To God's Country Through the Night

I'd been on the road for a few years, all over the world, and had returned to America for a time, finding myself riding with a stranger in the night, one more driver helping me on my way home. By then, even at 17, I'd seen a lot and knew odd things and strange things. The man in the driver's seat asked me quietly if I ever got lonely after years like this, travelling, alone, not having seen my home in over two years. After a time all people look the same, and all voices sound alike and everything is more like more of the same only different but never home and never real and never ones own. He asked. Usually guarded in my conversations, I said, "Yes, sometimes it's very lonely on the road."



He slowed the car and came to a stop, and he said, so quietly, "See up there on that hill-top? You go on up there and you'll find lots of friends, like it's home."

"What is it?" I asked, as I climbed out of the car and grabbed my backpack.

"That's the nut-house," he said.