Chapter Six

The following is chapter six from the as-of-now unpublished novel by Matthew Osgood, Chasing Sunsets.

VI.

Far from home plate

Skipping across my first time zone, I felt that somehow I was beginning to cheat the Gods. An unsettling feeling, when you have too much time to think up crazy scenarios, comes when you feel that you’ve done something to upset some higher power. We, as people, are allotted a certain amount of time on this earth. Likewise, our daily dosage of sun or rain is also pre-determined. As I changed the clock in my car an hour back, essentially gaining an hour, I was granted an allowance on my day. I had an hour more sunlight, an hour more of my day. I was cheating as I sped west, holding onto sunlit days, trying to avoid the unrest of the night.

A major car crash slowed my trip to Chicago. I eased my way out of Indiana unscathed and crossed the border into the Land of Lincoln. My trip, so far, had been an enjoyable one, zigzagging across the eastern part of the country. There was no rhyme or reason to the route I took, just an excuse to see people and places along the way and maybe get in a little action while I was at it.

I was ready, though, to get some company because I knew when the days’ trip was over that I was to be reunited with a couple of good friends. I had made arrangements in advance to stay a couple days in Joliet, Ill. with my friends Eric and Marisa. They would take me out on the town, and tantalize my taste buds with some of the greasiest and delicious food the Midwest had to offer.

The three of us had met down in Orlando, Florida in 2001 where we were all taking part in an internship program at Walt Disney World. Eric was the first roommate I met, the elder statesman of the group, and right away I thought he’d be someone I got along with.

Back in Massachusetts, I had followed my older brother from elementary school through high school and even through college, so stepping away from that safety net proved to be difficult. I knew that for the first time, I would be stepping into a world where I knew absolutely no one. Having to rely on just myself, I realized that I had the personality tools to make it anywhere. I had to. It was fight or flight.

Eric was a seasoned vet when it came to the college thing. He was already a senior while I was just a freshman, far away from turning 21. When it turned out my seven roommates and I would all get along, we spent most of the time working during the days and spending an absurd amount of money and time on booze. Our drinking habits were increased because there was nothing better to do. We were in Orlando, where the sun shone bright every day. We were young, having fun, and, because there were 10,000 other college students, most of the nights consisted of drinking until complete inebriation and dabbling in some hookups or throw ups. Even if work concluded at midnight, there was a party you could join, particularly for our apartment, where every night was a celebration.

Somewhere along the line, we established a core group of about eight friends, and Marisa was one of them. She and Eric hit it off almost immediately, despite her boyfriend in New Hampshire. Soon after the program ended, she and Eric fell in love and she moved from New Hampshire to Joliet and they moved in together. The two were married in the fall of 2006.

Of all of the friends that I made down in Florida, Eric and Marisa were the ones I remained in closest contact with. Whether the situation calls for a drunken late night phone call, or a clever recap of the weekend through e-mail, we did a great job of keeping in touch, even after the program ended and a relationship between me and the two of them could have been in jeopardy. A terrible fear of mine is that one day, I will stop referring to someone I used to call a friend, as “someone I used to know.” It’s happened already with friends from Florida, and eventually found its way to my friends from California. Either way, Eric, Marisa, and I began to realize, through distance and absence, how much more we had in common despite the difference in time zones.

Their location was incredibly practical; as I thought that it was probably about halfway across the country. I was terribly wrong. Looking at a map of the country, now I realize how big of a difference there is between the Massachusetts to Chicago trip and the Chicago to San Diego trip.

The Camry and I pulled along Rt. 7 in Joliet about midafternoon. I thought of how Jack Kerouac in On the Road must have traveled these same roads during the height of his beat generation journey. Kerouac was a Lowell, Massachusetts native, who gained literary acclaim with his semi-true account of a trip across the country in the 1950’s. Little did I know that Joliet would be the first of many cities along the way that we had both stopped. I counted just him and me among the elite company that had been to similar hamlets.

Just Marisa was home as I pulled in. We sat on the back porch swing, smoking cigarettes and trading stories, updating one another on our lives. Marisa seemed happier than I had ever seen her. She had settled into her life in Chicago, far from the rough upbringing she had in New Hampshire. She wanted to know all about how the Red Sox were doing, and we reminisced on times we spent after Florida frequenting local bars. Red Sox fans are transplanted throughout the country, and at the time, neither of us had any idea that our beloved baseball team would be ending an 86-year World Series drought a little over a month later, and both of us would be watching from different sides of the country, unaware of the chaos ensuing at home. In fact, it was Marisa who made the first phone call to me as the celebratory third out was made in Game Four of that series, both of us reveling in the excitement of a Red Sox championship far from home plate.

When Eric arrived, we started making plans for the night. Ever the planner, he wanted to know exactly what I intended to do, when I wanted to leave Joliet for the trip westward, and so on. I told him I planned on spending a couple of days in his town, checking out the food, the people, and the bars. He took this sentiment as “I want to get drunk for three straight days.”

I realized that one of the only things to do in Joliet was to drink at bars and taverns, of which there are galaxies. There are bars on every corner, bars right next to bars, each of which I felt Eric had spent time. In addition to the bars, the selection of eateries could make even Michael Moore’s head spin. Each place, too, would stay open until about an hour after the bars closed, appealing to the late night crowd, which gladly accepted the convenience.

I welcomed the fact that most of these restaurants were, in fact, locally owned places, and almost none of them displayed the greediness of capitalistic America, shooting up fast-food chains every couple of streets.

Despite the fact that what I needed was a day of rest in between drives, we headed out on the town each night. Besides, we had catching up to do. And since Eric had already been to my side of the country twice, he wanted to show me where he grew up, introduce me to friends, and make up for the time we had lost since Orlando. It was a running joke that I would never make it to visit them out in Illinois. I had promised to come on many occasions, but never quite followed through.

After a couple nights of boozing until the early hours of the morning, we called it an early night before the voyage. We decided that we needed to hit the road early. We made sure to get coffee at the Dunkin Donuts by the highway just before the trip started. Despite the tendency to induce a good sit down in a bathroom along the road, a large coffee was something essential to making this trip happen. Eric suggested that we plan our trip around stopping in Denver, but Marisa and I decided it would be better if we played it by ear. Perhaps we should have listened to Eric when the idea was placed on the table, but we took our chances.

It was right as we left Joliet when I mentioned that we’re about halfway to San Diego.

“Halfway there?” Eric laughed as he went to the glove compartment for our map. “You are so wrong, Matt.”

I ignorantly debated with him as he opened the map.

“We’re not even close to halfway, maybe a third of the way,” he measured the difference in distance eastward and westward with his thumb and his index finger. “You could drive back and it’d take you less time.”

Eric thumbed through my case of CD’s, which ranges from country to rap to jazz and soul. I watched him flip pages back and forth, offering advice and explaining the track listings and compelling stories behind the names of the blank CD’s I had recorded myself. He finally picked a country CD, aptly named “Getting’ Lucky in Kentucky.”

I scanned through the tracks, finally stopping midway through the disk to show Eric a song he may have never heard before but might find funny and enjoyable. After the song was over and we shared a good laugh at Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach,” Eric returned the CD to track number one, explaining, “What else do we have to do?”