The call of birdsong woke me up, piercing and insistent, as if there was work to be done. It was just after five o'clock. I rolled under the blanket for a lingering stretch and then kicked it off, rising to witness the early morning glory of the Texas dawn. A rattlesnake passed me by and didn't even blink, while a trio of crickets chirruped a round for breakfast. This was Mother Nature's hour, the only sign of human activity being the bed of ash left over from our campfire. I crouched by the water's edge and cupped some morning freshness into my hands. Wetting my face, I marveled at the honesty of the morning. Not a soul around for miles. I yawned and stretched out wide. My arms felt as though they had gone right round the world and come back to me, so peaceful was the scene. I could see why Janis loved it so. Janis? Most probably down the river someway. What a day it would be for her, what a night too. I'd thought of nothing else; orphaned, homeless and struck by cancer. It was almost too much just to have it all in the same thought. She would need her space once we got to Port Arthur. But I would be there for her. She had looked after me and given sparkle to my trip. I figured I owed her. I lifted my blanket and shook it clean, across the river. My clothes were piled neatly next to where I had slept. My knapsack was there too. Strange, I thought. I had not left them there. My bag had been in the passenger seat of the Lincoln. "S**t," I said suddenly. How could I have been so blind? "Janis!" The car was gone, its tracks leading back up onto the road and away. She was gone. My heart sank to my stomach and my stomach to my knees. In quick succession, I felt panic, then anger, then confusion. 'Janis', I mouthed, the word forming but not materialising beyond a whisper. I slumped to the ground. Forlorn on the roadside, I ran my hands through the dust and sand; brown specks, grey ones and silver ones too. I felt sick inside, like somebody had opened a treasure chest up before my eyes, only to close the lid with my fingers still on the rim. How could she have gone, I wondered? There was so much more to say. I was flattened. The sky was suddenly heavy with the traces of her presence and my world seemed too big without her in it. It was not supposed to be that way. Not yet. Still she was gone and I could not escape the inevitability of her departure. For a long time I sat by the road, keeping one eye on the horizon and the other on the waters of the Sabine, waiting for her return. I ran the previous night's conversation over and over in my head, searching for clues, hoping for reasons. I guessed it boiled down to one thing though; for Janis the road went on forever. Staying put was too painful, it seemed. For Janis, the yellow brick road went on. And now she had gone. Gone for good, I was sure. No goodbye, no tearful parting and no mess. It was her way. Everything good is used in little pieces, my mother had once told me and as I watched the sun rise high in the sky that morning, I knew that I had been privileged to share in the good that was Janis. After a while, I turned to face the campsite. Everything was just as it had been the night before. The same, but different; like the Mona Lisa without her smile. I lingered, not wanting to change anything, not wanting to move. Like a bereaved parent who cannot adjust to the dust-gathered room of a once living soul, I hoped to preserve the scene. Her footprints could still be seen in the sand and the outline of her body where we had laid together on the ground had left the brown grass flattened and trampled. So I stayed, until the breeze of a passing truck blew the footprints away and the outline of her body could no longer be seen between the blinking of my eyes. Eventually and groggily, the yesterday in my head gave way to the reality of the day. It was Sunday 24th August, 1969 and I was lonesome and a long way from home. I needed to get back to a place where I belonged; I needed to speak to home. I decided I would head into Port Arthur anyway, not necessarily to look for Janis, but certainly to feel her. I felt certain that she would have visited the graves of her parents, but after that, who knew? I wondered how serious she had been about going to Mexico. Maybe she was already on her way. Or perhaps, I thought, she had headed to Washington, to look up her sister. I would never know and it made me feel physically sick to think about it. It would take many years before I stopped watching the horizon in anticipation, or spinning round whenever I heard a southern American accent. She would, I knew, be with me for life. For now though, however much I disliked it, I needed to move on. I sat in thought for a few minutes and then, opening up the front pocket of my knapsack to check on my funds, I found a still-fresh ghost. Janis' copy of 'On The Road', the Kerouac bible I had seen in her glove compartment a few days before had been placed there during the night. Inside the front cover was $200. No words, no message, just the money. 'A little something to get you home, Peaches,' I could hear Janis say in my head. Suddenly her absence hit me. I dropped the bag and wept. |
