along the rest, to the south

I was counting the distance from when you locked the door on me with pit stop exits.

The miles on highway 59, going south past Tuscaloosa, a bullet shot through backwater Alabama. Past Ellisville, past Tawanta and Albeison, mirroring that country route 11 to the left of the highway until it turned sharply away from me when I violently cut across Moselle Seminary road at 90 miles per hour. That country road sensed my recklessness and didn't want nothing to do with it.

There was a pitstop in Rawl Springs, over by the train tracks, somewhere by Bowie or Maybank. It didn't last long, and soon it was highway 59 again. I was already blowing past Okahola, Purvis, Talowah. The open highway telling me to calm down, and get that devil out of your mind cause it's hurting everything real bad. The air conditioner didn't work and the summer Alabama heat had me sweating the memory out through my skin. Some kind of hallucination from the heat, it almost made turn around and go back. Almost. I lit up a cigarette, turned up the radio of Jesus county, and stuck my hand out the window like I did when I was a kid, pitching it up and down.

The sign said Picayune, then there was the water flowing southeast, and wouldn't you know it, there was that old route 11. It arched across the west and pushed southeast along with the water through my path. But there was no hard feelings this time around. It was heading to Santa Rosa, I was happily following the rail tracks over that great river towards Baton Rouge, and into gris-gris country.