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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
It had started out as a simple thing, as a nothing thing. He had gotten the camera from his sister Hailey, a gift, sent in the mail and addressed in her small scratchy cursive. It was already loaded with pictures of her family, his family, she said, his niece and two nephews grinning at the camera. In one picture they held up a sign, “We love you, Uncle Paul”. In another, they were all baking a cake. Hailey, in the accompanying card, wrote that they missed him; she wrote that she loved him, and she wrote that it was seven hundred and eighty two miles from his front door to hers. She also sent him the key to her front door in case he decided to make the journey. His sister was thoughtful. He thought about calling her to thank her while he clicked through the pictures, but the television was on, and the Yankees were winning.
Paul woke up the next morning still slumped on the couch, with the camera in his lap. He decided he would take it to work, load the pictures onto his computer, and have them as a screen saver. Pictures of people who loved him could float by on the screen when people were in his office. They would know that people loved him, because there was proof. “We love you, Uncle Paul.” Proof. They would whisper in the halls outside of his office, “It must have been the wife that was cold, because Paul has pictures of his family all over. It must have been her fault that they divorced.” Paul daydreamed through his entire drive to work. He imagined catching people saying things like that, and imagined himself responding, “No, it just happens. She's really not a bad person. I wish her the best, no need to be mean.” He imagined their faces staring at him as he walked away, incredulous at his kindness, impressed that he could take the higher road.
They would never imagine that he had not set foot in his bedroom except to get clothes for work in the morning, or that he had spent every night that week polishing off a bottle of wine, and the week before that a twelve pack of beer. He had started feeling embarrassed about how much alcohol he had bought, so he went to the liquor store and loaded up on bottles of cheap merlot, smelly cheese, and soda crackers, telling the bored girl behind the counter that he was having a huge housewarming party, trying to sound happy and talking too much. She didn't even look at him, working at her cuticles with her front teeth while he blushed and sifted through his wallet for his debit card.
There was a sign in the grassy divider between his office building and the main road that said “178 MILES TO JACKSONVILLE 66 MILES TO ORLANDO”. Paul noticed it every day, but today he had the urge to get out of the car and take a picture of it. It was seven hundred and eighty two miles to his sister's house, she said. He wondered if she had gone on mapquest.com to find that number or if she had done the math on a piece of paper, in her small scratchy script.
It is nothing to load up pictures onto a screen saver. Paul sat in the office looking at the pictures all day. They came out of the corners of the screen, floated up from the bottom, expanded out of nothingness in the center. There was no pressing work to be done, and any time anyone looked over at him, he imagined they were thinking about how much he missed his nieces and nephews, not about how much he must miss his wife. There was more dignity in missing someone who was still in your life, he thought, than in missing someone who had decided to opt out of it.
At 5:30, Paul gathered his things. It was Friday. Before the divorce, Friday was dinner and a movie with Pam; before the marriage, Friday was drinks with the guys. Now, Friday was only the day before Saturday. He noticed that the camera had a timer on it. He could take a picture of himself standing in front of the sign. He could load up the camera with pictures of himself and send it back. Then they could do the same. He thought to himself that he should call his sister and say thank you, but instead he glanced around the parking lot to see how many cars were left. His was the last. He unlocked his car and got in.
Paul only had to drive onto the grass an inch or two to get the car where he wanted it. It was a good spot for a picture, the emerald green of the sign would look nice in contrast with his pale green shirt. He balanced the camera on the roof of the car and set the timer for thirty seconds. He ran to the sign and held onto the metal leg of it.
Thirty seconds seems longer when you are expecting a flash to go off during each second leading up to it. Paul grinned at first, to show that he was okay, but by the time the picture snapped, his grin looked like an irritated bearing of teeth. He set the timer for fifteen seconds this time and didn't smile. He tried to look calm, easy. That one was better.
On his way home, there was another sign and Paul wondered if he should take a picture with that one also. He kept going, but he thought about it the whole way home. “40 MILES TO OVIEDO 216 MILES TO MIAMI”. He unlocked the door to the messy apartment that only contained the things Pam didn't want. 40 miles to Oviedo, 216 to Miami. Paul wondered where there were other signs. Were they placed a certain amount of miles from each other? Or were they randomly staggered throughout the state, in places where travelers may be going down the road and the sign may inspire them to vacation in Jacksonville, since it is only 178 miles away? Was there a pattern?
That night, Paul confronted the bedroom. He had avoided that room for a week, but tonight he brushed some dirt from the sheets and made the bed. When he was done, he lay down in the dark room and thought about other places he had seen signs. Seven hundred and eighty two miles to his sister's house. He wondered if there was a sign saying that. Would she appreciate it if he sent her a picture of it? He would get an early start of it in the morning. Paul listened to the rain.
The rain slowed into a fine mist over the weekend and, by Monday, the grey weather had transformed into bright sunshine. There was a sign on Old Aces Highway, and one on Harbor Drive. He also found signs on June Street, Jane Street, and Pineapple Avenue. None of them said 782. He took a picture in front of each of them and went into work a little late. No one said anything about it, and he suspected they didn't notice so he left early. On the way home, he found signs on Sunshine Road and Highway A 1 A. He had perfected his picture face and was no longer self conscious about people passing by in their cars, looking at him. They didn't know that he was anything but a happy traveler. He grinned for some pictures, looked confident and happy in others. He was amassing a collection. He thought maybe he should take some more.
Samantha's Isasi's poetry has appeared in publications such as Freefall, The Sulphur River Literary Review, and The Long Island Quarterly, and her fiction has appeared in 580 Split.