By now it was down to just two rune stones.  It seemed impossible that I had drawn every rune on this trip except Wyrd and one other.  Wyrd, the blank stone, is the stone I’d drawn the year earlier when Ruth had offered to do a reading for me.  It is the twenty-fifth stone, a modern addition to the set, and meant to signify the hand of God or destiny.  What did it mean if it was the last stone I picked on this trip, that I’d been destined to learn about the runes? 

Apparently, because before the sun had even risen, I snatched up the nearly empty bag and drew a stone, unable to bear the suspense any longer.  It was Ehwaz, the rune of ideas.  That meant that Wyrd was the last rune in the bag, the only rune left the day I got back to California.  That must’ve meant something.  Of course, it meant something.

That morning I called a taxi around eleven.  It only took twenty minutes to get to the airport.  Although I’d sent in my negative COVID test and checked in the day before, it still took about a half hour waiting in line to get my boarding pass.  The woman who assigned me my seat loved that I loved Mexico.  It was a hassle to be so early.  I had nearly three hours to kill.  I got a newspaper, Metro, the news of the day, and read up on the latest fatalities.

A man and his dog had been run over in a car accident.  A picture showed both of them lying in the middle of the road.  A woman was killed in a motorcycle accident and the picture showed her in a black dress, all wrapped up in her own intestines.  Up in Wisconsin, a driver in a van intentionally ran over twenty people at a Christmas parade.  A man was killed outside of a cathedral.  Another was shot trying to steal a cell phone.  The Circus of Horror had nothing on real life. 

Even when the plane finally boarded, we sat on the runway for a half hour.  It was too hot.  There was no air circulating.  There would not be much time to transit when we got to Houston.  I’d have to pick up my bag, go through immigration again, walk to the other gate.  There hadn’t been much time to begin with and now we were running late. 

When we landed in Houston, it was a long walk to get to immigration and only five out of thirty gates were open.  Then when I finally passed through and went to pick up my bag it was the last one onto the carousel.  By then it seemed evident that I was going to miss my connecting flight.  I dropped my bag off on a conveyor belt and found I still needed to pass through an additional security check.  This one was barely moving and the guard was showing no sympathy.  He ordered me into one line that wasn’t moving at all and I just stood there and seethed.

They made me take everything out of my backpack to get to my laptop.  Then it was almost impossible to fit all of the clutter back in.  My feet were nearly bursting out of my shoes as I half-heartedly hurried to my distant gate.  The plane had already been boarding for forty minutes.  There was no way I was going to make it.

When I got to the gate the door was closed and a woman was standing in front of it.  She said she’d have to check and see if the door of the plane was still open.  By some miracle, it was.  I limped down the bridge, dripping with sweat, and had to put up with the other passengers giving me the stink-eye, like I’d been responsible for the hold up. 

Fifteen minutes later, there came an announcement.  The plane had been damaged by one of the luggage trucks.  We’d all have to exit and wait for a replacement plane to arrive.  I had found my way back to society.  That was for sure.