Angel at Exit 27

Angel at Exit 27

By Justina Taylor

She was always so thin, so completely gorgeous. A defined, yet soft facial structure, thin and curvy all at once. She wasn’t too tall or tan. And she didn’t even have to wear a lot of makeup, though she always wore a little bronzer to cover up her freckles and loose-fitting clothing to cloak her beautiful, yet never good enough physique.

It’s all I could occupy my mind with in order to stay awake as I surged along a rural stretch of the interstate into southwestern Iowa. My mother and all her tragic beauty, the way she was never good enough in her own mind, starved herself for years and then suffered delusions once she hit her psychological break.

The sun hadn’t even begun to peer over the horizon and the farm car I’d borrowed, a beat up old Honda 5-speed Civic from the early nineties, roared past scores of quiet farmland surrounding the highway. I was running late and in my panicked state had left my boyfriend’s house a little late. I’d never stayed over on a Sunday before. After all, why would I risk showing a lack of interest in my apprenticeship? The farm owners had been so gracious to me in providing housing, food, work experience, a stipend… Everything I could ever want.

I was too busy trying to remain alert on the road to even recall what had happened only a couple of months prior. I was only a week away from traveling to an off-grid homestead in southern Colorado so I could really learn how to survive. It’s not like I expected it to come in handy, but there was something so intriguing about knowing how the world used to work before modern industrialization.

Distrusting modern medicine and turning to a medium I had met at a farmer’s market earlier that year, all I could do was laugh at what he said in disbelief of how bizarre and indecipherable his words dangled, as if suspended in my consciousness. I didn’t seek him out to talk to the dead. I wasn’t that morbid or lingering in denial. I just wanted a metaphysical physical of sorts. A check up from the ‘spiritual doctor.’ And even if he was completely crazy, it didn’t matter because he never charged me a dime. If anything, it was simply an experiment with someone who suffered from delusions.

I can recall him dangling a quartz from a string over a number of charts and then quickly digressing from his failed reading. ‘There’s some interference,’ he said. ‘Something that needs to be addressed.’ It took everything in me not to laugh at his remark. I assumed a lack of validity like something out of the movies where the main character is being scammed by some lady who runs a psychic business out of her home with all of the clever gimmicks intact.

But this felt slightly different. Part of me wanted to take him seriously because he wasn’t dishonest about most of his ‘skills’ being rusty or ineffective. I was there on a sunny afternoon in a well lit room and he seemed like a nice old man. If anything, I was providing him with a practicing platform and perhaps even an ego boost.

‘Pardon my being so frank with you, but do you have an uncle who passed away?’

‘Not to my knowledge,’ I replied.

‘Or maybe an older male relative of some kind?’

‘Well, I don’t want to give that away. You tell me,’ I retorted.

‘Oh, um, sorry, I thought it might have been your grandfather or something. This man looks very old and too old to be your father, but that’s who he says he is,’ Peter, my medium replied.

I sat there on his couch, tucking my hands under my sundress, as though it might get my blood flowing a little better. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. He didn’t know anything about my family. A shiver ran up my spine despite the lack of air conditioning in his nearly dilapidated 1930’s house in the dead of summer. In my apprehension, I felt inspired to dig a little further and privately disqualify his claims.

‘Can you at least describe him to me, so I can be sure?’

‘Sure, he’s about 6,3 with dark, thin dirty blonde hair and he has a slender body,’ Peter replied.

I dug my hands deeper under my thighs. My dad and I had never looked alike and this man was describing him to a tee. ‘Maybe he had known someone in my family or searched public records ahead of time?’ I thought to myself.

‘He says he wants you to be careful on the interstate,’ Peter continued.

I burst out instantly into a fit of laughter, hoping it would fool even me into realizing how ridiculous this whole conversation was. What was I thinking, anyway? Why would I go see a medium and furthermore, if he was so in touch with the dead and supernatural, why wouldn’t he charge me for his services? He clearly needed the money with how run down his house was.

‘Oh, god that’s really funny, Peter,’ I squeezed out between my nervous, broken giggles.

‘What’s so funny about that?’

‘Oh, because my dad used to have me drive him around and help run errands after his stroke and he’d always complain about my driving and be this annoying backseat driver,’ I continued.

‘I don’t think that’s what he means. Our loved ones who have passed on don’t make an effort like this to reach out for casual reasons, so it must hold some significance. He seems quite serious like this is a warning.’

‘Hmm. Okay,’ I responded in apprehension.

Peter paused for a moment and then continued, ‘He says you need to be very, very careful coming off of the interstate onto the highway and that there is going to be some danger if you aren’t paying close attention.’

‘Okay then. Can we get back to the reading?’

‘Sure, it seems like that’s all he was trying to communicate and if I didn’t pass on that message, they usually make things more difficult until they get their way,’ Peter assured me.

At this point, I was convinced this nice old man was a little loopy. Maybe part of me wanted to believe he had some connection or insight in ways I couldn’t harness since he was indigenous, but then again, my hippie dippy notions were veering off the road of logic and into a ditch I like to refer to as ‘illogical prejudice.’

Nothing else seemed to have held any motivation or impact that day and after I returned from Colorado, I was ready to get my hands dirty and dive into farming. It was the next phase of my adventurous endeavors. What I hadn’t expected was to have ended up working and living on a farm located only a few miles away from where my dad used to live.

I remembered chasing animals around and exploring in the woods around his little shack when I was a kid. He had bought that piece of land like the recluse he was with a few other friends and they all built their own houses. It was like a kind of redneck utopia and the one thing I wished he had left me, but he sold it right before he passed away.

On this particularly rushed and stressful morning, the sky began to slowly illuminate over the rolling hills and bluffs off in the distance. Barely anyone was on the road because the area was so sparsely populated, so I felt pretty safe. The only thing that could really pose a threat at that time of day might be a stray deer attempting to cross the road.

As I veered onto Exit 27, the ramp my dad always took home, I noticed a semi pulled over on the street perpendicular to the exit ramp and right in front of an abandoned filling station. That station had been closed for decades, so I was surprised the driver didn’t simply pull into the parking lot, and instead had taken up a large portion of the narrow road ahead.

As I turned left onto the road behind him, I waited patiently for him to pull back onto the road. Even if he had been sleeping, surely he’d hear me peeping my horn and would need to get back on the road and onto his route as the sun was starting to slowly emerge.

But after a minute or two, he didn’t budge. As I stuck my head out the window, the crisp, foggy air kissed my cheeks and crept up my nostrils. That scent instantly transported me back to my childhood, wreaking of wet, silty soil and tree pollen. The coast was clear and I noticed a defunct railroad tunnel hovering over the stretch of highway road. It had been built before the interstate was established and it reduced the road to one lane. The brittle, uneven bricks stuck out like blades of straw in a bale.

As I shifted the car into second gear and merged around the back of the semi, inching toward the tunnel, I heard an engine roaring. I let my foot off the gas for a moment, coasting in third and glanced around at all of my mirrors in curiosity of the sound’s location. I saw nothing and shifted back into second to get my RPM’s revved up again when I noticed a shadow surging toward me from the other side of the tunnel.

I let my foot up off of the gas again and tapped my breaks, cautious, yet calm. As I brought the car to a near stop, the shadow grew closer and appeared to be a full-sized sedan, racing faster toward me. I flashed my headlights so the driver might see me and decrease speed, but the car continued as though I wasn’t even there.

Waking to my inner alarms as a spark of electric vertigo raced up my spine and into my neck and shoulders, I glanced around again at my mirrors, taking note of the distance between myself and the back of the semi-truck. The sound of the car grew louder and I threw the car into reverse, slamming my foot on the gas until it collided with the floor.

Once I was parked safely behind the semi again, I took a deep breath as I pivoted my head and torso to gaze at the car still plowing through the empty road behind me. I turned off the engine for a moment, as though disengaging the vehicle’s power would snap me back into focus and calm.

When I returned to the farm, I ran to the converted barn where I’d been living. As I threw on my overalls and tall, mud-encrusted rubber boots, I tossed my cell phone onto my bed, knowing the dew and last night’s rain would make for a muddy morning.

It was harvest day, the busiest day of the week and I always dreaded how stressed it made everyone. The truth was I enjoyed the hustle and the monotony of cutting pounds upon pounds of leafy greens and hauling them back to the wash and weigh station. It was a great way to pass through the morning faster. Most of our work was done before noon and then we’d just lay around and graze on our lunches for two hours in the afternoon.

The sun choke crop had just been decimated by wireworms and the farm owners were not in any mood to joke around or even socialize. We were working on a delivery deadline for one of the trendiest and busiest restaurants in downtown. As I frantically sliced through dew-covered arugula leaves in an attempt to show the owners how fast I was, my fatigue caught up with me. I had cut more than just the crop. I felt a sharp sting on my finger and looked down at my blood-covered left hand.

‘Tara? I’m bleeding. It doesn’t look that bad, but I accidentally nicked myself.’

‘What? Well don’t just sit there. Go clean it up! You’re bleeding all over our money,’ she sharply barked at me.

As I ran back to the barn to retrieve a bandage from my first aid kit, I shifted my eyes down toward my phone on the bed and noticed my boyfriend had texted me to ensure I reached the farm on time. I stuffed the phone back into my pocket as I slipped my boots back on and briskly ran out the door toward the field. Pulling my phone out, I replied to him and stuffed the phone back into my breast pocket, zipping it up to ensure it didn’t fall out into the abyss of mud that had manifested from the salad greens fields overnight.

I continued harvesting with the others and then my phone rang. Tara glanced up at me with a stern glare. Mortified, I paused and slowly plucked the phone from my overalls.

‘I’m so sorry, let me just get this real quick. It’s probably Clint. If I don’t pick up, he’ll just keep calling to make sure I got here okay,’ I apologetically muttered.

It was my grandfather calling me. I had been so busy over the past week and a half that I hadn’t talked with my grandparents at all. We usually talked at least once or twice a week.

‘Hi, Grandpa. I really can’t talk right now, but I’ll call you back in a bit.’

‘Tina? Tina, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hang up on you. The attorney of the other driver was calling me and I didn’t know how to keep you on hold and answer his call at the same time,’ my grandfather rattled off frantically.

‘What? What are you talking about? What other driver?’

‘The other driver who was in the accident. I just wanted to call you back and make sure you weren’t hurt or anything. Are you okay?’

‘Grandpa, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in the field working with the rest of the farm crew, listen, I’ll call you later, okay?

‘Sure, Tina. I was just worried because you sounded really scared when you called.’

I glanced up to see Tara still glaring with disdain at me.

‘Grandpa, I’ve really gotta go. I’ll call you in a few hours when we take lunch.’

‘Alright, hon. Love you. Be safe.’

As I pressed the end call button on my cell phone, I paused in disbelief and shock.

‘Hey, Chatty Cathy! We’re moving down to the next field ‘cause the rest of this row isn’t mature enough. You coming?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll be right there,’ I replied to Tara.

I dropped to a squatting position and buried my face in my hands, running the balls of my hands up to my temples and squeezing as hard as I could. Maybe it would get the blood flowing a little better, I thought.

When I returned to the city the following Sunday, I sat down at my grandparents’ kitchen table as my grandmother pushed down the lever of the toaster and flipped eggs in a skillet.

My grandpa sat down in his usual chair, leaning into the back, folding his legs, and setting his right hand on the table.

‘Grandpa, I’m sorry I didn’t call last week, but I have this funny story to share with you. It’s actually kind of scary. Do you remember calling me last Monday?’

‘No, it’s been a couple of weeks at least, hasn’t it, dear?’ he inquired toward my grandmother, still standing at the stove.

‘Yep, we figured you were pretty busy, but at least you’re out there working hard,’ cawed my grandmother.

‘Yeah, it sounds like you’re having a lot of fun out there,’ added my grandfather.

‘Really? You don’t remember calling me about a car accident?’

‘Oh, heavens no,’ he replied between chuckles, knocking his fingers against the antique wood table.

‘Say, Jan, have you got any of that freezer jam in the fridge, or should I go get another jar from the basement freezer?’

‘I think we’re out. You’d better go get some anyway,’ retorted my grandmother. My grandpa pulled himself out of the chair with both hands as though fighting the gravity imposed whilst climbing out of a pool. I watched him in disbelief as he sauntered down the stairs, railing in hand as the stairs beneath him creaked.

‘Tina, if you don’t want to drive back to the farm, right away, you can stay in the spare bedroom upstairs and head back in the morning. That way you don’t have to rush through your weekend,’ my grandmother chimed.

‘Oh, thanks, but I really should get back before dark. You never know what kind of wackos are on the road.’

‘Ha, now you sound like your dad!’