Reunion

Somewhere in New Mexico
November 2015

After two decades of deliberate silence, my best friend from high school, Ziya, called me on my forty-second birthday.

I was sprawled out by a forgotten road in New Mexico, using the excuse of a coming gully buster to take a break from the back-breaking work at Spirit Wind Ranch. The ranch was my latest attempt to hide from the world, or more accurately, my own damned past.

I’d spent my last twenty bucks on a stash of green chile tamales and a bottle of mezcal that tasted like it could strip paint. The old timer who sold it to me probably thought I was just another drifter, blown in like a tumbleweed. He handed it over wrapped in yesterday’s news—not that I gave a damn about the headlines. Let the world burn without me. I’d left it behind.

Twenty years ago, I had hit the road with dreams of riding off into the sunset.

Cue the dramatic music, fade to black.

After sealing a gate to hell and stopping the apocalypse, all I wanted was to escape the bullshit. Except, there’s nothing romantic about running away. All that hero crap? Turns out, it’s just another way to end up talking to shadows and guzzling mezcal on the side of a road, alone on your birthday.

When you’re twenty, it doesn’t matter much. I willingly paid the price for my freedom. But at a certain age, you realize there’s probably more behind you than ahead. You start wondering if maybe you should have stayed in that stupid town you fought so hard to escape.