New Hope

cow
Originally uploaded by aaronjmaier.

I keep having this dream. Every morning I wake up and remember different parts of the story, but never the whole thing. A white cow moves along a rusted fence covered in thick bramble. The cow moves swiftly through a golden field of grain left fallow through the winter. The sky is a deep blue bleeding into the infinite reaches of my memory. Nothing is the way it should be. This is not the way January in Ohio should look.

In the dream I am stranded on a windy road through the middle of nowhere. I have to travel to the crest of the hill in the distance. I am all alone on my journey. I come to a small empty country church. I clearly remember certain details like the little sign on the front of the church. Small black letters. New Hope Baptist Church it reads.

New hope. For what. I'm stranded. This is when the dream starts to get weird. A haggard bearded man in grease-stained Carharts arrives at the church. The man has a scorpion tatooed on both sides of his neck. I remember him telling me the story of the scorpions through the smoke rings of his Winstons. He got the ink done at Surgis. 1984. He said that was before all those yuppie doctor types started going to the rally. It was still a party then. Now they have corporate sponsors for their website.

I become instant friends with Charlie. We swap stories from the road and talk about all of the adventures that lie ahead. Further on down the line. Talking to Charlie makes my feet itchy again.

I always wake up at the same time. Charlie drops me off at the crossroads and yells out the window "see you a little further on down the road."