The Captain and the Obsequito - I - Shotgun

I

 We parted ways at the end of the Rankin Bridge.  Dad turned right, towards Homestead to get pandemic rations for the cats.  I turned left, toward Georgia, to win my old blind horse back and have my first child, alone.  And then I started to cry.

Well, I guess I wasn't entirely alone at least.  I am being dramatic and blame the pregnancy with it's many complicated hormones for that.  I had Brooklyn riding shot gun, of course.  Always shotgun.  Only my good stories start that way - and though I know neither of us are eternal or immortal - I do hope that for some time more they continue to always start out this way.  Grace was behind my head in a cheap crate zip tied together from a larger cat's escape efforts that snapped all the little plastic clips some time ago.  A larger cat who used to be her housemate, with another kitten, and a little blue lobster in a fish tank, and a welder, in a home that used to be ours - or so I thought.  Funny what turns out to be conditional, when people think they are "unconditionally" in love.  Or at least, I thought we were.

The roads became ones I'd never driven before too fast.  I never leave town by turning left at the end of the Rankin Bridge.  I always turn right, to 347.  Always.  My tears blurred the autumn trees into big globs of yellow and orange hanging over freight trains and the river on either side of me, the black top like a tired grey ribbon stretched and twisting in an impossible dream before me.  Grace meowed softly, plaintively, behind my head.  Brooklyn nervously licked my trembling right hand.

"We're gon-" I stammered, choking on a sob, spitting flecks of tears that had gathered in the corners of my lips onto my left hand and the steering wheel beneath its white knuckles and brown tattooed skin. "We're gonna be okay."