Like a Road
an excerpt

My name is Jerry Carson. I left home when I was 16 and haven’t been back, although that will soon change. All the Carson men leave home early and while most would claim that they never looked back, I have looked back many times. The Carson men leave because we can no longer live with another Carson man. We are all insufferable bastards. When I look back on the days of my youth, I know I was one too. I hope that I no longer am.
But now I am returning home, not because I miss it, because I don’t, but because I feel the relentless pull of home like some sort of migratory bird, and because my father is dying. He’s not dying of anything in particular, he just is. He’s not old by some standards, late 70’s isn’t that old but by Carson standards, he’s ancient. We all die relatively young. We grow weary of being insufferable bastards I suppose, and fade away.
I am surprised that he isn’t already dead. He was a hard drinking, chain smoking son of a bitch when I was living at home and I suspect that he didn’t change much in the thirty years that I’ve been away. Carson men don’t change you see, they just are. Have I changed? I think that I have…I know that I have.
And so here I am, in a roadside hotel, unable to sleep. The traffic on the highway doesn’t help, I’ve always preferred quiet to chaos. But what keeps me awake most are the thoughts of home. I left more than my father behind. I had a couple of friends once. I wonder if they’re still there. I suspect that they are; trailer park people rarely move, unless it’s to another trailer park. I guess I’m the exception to that rule. I’ve never stayed in one place longer than two years, and that wasn’t by choice, but I’ll get to that.
So why am I telling you this? I don’t know for sure. Part of it is because I can’t sleep and when that happens I’ve learned not to fight it. It’s easier just to deal with the memories and set them free than it is to fight them…and I’m tired of fighting them.