Off To See The Shaman

The drive was always the hardest for Mac. It wasn’t the anticipation or the anxiety that it induced. Instead, it was the actual turning of the wheel and the thumping of the pedals that made it difficult. His bones ached. His joints creaked. Simple movements had become… less simple. He felt like an old car that had been left to rust on the front lawn. It had been this way for quite some time. 

Rain pattered against the windshield as he drove. It was Fall and the weather had begun its yearly downturn in New England. The leaves still held the vibrant colors of their death, outlining the sinuous highways connecting the townships. Millions of tourists appeared each year to see the spectacle; the bright, organic flair of decay. Their cars created a long line of traffic in the opposite lane. Mac couldn’t wait to get out. Leaves be damned. 

He had been told that someone could heal him. 

The last year had been difficult for Cormac ‘Mac’ Ciaran. Divorces, custody battles, starting a new business, and the oppressive weight of dead dreams are never easy to navigate. All of them at once though… He had broken his shoulder somewhere along the way as well. Running into a door frame playing with his dog, the lone holdout of his previous life, had jarred his bones. None of the doctors could figure out why they hadn’t clicked back into place. As he drove, the dull ache returned. He switched arms and turned up the radio. 

It had been a shock when it all happened. His friends, the few that remained, told him that it was a good thing. That it was a release from a life sentence. It was God’s way of directing him back onto his ‘true’ path. They sent care packages and took turns checking in on him. Despite the well-wishes, the shock remained. He constantly felt dazed, confused, and harried. As if the soil underneath him was the only intact piece of ground after an intense artillery barrage. He did as they said though. One foot in front of the other. One goal at a time. Try to get some sleep. It didn’t make a lick of difference. He missed his boys.

As months passed, it was rare for Mac to have moments that weren’t just ‘going through the motions.’ They told him that time heals all wounds; that all he had to do was walk forward long enough. But it wasn’t true. She kept putting her fingers into his life. His new business faced an onslaught of negative reviews. The credit cards were all maxed and left in his name. His social security number was used for an auto loan in a faraway place. Time wasn’t healing his wounds. It was killing him, one day at a time. 

His friends were good though. They never gave up trying to help. At some point, they decided that his current plan wasn’t working. There had been a brainstorming session without him present. The greatest minds he had ever known had come together with a new plan, an audacious outline for his life. Mac didn’t have the brainpower left to fight or argue. When they told him they had found someone who could help, he simply nodded in assent. A week later he was on the road. Destination: California. 

It is a little-known fact that when enough bad things happen to a person, they will begin to question everything they know about life and the world. The very foundations of what they believe come into question. Nothing is real. Everything is fake. The soil beckons and the sky rests on the wet ground. The paltry words uttered by the impassive masses mean nothing, their huddled forms only serve to delay and deter one from achieving the most pointless of goals. One is left with none of the joys of life. In their place is only the source code of our brains, functioning only to continue the base means of survival. Some can cling to their religion, their family, or even their jobs in these moments. Mac had none of these anymore. 

He was a shade of his former self. The shadow that had once followed him everywhere now walked furtively in front, obscuring the flesh and bones loosely standing behind. That was how it felt driving down the serpentine highways, as if the weakness that had come to define him was outpacing the car, making the turns. He was as fleeting as each individual raindrop and just as small. The windshield wipers would brush him aside…

Mac snapped out of his ruminations with a start. That is how people die. He thought. They start thinking that they are dead. He pressed down firmly on the gas and changed the radio station. 

They had told him that she could heal him. All he had to do was open his mind. He had to believe that they were right. There weren’t any other options left. 

Mac knew nothing about shamans. He had grown up Catholic, a fifth-generation descendant of Irish immigrants. None of his family had ever left New England, aside from the rare vacation to Florida or The Bahamas. He had dutifully attended mass for most of his life, had married a ‘devout’ Catholic woman, and had always done what he thought God would want him to do. The very idea of a shaman was completely new; something he couldn't begin to comprehend. His friends had done the research. There were people who swore by this woman’s ability. Lives, once utterly hopeless, had been completely changed. There were even stories about people coming back with new names, identities, even new personalities. He didn’t know anything about that. They had told him she could heal him. That was enough for him to pack his bags and start driving. 

States passed in a blur. All he knew were drive-thru coffee stands, gas stations, and moderately priced hotels. There is a rhythm to travel, a pulse to it, if one can find the heartbeat. And after enough pit stops and road trips, all of it starts to look the same. It takes time to find the good spots and the good stuff in any location, mostly because locals don’t want you to know about them. So most don’t even try. The highways become nothing more than a conduit toward a loosely defined objective. The coffee is the fuel behind the fire; the adrenaline and cortisol shots that drive one onward. Further. Faster. To somewhere else. Anywhere else. 

Mac didn’t remember how many days had passed when he crossed the state line into California. The sun blared into his eyes, trying to sear into the darkness that grew behind them. By now he was accustomed to driving well above the speed limit. It barely phased him when he looked down and saw that he was going 110 mph. He was going along with traffic. Everything wound together, loosely connected vines intertwining, gripping and pulling, tightening… and binding. He didn’t notice time passing. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had. It didn’t matter. 

They had told him that she could heal him. What they had implied was that he could be healed. That was enough. It had to be enough. When he pulled up the gravel walkway, the light of the fading sun casting deep shadows throughout the surrounding forest, a woman in a long blue dress appeared from out of a grove of massive, red-barked trees. She smiled at him and warmly beckoned him over. This certainly wasn’t like church. 

Maybe she can.