Title is from the Gillian Welch song I Dream a Highway Back to you. Great song. Anyway, this is my first Wolverine story and I hope you like it!
He's been on the road longer than he can ever recall. Years and years have passed and that long winding road still stretches out in front of him. Twisting on out into the horizon. A single gold band running down it's middle. He follows that road on foot and on bike. Towns come and go as the years pass by. More years than he can count and more miles than he can ever know.
He passes trees and forests and deserts and rivers. Sleeping where he can and when he can. He's going home. Going home to rest.
That long back ribbon with it's band of gold stretching on for miles. Laid down by men long gone. Men who came and went in his lifetime. By all rights he should be gone now too but he's not. He's still here and if nothing else is so is the road. The endless highway of hard black asphalt. He rides his bike down the road, hardly looking from side to side and not thinking much. He's an old man and the world's changed. There's nothing he wants to look at as he drives. He's just looking for that home at the end of the road. Houses pass, small and scarred from the years. He doesn't know what's happened in them over the years. He doesn't know their stories but they're like him. They've been on that road for years and when the people in them go they'll still be there. Just like him.
He drives through the towns and sees the people go about their days. He was there before them and he'll be there after them. Some of them eye him distrustfully. Not many people go through the towns and they're dying. The interstate took their gas stations and the visitors who once bought from their stores. Hard faced old men lean in door ways and watch him pass. If they're lucky they'll pass before they see their town die.
He never takes the interstate. It's too fast and has too man people. Too many people all in a hurry, never looking to their left or right. They miss the world the old highways can show them. They miss the people.
He stops and pumps gas at a small station in a small town. A little old man stands with his thumbs in his belt loops, his face is lined and hard. He squints and gives a one fingered wave. He spits into the dust. When he was a boy he pumped gas for his father. His grandfather opened the station when cars first began showing up on the high way but his son won't pump gas and neither will his grand son. His son left and went to school far away and never came back. He doesn't understand all of the big words his son uses now and sometimes he thinks his son talks to fast and he doesn't understand the things his grandson talks about.
Wolverine nods back to the old man and quite suddenly the old man's eyes go wide and he senses something that stands his hair on end. The strange little man who calls himself Wolverine is something like him. Something different from the fast new world and he can feel it, even if he doesn't understand it. His heart beast fast for the first time in years. And then the little man swings his leg back over his bike and is revving up the engine and just as soon is driving off back down the road and the old man is left standing, puzzled and a little disturbed. He goes back inside and has a coke. He needs to sit in the shade for a little while.
And Wolverine heads on down the highway. He feels a little funny himself. He stops for dinner a few towns down in a little diner. A woman with a face older than she is serves him. She watches him out of the corner of her eye because it's been a long time since anyone from out of town stopped by. They all go to the Mcdonald's in the next town over. It's putting her out of business. She'll be shut down by the end of next year. She wishes she'd gone to school longer, if she had she wouldn't be so worried. She watched the stranger eat with a kind of hunger herself. She craves affection. She's divorced and can't find anyone worth it in her small town. She's been lonely for so long.
Eventually he's the only person left in the dinner. It's late. She wonders where he's going to stay. She wonders over to his table where he sits finishing a piece of pie. She thinks it was kindness that made him order it.
She says something vague and he responds and they meet eyes and she feels a pain of hunger. She spends the night with him and it's just what she's always fantasized about. Animal and rough and yet gentle and kind. It's the first time she's had sex in the seven years since her divorce and it gets her thinking about her ex. He wasn't a bad man, they just hadn't been good together and she tells her friends she hates him and pretends he did her wrong but it wasn't like that. Not really. They just stopped loving each other and were strong enough to go their separate ways. Her friends wouldn't understand that. This man now lying next to her didn't ask about it and for the first time she weeps to herself because she doesn't have someone to lie next to each night and there are no children in her home. She lies next to him and he can smell her tears and at first he worries but soon he realizes they aren't for him and he puts an arm around her, not speaking or asking what's wrong but giving her a night of what she's missed and soon her tears dry and they do it again and she thinks she'll go mad once he leaves. Seven years dry she could handle but seven years and then a drop of water splashed in her mouth and no more after that is a kind of hell she never thought about.
She finds him in the garden the next day, he's getting ready to leave but she convinces him to stay for breakfast and she knows he feels sorry for her and that's why he stays but she pretends it's not. They don't talk much but he tells her his name is Logan and she smiles because it's all so unreal. He smiles at her because even though she isn't young or even that pretty and her face is lined with an age she hasn't yet reached he thinks there's something lovely about her.
They have sex one last time and he leaves not long after that and she doesn't feel bad seeing him go.
The road stretches out in front of him again. A long black tongue stuck out at the world. He's closer to home now but he's not there. He's got miles to go before he gets there and miles to go before he dies.
He heads through the mountains. Through coal country. Through small mining towns. A few children watch him from front porches. They're not in school. He guesses that it's Saturday. They watch him with big eyes. One little boy waves and his sister hides her face in her doll's stomach. He waves back. The boy grins. He wants a motorcycle but he's only seven and only has his older brother's bike. He'll tell his mother about the man on the motorcycle over supper.
Coal Country starts to slip away as he passes through the hills and hollows, the kudzu lying flat and green against the ground. He sleeps out under the stars, gazing up at yet another thing that's been there since before his time. The moon and the stars. The moon, stars and highway and him. He smokes his cigars and stares up at the sky. He can still taste the lips of the woman in his mouth and it's a pleasant taste. He'll never see her again but he hopes she'll do alright. He knows her dinner will go under. Just like the old man's gas station will when the old man passes.
He lays down and blows smoke at the stars, he can hear animals near by. He can smell deer but they know he's not hungry and on some primal level they know they don't have to be scared of him. Even though he's the most dangerous thing in the woods that night. Funny, he thinks. He's a predator. Some have even accused him of pretending to be a man but tonight he feels at ease. He's by himself and can relax. He can sit quietly and feel the years wash over him. His old bones can settle in him and he can appreciate the night.
Too many of his nights are fraught with blood and death. It's good to lie in peace. He's close to home. Home is good too. He's been gone for a long time. He wonders what things have changed. He'll find out soon.
At just before Dawn he rises and in the gray light for morning stalks to the edge of the woods, he can still see his bike on the edge of the road. He moves to relieve himself but stops. There's a fawn standing only a few feet away. It's frozen still and wide eyed. He watches it and a kind of understanding passes between them. He's the most dangerous thing in the forest and it's one of the most fragile but it knows he won't hurt it and he tells it that without speaking. It blinks and twitches it's tail and then gallops off. He spots it's mother and gives her a sort of nod before going back to his business.
Ten minutes later he's on the rad again. That long black snake twisting out ahead of him. He drives at a slow pace, enjoying the solitude. Enjoying the quiet. Enjoying how his motorcycle is the only noise for miles. Soon he starts to see farm houses and barns. He's heading back to civilization and a piece of him aches because of it. Part of him longs to remain up in the mountains and hollers. To remain by himself in that silent isolation.
He pushes through that and stops for lunch. Almost home. He smiles to himself, thinking maybe he'll take a detour and see the ocean but then he thinks that he's already been away for too long. Maybe next time he'll head up the coast.
All thoughts aside, he heads home, following that long black ribbon. He's close now and a sense of regret fills him. It's the kind found after a long journey. When you're too tired to really keep going but every part of you begs not to stop. He's felt that many times before. He smiles to himself and he follows that long back road all the way to the mansion and through the doors to where a beautiful woman with fiery red hair lives. She's not his and she never will be but sometimes it's almost enough for him to just see her. There's a kid there who's always happy to see him. That's good. Both of those things are good. And he hopes when he finally reaches the end of that road those people will be waiting for him and it will be a good death. Because that's what the end of the road is, it's death and the only thing a man like Logan can pray for is a good death. But until then he'll keep on down that long black ribbon.
Thanks for reading.