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About a Driver

Sterling A Slechta

    When I walked into work I saw Marcus smiling, sleep-deprived with his red eyes and cigar-stained teeth. He was sitting next to the plastic trashcans in the middle of the garage in a desk chair with a broken wheel, newspaper in hand, coffee on the ground by his feet, a white light flickering overhead. “You’re in early,” he said.
    “So are you,” I replied, rubbing my hands together, trying to wake up the blood. It was Friday, right? Three days to Monday. I started going through the motions. Keying in my number at the time clock, watching the screen and waiting for it to go through, pulling my jacket and hat from the hooks on the wall, keys from the filing cabinet in the corner. This was my life.
    His eyes were locked on the sports section, trawling through all the week’s betting lines for the keys to his freedom—some hunch that Vegas had left the door open for a man as worthless as himself to step through into fortune and happiness and all the good things. At least for the weekend. “I saw your car over at the Microtel on 7th North the other day,” he said. “You meet up with some strange down at Mully’s after we went out. Had to take her somewhere classy?”
    The wheels on my dolly squeaked like old brakes as I drove five totes of deliveries to the garage door. “Yeah, Marc,” I replied, “your sister.” That was a lie. I did stay at the Microtel on Wednesday night, but I was alone. Sometimes I did stuff like that, like booking a forty dollar room at a dirty hotel where old professional people would go to have affairs or lose themselves in a one-night crack binge. I would sit in that room until I’d get too tired to think, until my eyes couldn’t stay open. I’d sleep for maybe two hours and then wake up in the same seat feeling like the world was brand new. There was a science to it. When you surf around on the web long enough you can find all kinds of ideas. Homeopathics, meditation, special diets, drugs, anything. But in the end, it’s all just shit. Everything just buys you a couple weeks at the most, then you’re back to square one. No cure for life.
    Marc let out a chuckle. “Hey, Sil,” he said, “do me a favor and drive into a ditch or something.”
    I told him I’d think about it.

    There was trash in the streets. A morning wind behind plastic bags and fliers and scraps of newspapers and take-out menus. Another day about to fall into the past like so many others—the hours swallowed up by routine, regurgitated as a paycheck, as a means to stay alive.
    The world was still asleep. Everything in sight drenched with pastel shades of blue and gray. I passed old houses, trees swaying above manicured lawns, casting skinny shadows on the ground. Sometimes I saw faces in the motion of the leaves, other times it all just looked like static.
    I drove through the toll booth, glanced over my shoulder to see half an orange sun struggling to rise above the horizon. The clouds around it like a cotton frame. I wound down a window, smelled the end of summer and thought about old westerns—cowboys always riding off into sunsets. There I was, driving away from one.

    An old couple watched a weatherman on the rest area TV as he waved his arms and told them about the next big storm. They were sitting on the only bench in the building, sharing a cup of coffee, straining their brows like they believed every word he said. I guess age doesn’t guarantee a decline in gullibility. Or maybe they just weren’t from around here.
    The floor was slick in the restroom but there was no yellow sign on the ground to warn me. Slipping crossed my mind, and the thought of a few months of disability. I glanced around and saw the mute janitor wringing water from a mop in the corner. He’d probably lose his job if I did it. The world didn’t need that. Besides, I was too much of a coward to do it right.
    Some genius for a day had scratched the words, “random hate,” into the tiles above the urinal. I smiled when I saw it. Apparently, people were running out of ideas.
    On my way out I checked the vending machines in the lobby and noticed they had added two new types of sandwich cookies that would probably stay there long past the expiration date. They were on row 3 right above the two middle cells which held lines of small, unassuming cardboard boxes—one set labeled “condoms,” the other set labeled “tampons”. Two-dollars a piece.
    I put in two bucks and hit E5 to get a box of condoms. Nothing happened so I pressed it again and still got nothing. I typed in a different code, reluctantly, and got a Baby Ruth and three quarters returned to me, then I walked out into daylight.
    Along the Thruway, there were cars and tractor trailers roaring by under the shadow of an Upstate drumlin crowned, as they all were, with a giant cell phone tower. The sounds all merged together in a steady drone. The sound of business. The backstage of America. Constant as the tide.

    “How was your week?” asked the tall girl with the dark eyes and the visor at the McDonald’s drive-through.
    I lied and said it was busy as I fished through my pockets for two quarters.
    “I got lost,” she said, a wide grin on her face like she was proud of the fact. “I was going to Buffalo yesterday and I took the wrong exit.”
    I found the change just in time. I didn’t need any details. I grabbed the coffee and drove off. When I reached the intersection I tried to remember whether I said thank you. When I reached the stoplight I couldn’t have cared less.
    Waterloo. What a town. It smelled like garbage the way it always did. The summertime was worse. Every day you’d see the trucks, the big flatbeds overflowing with trash taking that right off 96 to the Waterloo Landfill and climbing up one of the four mountains of shit. Everything inside would be steaming and rotting. I’ve seen the satellite images on Google. They’re all black.
    After the intersection with River Road it wasn’t that bad. Route 96 would open up a bit and on either side I could see the countryside bloom. The silos and cornfields, old barns, cows chewing cud and staring at nothing. There were Mennonite children who waited at the bus stops and held small, red coolers in their hands. The boys wore neat suits and little top hats, the girls wore dresses and had scarves pulled over their hair and tied beneath their chin. It was like going back in time.
    I saw billboards advertising Christ—as if he needed marketing—and little shacks that sold baked goods on Friday and Saturday. I passed a harness shop, saw two men with neck beards riding along on a horse-pulled buggy; the Sheriff’s Department, an army depot, a clearing; I saw light glinting off a strip of razor wire behind a wall of trees; I saw red bricks and aluminum ceilings behind an American flag and a big sign for the state prison.
    The van’s engine sputtered as I parked in front and unloaded the first two tote of medications. It was always making little groans like that, like it was just as loath to be out here as I was. We’d logged a quarter-million miles together. Just me and the van. Soon enough it would be sitting in a gravel lot somewhere, its guts being sold to mechanics piece by piece until there was nothing left but the rust.
    I walked into the main lobby past CO’s who all nodded their heads, the bald one behind the desk making a call to medical as I took a seat in the corner and waited. The banter was typical. Arguments over football teams, stories from the weekend, random attacks on officers’ sexual orientation.
    “Hey Orange!” said a five-foot-tall officer as he walked in with a coffee in hand, smiling beneath his handlebar mustache. “You should see if the drug guy’s got anything to help you grow your hair back.”
    Orange was the bald, stonefaced officer behind the reception counter. “That gonorrhea clearing up all right for you?” he asked. “Might want to see if he’s got anything to help you,” he added.
    “He’s probably got some Viagra for you and your limp dick. Maybe then your wife’ll stop calling me.”
    It was always the same nonsense. I’d heard it all.
    The gate opposite me opened up at the whim of one of the officers in the control room and the curly haired nurse on the other side strolled in behind her med cart. I noticed the fatigue around her eyes as she walked over in her scrubs and said good morning in monotone. I replied with the same and asked how she was doing. She said she was tired. I said I was too. We traded totes and I left.
    Outside, a white doe stood by the picnic table sniffing around for some food. We locked eyes as I walked past and she continued staring, fearlessly, even as I got in the van and slammed the door shut. There was that silence again as I scribbled the time and the miles on a piece of paper. My hands were shaking a little.

    The alarm on my cell phone started beeping at 2:30.
    I forced open eyes that were glued shut with sleep. There was a ringing in my ears. I sat up in the back seat of the van and tried to adjust to the sunlight.
    My deliveries were finished so I’d stopped at a parking area on Route 13. It was supposed to be a place for snow plows to turn around at in the winter rather than for people to pull over and take naps. Regardless, it was empty now. I killed the alarm and kept my head low as I crept back up to the driver’s seat.
    Outside my passenger window the earth sloped down to a shallow creek that trickled along beneath a line of pine trees. The view from the driver’s-side offered only the road, and beyond that, an overgrown field spotted with a few rundown farmhouses and barns.
    I stepped out and took a long stretch. The world barely made a sound.
    I took a leak behind one of the trees and watched the creek as the water curled around rocks and little shrubs; the silence of the countryside urging me, the way it always did, to forget everything and just walk away, leave the van and all my things behind and just disappear into a world splayed out before me like a mirage. Everything was surreal. The way the wind massaged tree limbs as sunlight sneaked its way between leaves and branches; the way the water reflected the world; the smell of summer ending. But it was all just a mirage, a veil, and behind the veil was a cold, stupid, and bitter world where jokes were never really funny and where all you could ever find when you turned a corner was senseless work and the absence of meaning. I knew all that but still I smiled. It’s not like reality surprised me anymore. I’d been alive long enough to know its tricks.
    For a while I just stood there with my hands at my waist. The sunshine beyond closed eyelids becoming a dull glow, my breath slowing down, growing deeper as I emptied my thoughts and tried to remember how I’d made it as far as I had. It was all so easy.

    “What’s up stranger,” said Lisa as I walked into the garage. I dropped the stack of totes I was carrying and let out a sigh.
    “Not much, Lisa. How you holding up?”
    She shrugged her shoulders, made some lazy gesture toward the walls. “I’m here.”
    I offered a smile as I walked over to the filing cabinet and dropped off my manifests.
    “I never see you anymore now that you do this run,” she said.
    I thought I remembered having this conversation before. In fact, I was sure of it.
    “But that’s probably how you like it, huh?”
    She was wearing an extra-large hoodie even though she was barely five feet. She was skinny too, although she probably wouldn’t notice it when she saw herself in the mirror. One of those body disorders. She was smiling at me, dimpled red cheeks on either side of chapped lips, her thick-rimmed glasses only slightly crooked.
    I laughed and shook my head. I didn’t know the answer to that question anymore. Maybe she was right. Maybe that was how I liked it. Alone, empty, disconnected.
    “Hey, what are you doing tonight?” she asked. “It’s Friday, you’ve got to be doing something.”
    I told her probably nothing.
    “Do you still have the same number? I’m having people over. I’ll call you. You should come.”
    I said okay even though I didn’t think I’d actually go. The last time she’d had people over it was just me and the couple that lived below her. They were both sunk into the couch and practically frozen with red eyes like they were high as hell but I thought that might have just been the way they were.
    “You better pick up your phone this time,” she said with a grin as she walked back into the shop.
    After that, I heard our boss’s voice on the intercom asking all the pharmacists to meet her in the conference room. She sounded annoyed, the way she always did, as if she had more important things to do than her job. It was a mood I usually sympathized with. But today it just sounded excessive.
    I took a seat in the desk chair with the broken leg and waited for my time to leave. I could smell the trash in the cans behind me. Rotting food and expired medicine. The sour stench of B vitamins that always overpowered everything. I heard a noise from below and when I looked down there was a drop of blood on the cement floor. A second later, I tasted metal.
    The ceiling light in the pharmacy’s bathroom hummed and flickered as I sat on the toilet with my head tilted back. I squeezed my nose shut with toilet paper and waited for the bleeding to stop. I felt helpless. I wanted to go home. I started breathing a little quicker. Always those little aggravations, reminders of the frailties of the human body—this bag of shit and water I’ve walked around in for all these years—they always make me want to go home.

    In my apartment, the bathroom was lit only by light bleeding in from the hallway behind me. It threw my shadow on the wall in the shower, my touseled hair like some demonic crown as I sat on the edge of the tub with my clothes on the floor behind me.
    I’d been talking to her again. Or my shadow, or God—I don’t know. Whoever I spoke to remained silent. There was no voice to answer my questions. I’d been sitting there for what seemed like an hour, trying to right my breathing, trying to clear my mind. My eyelids had gone numb, but a side stitch that had started on the ride home wouldn’t go away.
    I didn’t know what to think anymore. Or even how to think. It had been a long time since my last meditation. The routine had stopped around the same time I stopped smoking. A coincidence, I think.
    “What the hell am I doing wrong?” My eyes focused on the flesh of my wrists and the arteries beneath. “All just moving so damn fast.”
    I thought I heard someone knocking on the front door so I laughed and might have even waved at my shadow on the wall, or my shadow might have waved at me, either way it meant nothing. The knocking at the door was left unanswered.
    “What am I doing?”
    My cell phone started ringing. My hands started shaking. I tasted bile. The knocking at the door had stopped but the ringing continued. I stood up and dug my cell phone out of the clothes on the floor behind me. It was Lisa.
    “Hello?”
    “Uh, is this Sil?”
    “Ya, Lisa. What is it?”
    “You sound like you just woke up,” she said. Did I? My voice was hoarse and my nose was congested. “You’re still coming over right?”
    I said, “sure,” and asked what time it was. She said it was eight. Apparently I had only been on the edge of my tub for twenty minutes.
    “We got, like, some liquor. But if you want to bring more that would be cool.”
    “That’s fine,” I said. I told her I’d be over in an hour.
    After I pressed the END button I sat down next to the toilet and stared into the porcelain, hoping the sight of it might agitate my gut. All I could manage was a couple of painful dry heaves.
    I flipped the light switch and turned the shower on.
    “Is this all there is?” I asked myself, breathing in steam that spilled through the air. Was I just another animal? Could I ever adapt to this world?

    “What’s a destrudo?” asked the anorexic girl who was lying on the couch with her legs crossed on her boyfriend’s lap. She had an ultra-light cigarette in one hand and was passing a joint to Lisa with the other. Her name was Jess—one of Lisa’s friends from high school who never made it out of the neighborhood she grew up in. Ten years ago she would’ve said she wanted to be an actress. Now all she wanted to be was a good mother. Things change like that.
    “Some Freudian thing,” I replied, my voice lost in a room full of blank stares. I saw Lisa squinting her eyes like she was about to crack up laughing as she blew out a lung full of smoke. “It’s a psychological term,” I added. “Y’all know what libido means?”
    “Yeah,” said Jess’s boyfriend from underneath the brim of his Yankee’s cap. “That’s when you’re trying to get laid.” Everyone started laughing except him and me. His girlfriend said he was crazy and he just shook his head. “For real,” he added, “Sil knows. Tell her Sil.”
    “Right, and destrudo is like the opposite of that.” I couldn’t remember how we’d got on the topic.
    Lisa stood up from the recliner, winking a tired eye as she offered me the joint. Smoke was dancing off the tip like fog getting peeled off the surface of a lake and I took a few hits, felt the smoke gouge its way through my windpipes. I passed it to Lisa’s sister Cassie who was sprawled out like a corpse on a loveseat in the corner.
    Time passed and somehow I was feeling alright. Something about people, about having actual eyes and ears to share the world with.
    It was a muggy night. One of those hot days at the end of summer. Lisa had fans set up around the flat but they didn’t have much effect. Windows were open in the two bedrooms that were off the living room where we were smoking. The cross breeze brought in smells of cheap air fresheners and perfumes.
    “So what does that mean?” asked Cassie, her eyes closing as she took a long drag. “It’s like, when you don’t want to fuck?”
    They laughed some more.
    I shook my head. “No, not like that.” The legs of the wooden chair creaked as I sat up in it, scratching my head, trying to figure out exactly what I was talking about. “It’s this thing in your mind that just makes you want to rage out and destroy things.” My hands were making some weird gestures like I was trying to massage the idea out of the air. I hadn’t smoked in years and it felt like the world had just become three times heavier. People were speaking but I wasn’t listening to what they said. I heard the words— the little animal noises. I just couldn’t pay attention to what they meant. I was following the cadence, feeling all the breaks and notes like everything was music. Somebody would launch into a scat song, wave their hands in the air, everybody would start laughing and I was laughing, too. Just because.
    At some point we ended up in the kitchen and I was sitting on the linoleum counter next to Lisa, my arm around her waist as somebody gave us each a shot glass. They were cold and mine had a picture of an old car and had the words, “Road Trip!” stamped on it in red paint. It made me think about work, about the highway, about the drone of cars and trucks that echoed along it for all hours of the day and night. Even now.
    Somebody said: “Take the shot, man!” I noticed everybody around me had already taken theirs. I shrugged.
    Cigarette smoke was swirling around the ceiling fan like a storm on the cusp.
    I took the shot. It tasted like nothing.
    Jess’s boyfriend was in the street with his shirt off. He still had his hat on, pulled low over his brow. He was muttering stuff like, “I’m serious, man,” and staggering around in a circle with the stub of a cigarette smoking between his lips as he stared up at the phone lines. He had a big tattoo on his chest of an AK-47, a farmer’s tan around it in the shape of a tank top. “Sil, you know I’m serious, right?”
    I nodded my head from the sidewalk, thought I could feel myself swaying a bit as I stood there. Lisa was next to me, along with the neighbors from downstairs.
    There were cars parked on the side of the road and I couldn’t stop thinking Jess’s boyfriend was about to kick a fender or punch a window. He was that wound up. I couldn’t remember why. He’d been on the phone for a while, and somebody had said something about his brother getting arrested at a baseball game.
    Suddenly he stopped a few feet from the curb. Light from the streetlamps covered everything, made the world glow a dim orange. There was a dog barking from the back of one of the old, ratty colonial homes across the street.
    “Yo, Sil,” he said. “What’d you call that shit again, man?” He was scratching at a red streak across his stomach. “Destrugo? Destrubo? That’s me right now. I feel like destroying some shit for real, man.”
    Lisa took a step onto the uncut grass between the sidewalk and the road. “Dude,” she said. “You need to relax. Your brother’s gonna be alright.”
    He glared back at her, his brow creasing up, confused, like she’d just called him the wrong name. “Lisa, I don’t give a shit about him.” He looked up at the sky. “I’m just pissed off, and I’m fucking drunk.” At least he could admit that much. “I’m sick of waking up and doing the same shit every day. I need to be on my own grind. This bullshit job I got at the call center is some shit for the birds, man. It’s some work for goddamn punks.” His eyes shifted and suddenly, he was staring right at me. “I wanna do what you’re doing, man. Just driving around; no boss; nobody telling you you gotta stop wasting time and get back to work, none of that shit—shit that makes you wanna punch a hole in a wall or a face or something, anything, man.”
    I could only smile. I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure if he’d enjoy it as much as he thought, but I wasn’t ready to say it. I figured it was one of those situations where the grass always looks greener. What time was it? I checked my watch but couldn’t see the dials.
    “I need to be out there,” he said again, waving his hand in the direction of the interstate. He had a smile on his face like he already was—like his mind was flying down the road, wind blasting through open windows, the world disappearing in the rear-view. “I need to be out there, man. I need to be out there.”
    We were sitting on the grass at the harbor, the sound of the wash rolling in like God trying to put the world to sleep. I was staring at a red moon about a hand’s-width above the horizon, the clouds around it barely moving.
    A line of empty boats stretched along the edge of the shore. They were all swaying with the tide, making little creaking noises from the pressure. The one closest to us was a big white houseboat that had the words GOING, GONE printed on it in cursive letters.
    It was just me and Lisa. Her face was pressed against my shoulder. Sniffling, still crying, I think. I can’t remember what had set her off, but I remember her saying something about how her father was trying to control her life, and something else about a woman from the office named Rachel, who she said was a cunt. Her face turned all suspicious when I said I didn’t know Rachel. The fact was, I didn’t know most of the people I worked with. I was surprised how anyone could. So many names and faces. Generic names. Miserable faces.
    I took a long sip from a Coors Original in a paper bag, finished it and tossed it in the harbor. A few drops of beer flew out as it spun. After it splashed in, it just popped back up and floated there on the surface like a weed.
    “Going, gone,” I said with a smirk.
    Lisa lifted her head. I still had an arm around her.
    “What was that?”
    I shrugged, tried to think of something funny. “I dunno,” I said. “A can of beer, I guess.” The world was starting to spin a little. Everything was getting foggy. I asked her if it really mattered and she thought about it for only a second before she leaned her head on my shoulder again and said: “You’re pretty crazy, you know that?”
    Of course I did. I nodded my head, kissed her hair as I watched the light from the stars glimmer off the wrinkled surface of the water. Of course I knew.

    At some point the memories stopped, and I was dreaming.
    I don’t usually dream when I’m drunk. Or maybe I just don’t remember them. They just become more random images lost in the fog, I guess. Images I don’t need and will never get back. But the dream from that night was different. It wanted to happen. It wanted to be seen and remembered. So it did.
    And I was back behind the wheel. Always. Riding that stretch of I-90 that cuts like a knife down the middle of the Montezuma Wildlife Reserve. It was before the fire too, so everything was crystal clear and pristine, no bulldozers tearing up sections or excavators peeling up layers of earth. You could drive through and the sky would get so big—the way it does at the ocean—and you’d be able to see for miles in every direction. The long grass and the trees, the ponds, and there’d always be a group of birds flying up like something from a movie.
    The windows of the van were open, but the wind wasn’t whipping through. Everything was silent even though I was driving about a hundred miles an hour. Speeding because I had this feeling like I had to be somewhere and I was already late.
    I passed a brown SUV with a trailer hitched on the back and a green canoe strapped to the roof. I peeked in the window as I came up alongside and saw a woman in a halter top with short hair, eyes closed, chin on her chest, fast asleep without even a finger on the wheel. I tried to honk the horn but it made no sound. I tried to yell out the window, “Hey, you!” but she couldn’t hear me.
    I passed a rusted Subaru station-wagon and saw a whole family sleeping the trip away. A boy and girl in the backseat, snuggled up together like little chimps. And up front was a guy in glasses and a white shirt, slumped over in the driver’s seat with his face up against the window, a little strip of drool spilling out from the corner of his mouth. His wife didn’t care. She was sleeping, too.
    And it went on and on. Trucks, tractor-trailers, panel-vans, limousines, buses, all piloted by a race of sleeping souls, all somehow staying straight despite the bends in the road.
    I tried the horn again and again. I was shouting, “Hey!” at everyone I could, but nobody listened.
    At some point I started to feel afraid because I couldn’t understand how they were doing it, or how it was even possible. How was there just miles and miles of sleeping traffic and no accidents?
    I shook the thoughts away and tried to focus on the broken white line in the middle of the road as it flickered by. And the mile markers. My mind was drifting again. This was the world.
    What time was it?

    My first thought was the realization that I didn’t have my credit card. It was still at a bar somewhere between Lisa’s house and the harbor. Not for the first time, I was the drunken idiot who stumbled out into the night without closing his tab. Probably lucky, though. I would’ve messed up the tip. My car was there, too. But I was proud of that one. A couple years ago I doubt I would’ve thought twice. Not anymore. When you drive 360 miles a day, walking five doesn’t seem like much.
    Apparently it was, though. Because I wasn’t in my bed. I knew that.
    I was sprawled out next to a tree on a road about five blocks from my apartment. The sun was up, burning a hole through the clouds and making them all shimmer and glow like melted chunks of shattered china. There was no hiding in that light.
    I didn’t care, though. No guilt. I sat there rubbing my eyes and yawning as I pushed my back up against the tree. The street was familiar. The short, ranch-style houses with giant lawns and garages. No cracks in the paint. And no sidewalk on the side of the road with the houses, either.
    Behind me was the cemetery. Not where I wanted to be. It happened though, so I could only shrug. I let out a chuckle, too, and leaned back.
    There were kids playing in the street a few houses down. I could hear their little voices barking politics across the breeze, imitating the tones of their parents. They were young, so it was harmless. All four of them were standing around with their hands behind their backs like little Marines, someone would say some magic word and everyone would start running and dodging in so many directions you couldn’t tell who was chasing who. They would do this for almost half a minute until all of a sudden, everyone would stop and they would start over.
    I had no desire to watch, so I closed my eyes and started talking to myself. It’s a habit you develop from driving alone for so many hours per week. More like muttering in your sleep than carrying on full-bodied conversations with your subconscious. Most times it was just gibberish. This was no different.
    After a while one of the kids walked over. A boy about eleven or twelve-years-old with a big green t-shirt on, the collar stretched out and the sleeves reaching almost an inch past his elbows. He was wearing sweatpants and taking sips from a coffee mug with the words BECAUSE I’M THE BOSS printed on it in black letters. Narrow eyes stared right through me.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    I yawned and told him I was trying to wake up.
    He was quiet for a moment, eyes gazing down at his feet. He took a step forward and held out his mug. I shook my head.
    “It’s just water.”
    There were church bells ringing at the other end of the cemetery, past about a mile of headstones and mausoleums and little pathways for the bereaved. I rubbed my forehead, reached out and took a long sip of the boy’s water before handing it back. I felt lightheaded. My legs were weak and wobbly even though I was still sitting in the grass.
    “Are you okay?”
    I nodded, glanced up the street to see his friends still playing the same game, strutting around like machines. “What’s your name?” I asked.
    “Bill.”
    I told him it was a good name and he just shrugged. I couldn’t think of much to say. I wasn’t good at talking to kids.
    “What do you want to be when you grow up, Bill?”
    He gazed into his mug, looked almost embarrassed. “A nuclear physicist.”
    I started laughing and he made a face like he wished he was bigger so he could strangle the life out of me until I was just as dead as the people buried behind me. There I was, just laughing at a little kid’s dream. The same asshole as I was yesterday. I had to stop laughing, but I maintained the smile because it was still kind of funny.
    I remember my uncle used to say he wanted to be a nuclear physicist. He said he could have been the next Einstein. He even got a scholarship to go study physics at Yale or RIT or something. I don’t know what happened. Somehow he ended up a fireman and he did that for fifteen years before he died in a housefire. Flames caught a gasline while he was inside trying to rescue some woman’s daughter, blew him straight out the kitchen window. As it turned out, the woman’s daughter wasn’t even in the house. She’d slept over at her friends place. It didn’t really matter.
    The church bells had stopped and I was finally standing up, stretching my back. I told Bill to be good but he didn’t say anything, just went on watching me with those narrow eyes. A breeze was blowing leaves along the side of the road as I started off down the street, along the edge of the cemetery, cars passing by the way they always did. For some reason I was thinking about the ocean, summer vacations when I was a kid, standing there as the waves crashed on the shore. I would watch the sunlight against the motion of the waves, never once thinking how absurd that freedom was, and how it would never last.

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