Member-only story
The Causeway
by Michael Szymanski
Evan’s stomach sank deep into his backside as his mother turned the car onto the four-laned S.R. 60 with water on both sides known to everyone as simply The Causeway.
Just an hour before, Evan’s stomach was doing flip flops while on that U.S. Air Express mini-jet in a storm just south of Atlanta but even though he was now on stable ground his stomach sank even more. As his mother swerved onto the sweeping two-lane curve to get onto The Causeway, he tried gulping down what he knew to be his heart blocking his windpipe. He fixated on that for a moment. His heart leaped as if it bounced high into his throat and his stomach sank down into the bowels of his hips as if each organ was scurrying to different ends of his body.
It wasn’t the Causeway itself that caused Evan’s runaway organs. In fact, the road was safer in recent years after being repaved with hard asphalt rather than that cheap tar which turned gooey in the heat and flaked off like chocolate cake. It was four lanes going in each direction now instead of two just facing each other and they had some sort of a weak metal median strip down the middle, although it looked like cars still broke through it here and there.
Evan opened the window to let the brackish bay air wash over his face.
