The Brakes

In the dream I can't stop Dad's old pickup. It's not careening down the highway at seventy-six miles per hour. Even in dreams my life is calmer than that. We're rolling in reverse through the night, Dad and I. My head is turned, looking behind. Dad stares ahead. The night is impossibly dark. The truck's feeble lights swallowed by dream darkness. There aren't even any shapes behind me, just a sense of something. Rocks, a stream, concrete walls, other cars, someone's cat or child. I push the brake pedal, first gently then to the floor. The truck still rolls. I hurt my leg pushing against the pedal. My head still turned backward, my eyes searching the nothingness, my heart screaming. Dad stares ahead, at peace with all he sees. I can't make that truck stop. I stand on the brakes, my mind spinning faster until I come awake, rolled onto my side, in dim morning light. The truck and Dad fade. I turn to look behind, out the bedroom window, and feel myself falling. There was never anything behind us, just an emptiness into which I've long been falling. Having made the trip, Dad could have told me that standing on the brakes against it means nothing, nothing at all.