All The Darkness You Need

Chapter 2: The Disenchanted Hitchhiker

On Interstate Ninety-five near the approach to Jacksonville there was an impossibly long flat bridge that crossed marsh and blackwater sections of some wide river or bay. The Sun set and died the bridge pink and the traffic on it sparkled. A relatively new, two thousand twelve Nissan Pathfinder flowed along the bridge with a hippie couple in front and their hitchhiking passenger in the back. The driver's name was Rosco and his hippie girl's name was Sage. Her real name was Karen but no one knew that for miles. The hitchhiker was a girl named Jen and she was twenty-one years old and she really was not a hitchhiker at all. The hippies called her a hitchhiker because giving a ride to a hitchhiker was so much more of a hippie thing to do.

Jen had met the couple at a party a few weeks after graduating junior college. They were driving to California a week or so from then as soon as they could get out of their lease and get their security deposit back. Rosco had to wheel and deal with the landlord to get that done and in the mean time Sage was packing and giving stuff away and the two took time out to go to the dinner party in their neighborhood.

The neighborhood party was held once every other month and everyone brought a dish. It was fun enough and sometimes great fun and on this particular time it was being hosted by some cooler younger couple so Sage and Rosco knew it would be a good time. It was a good time.

At the party they met Jen. Jen had just graduated with an art degree and she wanted to move to California. They wanted to move to California. Oh my God was said a hundred times and the three agreed to set out together as soon as Rosco could get the damn security deposit back from that bastard, Mr. Jenkins. He was able to get it taken care of two days later and three days after the party the three young people set out in the Pathfinder from the little neighborhood west of Fort Lauderdale.

The Pathfinder was crossing the flat bridge outside of Jacksonville six days after that.

Jen was in the back seat (again) and she was basically well pissed off at that point. They had stayed at a friend of Rosco's for a day or two in Orlando. They had stayed at a friend of Sage's for a few days in Saint Augustine. And now they were driving to goddamn Jacksonville of all places to visit some guy that Rosco knew who supposedly grew the finest herb in the state. Rosco and Sage smoked weed continually and Jen smoked some but was a much lighter weight than the hippie couple and the entire thing was beginning to smack of futility. Jen spoke, as if to her self, from the back. A monologue she had memorized by that point.

"I thought we were going to California. I could have walked there by now."
Sage turned around in the front seat.

"You gotta go with the flow baby. We are going. But you gotta just chill. It's all cool. The trip is the juice. Get it? It's the journey, not the destination. We're going. It's cool."

"Then bust a left after we get this super-weed from your boy in Jax. You swear?"

"I swear," said Rosco.

"Groovy," said Sage. "See baby. We're going. California is just a state of mind."

"No it's a state in the Union. It's on the west coast of America. It's a long fucking way. And we'll never get there driving in circles in Florida."

"Circles are round," Sage said and cracked up laughing.

Jen laughed too and said, "Fuck it." She sat back and relaxed and looked out the window. The water passed by and out in the distance a small boat was running on a plane. Jen wondered about the people on the boat. Where they were going. What they were doing. Where they were from or where they lived. The Pathfinder made the bridge end and headed up to the exit some miles ahead and no one in the car spoke until the exit.

"This is it," Rosco noted and he took the exit and began the lights and intersections to find his friend's house. He thought it was about ten minutes from the exit and he used his cellphone to call his buddy. They joked on the phone and in a few minutes the three travelers pulled into a neighborhood of older houses on big lots and the entire scene looked absolutely normal. Like any older neighborhood in Florida. Concrete block houses. Metal or tiled roofs. Straight driveways and plenty of SUVs. Kids here and there.