Strange Highways

Waiting.
     Joey drives through the intersection, straight ahead, passing the turnoff to Coal Valley, taking the county route all the way to the interstate.
     And on the interstate, although he still invites the devil of detachment into his heart, he can't prevent himself from recalling certain things that P.J. said, statements that have a more profound meaning now than they'd had earlier: "It's so easy to destroy me, Joey ... but ... even easier just to believe." As if truth were not an objective view of the facts, as if it could be whatever a person chose to believe. And: "Don't worry about fingerprints. There aren't any to be found. I've been careful." Caution implied intent. A frightened, confused, innocent man wasn't rational enough to be cautious; he didn't take steps to ensure that he'd eradicated all the evidence linking him to a crime.
     Had there been any bearded man with greasy hair - or had that been a Charles Manson-inspired convenience? If he'd hit the woman up on Pine Ridge, hit her hard enough to kill her instantly, why wasn't his car damaged?
     Southbound in the night, Joey becomes increasingly distraught, and he drives faster, faster, faster, as though he believes that he can outrun all the facts and their dark implications. Then he finds the jar, loses control of the Mustang, spins out, crashes ...
     ... and finds himself standing by the guardrail, staring out at a field full of knee-high grass and taller weeds, not quite sure what he's doing there. Wind howling down the interstate with a sound like legions of phantom trucks hauling strange cargo.
     Sleet stings his face, his hands.
     Blood. A cut above his right eye.
     A head injury. He touches the wound, and a brightness spirals behind his eyes, brief hot fireworks of pain.
     A head injury, even one as small as this, provides infinite possibilities, not the least of which is amnesia. Memory can be a curse and a guarantee against happiness. On the other hand, forgetfulness can be a blessing, and it can even be mistaken for that most admirable of all virtues - forgiveness.
     He returns to the car. He drives to the nearest hospital to have his bleeding wound stitched.
     He is going to be all right.
     He is going to be all right.
     At college again, he attends classes for two days, but he finds no value in following the narrow highways of formal education. He is a natural autodidact anyway and will never find a teacher as demanding of him as he is of himself. Besides, if he is going to be a writer, a novelist, then he needs to acquire a fund of real-world experiences from which to draw on for the creation of his art. The stultifying atmosphere of classrooms and the outdated wisdom of textbooks will only inhibit development of his talent and stifle his creativity. He needs to venture far and wide, leave academia behind, and plunge into the turbulent river of life.
     He packs his things and leaves college forever. Two days later, somewhere in Ohio, he sells the damaged Mustang to a used-car dealer, and thereafter he hitchhikes west.
     Ten days after leaving college, from a desert truck stop in Utah, he drops a postcard to his parents, explaining his decision to begin the experience-gathering process that will give him the material he needs to be a writer. He tells them that they should not worry about him, that he knows what he's doing, that he'll keep in touch.
     He's going to be all right. He's going to be all right.
     "Of course," Joey said, still kneeling beside the dead woman in the deconsecrated church, "I was never all right again."
     The rain on the roof was a mournful sound, like a dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young.
     Joey said, "I drifted from place to place, job to job. Fell out of touch with everyone ... even with the dream of becoming a writer. I was too busy for dreams. Too busy playing the game of amnesia. Didn't dare see Mom and Dad ... and risk coming apart, spilling the truth."
     Turning away from the deserted nave over which she had been keeping watch, returning to his side, Celeste said, "Maybe you're being too hard on yourself. Maybe the amnesia wasn't just self-delusion. The head injury could explain it."
     "I wish I was able to believe that," Joey said. "But the truth is objective, not just what we'd like to make it."
     "Two things I