Moose

Cold morning air moved clouds with atmosphere, pressured fog to cover parts of the highest peaks and lowest valleys. Rising steadily, worked the sunlight to brightness contrasting the limbs of dormant trees. As the sky shifts slightly to the day of work ahead, two silhouettes break across the line of horizon with quick movement, readying themselves. One of them takes a long glance at the horizon and moves his head up toward the sky, feeling the slow drift of clouds. He sighs heavily, turning toward his friend.

"The sky is finally getting lighter, earlier"

His friend hesitated. Neither of them enjoyed the wintertime, though they both chose to live in places with longer winters than summers.

"Finally a little warmer, too" he smiled a little, looking down at the ground wet with runoff.

"Wonder what it's like on the pass," they both said together by accident. He looked over at his friend and smiled, they both chuckled and climbed into the old truck they drove to work.
The mine they work in employs many people in the town they had both grown up in, and they had always enjoyed one another's company. They didn't often talk about 'old days', though if they did, it was about their mothers, whom had also been the closest of friends. His friend was looking up at the foggy sky as they were moving through low hanging clouds, grey and dark, threatening a spring storm. He sighed heavily, as his friend had earlier, and leaned back from the windshield.

"I'm sure the roads are great after whatever this did last night,"

"You only saw what it did in town," he smiled

"Barely, feel as though I was preoccupied." he said sort of proudly, having outdrank his friend. They had both decided long ago that whoever is the least drunk gets to drive that night, and the one currently driving always lost to his friend in the passenger seat.

"Enough to forget your truck and I still don't know what happened to your keys," He looked over at his friend and realized he was looking down, sullen. The driver looked ahead again and corrected his lean toward the passenger side of the road.

"Speakin' of, would yuh mind if we picked it up on the way home instead of headed to work?" He said, still looking down.

"Sure, that's fine." His friend flashed him a wry grin and grew very quiet for the rest of the ride.
His friend had worked every single day of his life, especially for his ex-wife, still collecting child support, he could almost hear him say again, over and over again. The snow had definitely started now that they were on the pass, was falling in heavy globs and sticking hard to every bit of dirt and mud showing. He maneuvered the dirt road well and they arrived to work a little late. They finished the day at the same time as always, stiff and tired from their days work. The late spring storm had gathered puddles around every pothole, none of the snow sticking too long but gathering in muddied slush along the roadsides and in deep rivets in some places.
They stopped in town to pick up his friend's truck from the bar, waving a couple times on the way there to people they knew. They usually rode together from town, Milton lived in town and had allowed his friend Barry to stay with him. He turned to offer his friend a place there for the night, ahead of the storm, but Barry politely refused.

"I don't think I should leave my dog alone again, the neighbors are always whinin' bout his hollerin'. Thank you though."

"No worries, drive safe my friend, I'll tell Candice you said hello." Milton said quickly, trying not to laugh at his friend's car door sticking closed in the evening cold, after a full day of spring storms.

"Sure, thank you." Barry jerked hard, hopped in quickly and slammed the door to his truck hard, hoping the ice would break loose from the inside of his door.
What he could remember of the night before had been occurring to Barry in distant, dream-like installments all day. He wondered how many times he had mentioned his ex, if she had come in with her new husband, he couldn't remember or discern from the number of times it had happened before. They show up and suddenly he's a stick in the mud to poke fun at, she jeers and cajoles his group of friends to a frenzy of painfully embarrassing laughter, and Barry ends up going to the bathroom over and over again with half and whole bottles of whiskey. His friends don't really notice, for the most part. Milton is always trying to take the bottle from him, but always buys him his first shot.
Barry tries to remember times before his ex, when his group of friends didn't even know her name. The once Barry actually mumbled something along those lines, they aped him to the idea she's better liked now. He almost fell down the stairs that night and hasn't brought it up again. The snow is hitting the windshield and piling up in dirty slush, starting to look like the road. He tries to find a place to pull over and break some of the sticky snow and ice off his windshield wipers, but can't find the road very well, so decides to try riding the rumble strips carved into the asphalt outside the lane. He finally sees his turn-off in the headlights, and realizes how late it has gotten. When he looks at the clock on the dash, it reads 11:11 p.m. He balks and looks at his phone on the counsel, he quickly realizes it reads the same exact time as the dash.
He looks down at his lap and starts to try and remember what he was doing or thinking about. He was in the bathroom with his usual bottle, wait, he was remembering being in the bar last night. He looked through his windshield and blinked. He remembers calling his friend about going to the bar the night before suddenly, painfully, he grips at his memory trying to recall when he had reached his friend. Around 8. They always leave work at five, are in town by 6, it never takes him more than ten minutes in the worst weather to make it home. His head started trying to fill gaps and his mind was racing, these things, events he knew dipping fiercely to the currency of time slipping out of his hand.
He decided not to go any further on the road to his house. He was within a mile, but couldn't stop his mind for long enough to find the road again. He stared at the windshield, watching the snow hit in random patterns, sticking and melting to slide down to the dash. He squinted, and in his headlights he could see the faint outline of a large animal just outside his lights. Huge, dark brown, this massive height covered in fur. His mind tried to focus on what was in front of him instead of the dash or counsel, where time and his mind had slipped. He stared blankly at the movement of this creature coming towards his truck, thinking how strange it is of any wild thing to want. His headlights were such a small area of possibility in these dark woods, his mind was confused and grasping at any sense of himself. This curiosity he imagined being shared wrangled his thoughts to focus, and he watched as this animal slowly moved into full view.
A moose stood in the road ahead of his truck, directly in his headlights. He had heard of the fierceness of Moose, and how curios and unafraid they could be. He stared, quietly, while the moose gently swayed back and forth in the headlights. He could've swore he saw the thing start to bob its head in the night, the moonlight reflecting off the snow adding to the backgrounds light and this strange movement. The animal reached down toward the ground with its massive head, picking at something on his leg. Barry stared for a long time, the moose never tried to move outside his headlights, and would look toward him periodically.
Finally, Barry decided to open his truck door, and had to shove pretty hard past the ice built up again. He was sure he would've startled the animal away with his door, but looked up and saw the moose ahead of him, not centered in his headlights as before, but in front of the door he'd just opened. He sat back a little and pulled his door toward him, nervous. The Moose came a little closer. Barry watched its breath gather on the other side of the car door window, and started to sweat. He noticed his own breathing, that he had started to heave and wheeze a little, and he considered jumping back into the cab.

"Do you know what time it is?"

Barry jumped. He looked through his car door window at the creature ahead of him, close enough to still see its breath on the barrier, and thought for a second. He remembered slowly having completely lost track of time, somehow: that it was now supposedly 11:11 p.m. on who knows what day and he'd arrived home no later than 6:30 p.m. in these same routines every other day. His loss being his only point of logical focus, he had only a talking moose encounter to settle his mind upon, and couldn't seem to. He stood and stared, and finally, after staring blankly and thinking about his options, and especially about being alone in the woods, he leaned forward and said softly,

"What?"

"No question otherwise? Just what? I am or what else or ever?" The moose was speaking, but none of what he was saying ever became obvious in his features. He couldn't wrap his mind around it, his eyes grew huge and he just stared again, turning over scenarios in his mind. Was he passed out? Did he make it to his truck last night? Was his friend Milton trying to wake him from a dream and assuming the part of Moose to his subconscious? He couldn't decide any of this, so did what he could and communicated.

"What did you say?" Barry said, slowly, wondering if that is indeed what he had meant to ask this creature.

"Do you know what time it is? Though, if you notice, I'm not really 'saying' anything, my vocal chords don't work that way, but we could communicate in the imaginal." Said the moose.

"Well, it is something you're saying in the imaginal, then, yes?" Barry tried.

"Yes. But, I cannot account for your interpretation, so it would be more like you are saying."

"But, you're the one speaking..." Barry said, slowly trying to comprehend.

"Am I? And you're the only one moving your mouth, yes?" --Moose.

"Well, yes, but it aint like these is yur words, too!" Said Barry, a little defensive.

"Mine or yours, here they are shared, this voice belongs to me but words cannot."

"It just depends on my own interpretation of your words?" Said Barry, slowly.

"Yes."

"Well, it's much the same for us. I remember having this argument with my ex, implied and explicit or whatever, meanings and consents..." He trailed off, looking to the darkened horizon for something lost.

"Yes, we are communicating, but I can't say that, and it's according to your own interpretation alone." The moose stopped, looked at the car door between him and Barry and wiggled his head side to side. Barry got the idea and stepped out from behind his door, closing it and meeting the moose outside, about four feet from him. Though no obvious motion happened in the Moose's facial features, Barry felt a smile.

"How did you know what I wanted without me communicating at all?" asked the Moose.

"Instinct." Said Barry.

"Instinct and imagination." Moose asserted.

"Imagination depends upon instinct, or instinct upon imagination?" Barry stopped and looked down, confused. These words were his and had come from his mouth, but felt foreign to him, somehow. He almost cried for confusion when his mind tried to decipher the events of the past couple hours, or however long it had actually been. He couldn't understand what was happening, and it felt extremely absurd to just be shootin the shit with a Moose, and now gettin' all philosophical was almost unbearable. Not even a phatic sense of everyday exchange, here, with a fucking Moose, but some lesson to be learned about communication or some other shit. He'd gotten angry with himself before, but couldn't understand where this torrential fury was coming from. Lack of understanding? It wasn't toward this creature, nor necessarily his current circumstances, and the fact that he couldn't pinpoint what was frustrating him so badly almost made it worse.

"Why get mad?" the Moose offered, suddenly.

"How would you know how I feel?" Said Barry, defensively.

"I could see it in the way you move."

"Madness, I guess." Barry waivered.

"Overthinker, huh?"

Barry just smiled at that, and looked at this creature for a moment. He allowed himself to get past his anger and dread, and was suddenly filled with awe. The snow falling gently was clinging to parts of the Moose's antlers and coat, snowflakes brightening in the headlights as they fell contrasted the dark movement of the huge animal, its awkward grace maneuvering mostly sideways, swaying, always about four feet away from Barry, and always keeping to the light. Barry stepped a little closer, the breath of both these creatures hung in the air's cold and mixed in the brightness of the headlights.

"How did this happen?" Barry said, all he could gather from his quieted and confused mind.

"Animals have always communicated with each other. Most species understand other species to a certain degree, but humans intelligence was more difficult for us to exchange. The allowance of these structures, I guess." Moose conjured.

"I heard dogs talk without proper lips, birds too. I have always wondered about animals talking together. One year, I saw a group of animals, a fox, a deer and a coyote all surrounding this circle of dirt covered in butterflies in the woods somewhere." He stopped, smiled at his memory, and watched the Moose nodding him on. He continued, "I've even studied the types of chemical messengers an environment or body could possibly exchange, but isolation of any single reaction or action in nature felt so impossible on so many levels, I gave up. That was before I met my ex wife." He stopped himself, looked up at the moose and looked out toward his left at the meadow. He drove past this meadow everyday, and every single day there was some sort of wildlife looking back at him from the landscape. He noted the reflection of the moon allowing him more visibility. Could see snow falling calmly on the huge, tall stands of orange and maroon willow following the field's ditch and outlining the dirt road in places, wondering what they would say about the cold.

"We're dormant, anyway" Barry jumped at a still, small voice coming from the system of willows.

"I didn't even say anything." he mumbled, looking out at the willows toward the meadow.

"They'd feel threatened by a match unlit in your hand, too." sighed the Moose, a little annoyed.

"George Washington Carver was sure he heard the plants..." Barry wondered aloud.

"Likely enough," considered Moose. "Do you know what time it is, yet?"

Barry felt embarrassed and remembered the incident in his pickup suddenly, trying to figure out how hours and hours of time suddenly disappeared with no relevant reason. He opened up his truck and read the time as 11:42, startled himself a little and turned to find the moose, and realized he wanted to relay information to an animal. The absurdity hit him harder than the time he'd read, and finally he could formulate a response.

"Not right."

"The sun carrying across the sky never meant numbers to us. These systems still don't make sense." Waivered the Moose.

"It's never really made sense to us, either." Barry gave his wry smile.

"'S'pose we could understand eachother because of this timing shifting?"

Barry looked at the ground and thought for a minute. He had expected the Moose to be some all knowing creature, to understand and have answers, not be asking him questions. He paused thinking about the loneliness of human intelligence, how far we're willing to grasp to feel less isolated in the wilderness. He wondered suddenly why this felt comfortable, as though he'd already adapted to all these possibilities without having experienced them, a strange joy confronted his thoughts and he wondered about great leaps he had heard of in evolutionary biology. His eyes finally rose from the snow covered Earth toward the Moose, the drifts piling up around them and snowflakes drifting all around the small spot of light they occupied.

"I don't know." Barry said, tentatively. He turned toward the meadow and tried to follow the line of willows. The moon had set now, and their branches barely worked enough shadow from the surrounding snow to be seen at all. Low hanging clouds and patches of fog enveloped the parts of light left, the moose had turned toward the meadow, too, and now took a step past Barry toward the tall willow. He started to amble gracefully through the willow, away from the headlights and into the bush. Barry tried to follow him, and the moose turned around and shook his head.

"If we confuse each other too much now, I fear communication will be more difficult in the future."

"Maybe that's what happened in the first place?" Barry smiled and watched the moose bob his head back and forth, and started through the bushes toward the meadow again. He watched him until he couldn't see an outline anymore, finally climbed in his truck and drove the rest of the way home.


The End

AMN