THE DRIVE


I fly up the on-ramp like a thousand butterflies lifting from the earth. Merging, I hear honking. It sounds like an elephant trumpeting. I become a snake, slithering, scales glittering, into the next lane. I’m nosing the car in front of me, I need to get going. The driver is a three-toed sloth, raising his middle finger. Damned slowpoke. Hurry if you don’t want me stepping on your back feet.  I spread my peacock tail, iridescent green with turquoise eyes bright with expectation. Make room for me!
There’s not a minute to lose. With a graceful leap, I land in the fast lane. At last I can gallop, a gazelle, my blood warm and flowing fast, on my way to the airport to pick up my husband. He’s been in Antarctica for two months, sampling ice cores, measuring the warming of the globe. Climate change. Usually the words land on me like two bricks, but today they are just two crows flying alongside me. Nothing slows me down today.
The truck in front of me, an armored rhinoceros, tries to slow me down, but I’m a squirrel monkey swinging from branch to branch, lane to lane. I pass the truck, swing back into the fast lane. I do this over and over, always searching for the opening, always wary of mischievous adolescent monkeys and angry grandpa monkeys, staying just out of their grasp.

It’s been so quiet in the evenings, with my husband gone. He travels for work two or three times a year, but never like this, leaving me alone for two whole months. We talk on the phone once a week when he comes in from the field, but we don’t have much time, so I keep it short and to the point, like a woodpecker tapping out a telegram. I don’t tell him about the next-door neighbor who died. I tell him about the cousin who had a baby. The argument I had with his sister, when she helped me with the bed and insisted on putting the top sheet the wrong way up, is not reported.  Nor do I mention how much I hate having to rely on his sister. I tell him I’m grateful for her help, and I mean it. He tells me he loves me, he misses me, and to keep the home fires burning. It must be really cold down there.
I'm loping again, in the zone, when the worst happens. I’m caught in a flock, a slow, tightly packed flock. They’re geese, stretching their long necks, staring at the side of the road with their beady, curious eyes. Police lights strobe and flares flicker. A woman on a gurney is passed by paramedics into an ambulance. Sun glints off crushed metal fragments; the asphalt sparkles with shards of glass. A cheetah in a cage, I’m filled with rage, I need to run, get the carnage behind me.    
The cars wander apart as the scene recedes, and now I’m a roadrunner, taking off with a zoom, legs spinning. No one can catch me. Beep beep! Headed for hubby.
If he had it to do again, I’m not sure my husband would choose to marry me. He says that’s not true, but I saw the looks, heard the whispered words. An elephant never forgets. I trumpet my horn, just for the hell of it. An old goat in an Oldsmobile stares at me with yellow eyes. I laugh like a hyena. It feels good. I’ve had my share of bad luck, but overall, the good luck wins. We're happy together, and he’s coming home.
 Airport exit, ½ mile. I narrow my focus like a peregrine falcon, swishing through the gaps
between the cars, pointed at my target and ignoring the upraised arms of outraged motorists. We’re in the home stretch, I’m a greyhound, the track is clear, and I’m bounding, furlong after furlong, to the finish line. A sharp turn slows me down. I veer into the parking lot and I become a rabbit, hopping and hunting for a burrow, and I find one, lined in a beautiful blue. I enter it. I open my door and reach over to the passenger seat to get my wheels. Then I haul out the chair, attach the wheels to it, hoist myself in, and I’m a woman, going to meet my husband.


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