Kings of Chesterton County
The crisp early spring air invaded through the open car window, clearing the dead thoughts of winter and bringing in feelings of hope for the new season, as the car hummed down the road. The tires blazed south singing out a song as if they were on fire, and this melody stood carrying the us nearer and nearer to a large weathered sign, which sat crooked and disheveled, that announced the crossing into Chesterton County.
The sun rose early that morning sending out beams of the new day that glinted off everything turning even the most miniscule objects to a precious priceless gold. Little did sleepy Chesterton County know that we had just ripped into the county line like the knife of Jack the Ripper and we would change Chesterton forever.
It wasn’t a new journey, I had seen the Chesterton County line sign every day for as long as I could remember, and it signified the comfort of familiarity me, this was Chesterton. Chesterton, Chesterton, what is there to say about Chesterton? Chesterton is one of those small down home places. It is a hometown community. Like the one where artists grow up, but never return to, simply because they remember how this place stood, locking their brains in vices and small white conformed rooms, making them hide all that was human inside them. Chesterton had fallen victim to the same small town close- mindedness that had choked out the creativity and free thought in the rest of the world. Chesterton was boring, and for so long, I was too, but it changed for me, the feeling of being ordinary often sat in the pit of my stomach like a cold boulder that just couldn’t be moved, and when I was in that car I could feel it being moved.
Grasping the wheel tightly, almost to the point of turning my knuckles white, I turned and glanced at my ally in the passenger seat. This quick glance revealed little about him, little more than a black shadow outlined with the gold of the sun. His face was set out against the rising morning sky and this seemed to be the only place for him somewhere above the other people of the world. He never saw this about himself, and sometimes I felt bad about not showing him more how much he meant to me. Sometimes all I ever wanted to do was conquer the world and have him at my side the entire time, somewhere I knew that if we couldn’t change this place, then no one could. I wanted to die trying. I wanted to give him the chance of seeing the world he often dreamed of, but never spoke of, and never thought he could have.
At times I had this feeling like the whole world was working solely for me, and that everything had fallen into place for me. When this happened I thought I could take on the world. All of my thoughts and ideas seemed true and achievable. My words were no longer the words of a seventeen year old child, but were the words of unexplainable wisdom, they were the words of gods and kings, they were so important that they could not be muttered from the tongues of mortals nor could they be understood by the ears of mortals. These were the words of deities and only deities understood them, and the only one that ever understood them was my ally.
What had now started was not a journey into Chesterton County, it was a journey to save the world, to save its people from themselves. We didn’t know it at the time, but trying can sometimes make all of the difference in the world.