking I'm in better shape, barely eating and constant walks. Just drifting is what I've done my whole life except for my time with Terri. I once told her I've never had an ounce of ambition, and it was a revelation to myself at the time. Drifting like a piece of seaweed in the tide. Sometimes I would fetch up on something like Terri or a job, and for a while I would have focus, but it was never mine.
If I am going to drift I may as well do it properly. The house is payed for due to the insurance, there won't be a for sale sign, or rabbit cage on the lawn. James and his wife will feed the cat, that is how he was living when we bought the place. I feel bad leaving him but he would hate coming with me, besides since Terri died he's been drifting himself coming home less and less. She was the one that made this a home, now it is just where his food bowl sits.
Time to leave, if I stay here I'll just drink myself to death. Probably do it on the road too, but at least I'll see some new sights. The house is secured, power off, keys with the inlaws. All these photos can just gather dust. My truck is packed, the road awaits. Is happiness out there somewhere, probably not, but I,m going anyway. How many miles will it take to remove this boulder from my chest? We'll see.