Lost in a Daydream

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       The truck heater fan on high, I dozed several times while restoring my body temperature. It took a long time for me to thaw out completely. I put the truck in drive and pressed the accelerator. I went nowhere. My tires had become mired in the mud that formed since yesterday when I parked alongside this sparsely traveled country road in front of my property. I didn’t care. I had plenty of gas to run my engine to keep me warm. That’s all that mattered. Most people, including me, didn’t have cell phones in 1997, so I couldn’t call for help.

       The early May sun topped the tree line and rapidly burned off the overcast sky. I looked toward where my camp was hidden deep in the thick pine and cedar trees. In the light of day, I strained to imagine how I nearly stopped the clock while battling to find my way out of there.

       In my side-view mirror, I could see the neighbors coming out of their mobile home down the road. I got out of the truck, hobbled toward them, waving both arms, and yelled to draw their attention. They were nearly out of sight when their car stopped and began slowly backing up toward me. I hadn’t met them before, so I understood the middle-aged lady’s suspicious scrutiny as she slowly rolled down her window. Though I was bare-chested and barefooted, my strained smile slightly disarmed her wariness. She saw my bloody foot. “What happened to you?!”

       “I own the property down the road from you on the other side. That’s my truck stuck in the mud. I went camping last night, and it turned into a nightmare. It’s a long story. I nearly froze to death in the storm.”

       “What happened to your foot?”

       “I stepped on something sharp as I stumbled to find my way out of there in the dark.”

       “Aren’t you cold?”

       “Not as cold as I was last night. If you would give me a ride home to Lamar, I’d be most grateful.”

       She opened the back door of their sedan. “Sit down here while I get you fixed up. Wrap that blanket around you.” I sat there while she fetched a first aid kit from the trunk. I screamed and saw bright glitters of light behind my tightly closed eyes as she dabbed a red mercurochrome solution on the gouge in my foot. She bandaged my wound. “You should go to the hospital,” she stressed.

       “I just want to go home and go to bed.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       The usual bustle in our offices roused into a frenzy shortly after I walked in the door. One of the clients was having software problems, and their office manager acted as though the world was coming to an end. I told her that I would come down that night and take care of it.

       The whole point of my disastrous camping trip was to get away from all this ruckus so I could silence my mind. Nearly dying of hypothermia a few hours earlier capitalized my desperate need for rest. I knew that I had to stop functioning for a time, or ELSE. I tried but couldn’t sleep in my bedroom with the commotion of my business happening right outside the door. My employees began to arrive and Mark, my clownish assistant, would not shut his mouth. Exhausted, I got out of bed and trudged onward.

       That night, I drove to my client’s manufacturing plant. It took me until four o’clock the next morning to fix their software. I stood in their production area, taking a smoke break afterward and realized I was too exhausted to drive home. I walked over to their forklift and curled up in a ball on the soft seat. I immediately fell asleep. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before the first employee arrived to fire up their production autoclaves. Those few minutes were enough rest for me to marginally drive home, but not enough to keep from losing my mind.

       I stopped by a fast food restaurant on my way home. While I waited at the drive-through window for my cheeseburger, the radio began talking to me—yes, to me, specifically. If I weren’t going insane, I might have realized that I was nuts. The voice blaring from the radio sounded like the one that taunted me in the darkness while I was freezing to death. It oozed evil.

       I only remember bits and pieces of the next period of time. I say “period of time” because I don’t know how much time transpired during which I became convinced that business wars had commenced. The teenagers’ hotrods rumbling to and from the high school a quarter-mile down the road became part of that imagined war in my hallucinations. Somehow I decided that three of my employees (Eric, Mark, Ashley) and I were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

       Yes, I was losing it. I had averaged two to three hours’ sleep a night for over a year. Compounding that, I had occasionally worked straight through the night into the next day to build my business and automate my clients, catching up with four hours’ sleep the following night. My mind finally decided it wasn’t going to take part in my lunacy anymore. I am entranced by all the bizarre diversions that my mind is concocting, to the extent of fighting sleep for fear of missing even one Alice-in-Wonderland event.

       Oddly, I persuaded Mark that we should go to church with Aunt Marvelene the next morning. While the world slept around me that night, my mind found fascination in everything, every distorted thing, that is. Morning dawned, and I was perfecting the knot in my necktie in front of the mirror, which somehow alchemized to sitting on my heels with the front of my ankles excruciatingly flattened to the carpet. It was provident that I straighten my hips, back, and neck precisely vertical in order to lend myself to God as a conduit in His genesis of a new universe. I posed in that position for an untold length of time, straining to lengthen my body inordinately toward the heavens. I ignored the searing pain in my overstretched tendons and ligaments, knowing the galactic importance of my mission.

       Mark came into my bedroom and found me that way. I was facing the clothes hamper, wearing only my underpants, dress shirt, and sloppily knotted tie. Mark helped me get up. It took a long time for me to straighten my tortured ankles enough to walk. I didn’t tell Mark about the supremely paramount task that I had accomplished for God there on my knees facing my hamper. I somehow knew he wouldn’t understand.

       I walked down the street to Aunt Marvelene’s a while later and apologized for missing church. Our conversation evolved into my asking her if it was possible for her pastor to baptize me that afternoon. She called her pastor, and I spoke with him on the phone. Something seemed to caution him about my decision, but he agreed to baptize me anyway. Aunt Marvelene drove me to a church in Altus. She and I sat in the front pew along with two other elderly ladies. I told the pastor that I needed to go outside and pray alone. His expression signaled his misgiving that I might be getting cold feet.

       I walked out of the church and wandered through the neighborhoods. I stopped and talked with a grease-covered man working on the engine of his pickup truck. We spoke at length until I concluded that I should proceed with my baptism. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember what path I had taken from the church to this man’s garage. I wandered around town a good while before I recognized the church. What a relief!

       The pastor, Aunt Marvelene, and the two ladies seemed almost surprised that I returned after who knows how long I had meandered around the town of Altus. The expressions on their faces showed that they knew exactly how long. The pastor baptized me in a sweet ceremony after he recovered from his agitation about my disappearing act.

       On our way home, the laws of physics were becoming distorted, and I deemed it my responsibility to mentally restrain them from getting entirely out of whack. Aunt Marvelene appeared to be having difficulty controlling the car and keeping it on the road. She probably wasn’t, but it sure seemed that way. As such, I exerted my mental prowess to adjust her wobbly course.

       I asked Aunt Marvelene to stop at the gas station on this side of the Spadra Bridge (spans the Arkansas River) so that I could buy a soda. She did, and while she waited, I wandered out the side door and down the road in another direction. I came to an old country church, walked around back, and sat on the rear steps for a while, praying. Then I continued walking down the road with no particular destination in mind. I remember having a premonition that I was walking off into a brand-new life when I was interrupted by two policemen in a police cruiser. We had a curious conversation about such things as today’s date and the current president, after which they asked me to walk the white line in the middle of the road. I balanced faultlessly, including a nicely executed pirouette. The officers seemed to be impressed with my agility in spite of their doubts about my mental acumen. One of the officers asked me if they could drive me home. I thanked them and asked them to drop me off at Aunt Marvelene’s, which they did. She hadn’t returned to her house yet, so I sat on her front porch swing and reminisced about the wonderful times we enjoyed on that swing talking about our family history.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       My memories are jumbled at this point. My ability to understand the concept of time was gone. Insane? I can barely remember Aunt Marvelene sitting beside me. I wouldn’t, or more likely couldn’t, get up from my office chair. My cheek squished against the surface of my desk, drool flowed from my mouth, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. For some strange reason, I was desperately straining to form a cross with the fingers of my hands to express myself, but I couldn’t corral enough energy to move my hands together. That is tired.

       I had been asleep at my desk for some time when Aunt Marvelene softly shook me awake. A zombie, I shuffled along as she led me by the hand. I had no idea where we were going, and I didn’t have enough gumption to ask.

       The next thing I remember is sitting in a large room. We were seated in a circle: Aunt Marvelene, Eric, Mark, Ashley, and a man directly across from me who emanated an air of authority. “What is your name?” he asked.

       “I’m too-weary-to-eat-fried-green-tomatoes tired; that’s who I am.” My head bobbled aimlessly about my shoulders.

       “I understand, but what is your name?”

       “Scott,” briefly resting my chin on my chest.

       “Where do you work?”

       “Eloquent Systems is my company.”

       “What do you do there?”

       “I’m a programmer, but I’m not going to program anymore.”

       “Why not, Scott?”

       “Because God is the ultimate programmer.”

       “What does that have to do with you?”

       “According to the Bible, God is perfect, right?”

       “Right.”

       “He programmed the Universe, and His programming makes mine look like child’s play. He doesn’t need me to help Him program the Universe, does He?”

       “I suppose not. What are you going to do if you don’t program?”

       “I’m going to become a barber and fix that pitiful haircut of yours. And I can do a lot better job of trimming your goatee than you obviously can. It’s down-right lopsided.”

       “You’re serious, aren’t you?” asked the man while self-consciously gauging the alignment of his goatee with his fingers.

       “Of course, I’m serious. Who wouldn’t be distressed about fixing that rag on the top of your head? It looks like it’s going to run away. Still, it would be a lot easier than programming the Universe.”

       “Your logic is good, Scott, but it’s way out on the fringe.”

       “See? I don’t need to be helping God program anything.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       Aunt Marvelene led me around in my bedroom, urging me to pick out clothes for a trip to somewhere. My next semi-clear memory is sitting in the back seat of Aunt Marvelene’s Grand Marquis. I dozed for a few minutes at a time. Aunt Marvelene sat beside me, holding my hand. I don’t remember who was driving, but it seems as though Eric, Mark, and Ashley were in the car. I remember seeing signs at the top of several large hospital buildings, and then I recall being asked to sign a register at the admitting desk of what turned out to be the Arkansas State Hospital. I didn’t possess much of my mind, but I had enough sense to realize that I needed help, and these kind folks seemed as though they wanted to do the job.

       Aunt Marvelene squeezed my hand and wished me well as a spectacularly beautiful, dark-haired siren with a mesmerizing voice gently took my hand and led me away. Still in a stupor, the fogginess of my thinking did not begin to shroud the perfectly sculpted features of this goddess who was leading me somewhere. Where? I didn’t care.

       I shuffled along, drooling and perfectly content to follow her anywhere. She led me into a glass-enclosed area, pulled a chair away from a desk, and eased me into it. She apologized for not having a room ready for me. I sat there watching her transcribe information from a spiral-bound notebook into a computer. Her delicate fingers floated blissfully across the keyboard. I fell asleep.

       My enchantress nudged me awake. She gave me a pill and a cup of water to wash it down. She led me into a bedroom where a man slept in a bed against the far wall. My lovely lady turned down my bed covers. “Will you be okay if we turn off the outside light in a few minutes?”

       “Would you please leave it on for a little while so I can read my Bible?” I asked my divine siren. My little nap had perked me up somewhat. Aunt Marvelene had given me a Bible to bring with me, and I felt drawn to it.

       “Sure. My favorite scripture is John 3:16. Sweet dreams, Scott.”

       I took off my pants and slid between the crisply ironed sheets. I held the Bible up to the soft indirect light. Unfamiliar with the layout of the Bible, I looked in the index and found the Book of John. The beautiful lady’s favorite scripture read: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” I read that verse numerous times before falling into a sound sleep.

Click here to read Part 2 of “Lost in a Daydream”