It’s been over a month. There’s good reason for it. I suddenly hit a point where I’m dried up, worn out, sorta/kinda had it. True tales of death and dismemberment are all well and good, it’s just that I—all of a sudden—don’t want to blather on about it any longer. No for the time being, anyhoo. Never say never and all that. After the book came out, I sputtered out on the side of the freeway and found out the tank was empty. Found I didn’t have a hell of a lot more to say about it. Outa my system. For the moment, I’ve decided to let the car just sit there. Maybe I’ll come across a filling station on the stroll home, go back and fill ‘er up, or say screw it and let the Troopers handle it.
However! Taking a break from blathering on is not in my nature. I just want to take it in a different direction. As I’ve secured this place on the webernets for over another year, I’m going to put it work, albeit in a different way and in a different direction. I’ve even been gracious enough to offer a sample below, and encourage all who read this to wipe away the tears and lemme know what you think:
- * * *
ONE
Will took one last walk around the apartment. Every step he took was an echo bouncing off the plaster walls. They were as bare and clean as the day he’d moved in fourteen years ago– flat white and not a nail hole or a dusty silhouette of a picture frame anywhere. There wasn’t even a single furniture scuff mark on the wall, and by the time Will had moved in, Kurt had been too old to leave handprints.
“Geez,” the building manager said when he’d stopped by with the damage deposit check. “I wouldn’t even have to paint.”
“Lucky you,” Will had said. He handed over the keys and folded the check into his pocket. Will had known the man for over ten years, and it was the longest conversation they’d ever had.
With the last of his possessions removed, all that was left was dust. That could have been anybody’s. He’d taken care of that with the lady across the hall’s vacuum, which, as it turned out, had been his a week before. He’d already forgotten she’d bought it from him. When he knocked on her door and asked to use it, she reacted as if he’d come to repossess it.
“You mean you want it back?” She started to ease the door shut.
“Pardon?”
“The price tag said twenty dollars,” she said, hand moving toward the chain on the jamb. “I even asked you if it was right.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, not knowing what she was talking about. “I’m just finishing up. I won’t need it more than ten minutes. Then I’ll have it right back to you.”
She hesitated; as if she were pondering whether not giving it to him would result in his kicking down her door, taking back his vacuum cleaner and anything else he could get his hands on. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. Just give me a minute.” She closed the door and he heard the chain rattle into place. He waited, wondering if he should, but the chain rattled again, and the vacuum was pushed into the hall through a gap in the doorway just wide enough to accommodate it. He was only slightly less baffled when he recognized it.
It took Will less than the ten minutes he’d promised. After checking the apartment one final time, pulling open all the cupboards and the single closet, knowing already there was nothing of his left, he and the vacuum were back in the hallway. When Will closed the door behind him, the lock in the knob clicked. Now he was out for good. He took out his wallet, put the damage deposit check away and removed a twenty-dollar bill. With the money sticking out from the zipper in the dust bag, he rapped twice on his now former-neighbor’s door and, without waiting for an answer, walked down the hallway and out of the building.
The afternoon sun was shining bright enough that Will had to squint. The streets and sidewalks were wet with melting snow. He’d heard the temperature was supposed to be in the fifties, but it felt cold. It was the wind, blowing steady and strong from the west and carrying all the chilled moisture that wasn’t making it into the gutters and drains. He hunched against the damp breeze and walked to a three-quarter ton, four-wheel-drive pick-up truck that was so new there were little strands of rubber still poking up from the treads of the tires. It was the first and only new vehicle he’d ever owned. Before getting into the cab he looked into the box. What was in there didn’t even take up half of the space available: A half-dozen plastic totes holding his clothes, and a few books; a steamer trunk with more books, two photo albums, some tools, a seventy-five foot extension cord, his coffee maker, two place settings worth of dishes and a desk lamp. His golf clubs were sealed in the bag, and there were three five-gallon plastic pails with the lids snapped on tight that were filled with golfballs. A small tin file cabinet was jammed in a corner. There was a tent, a camp stove, an inflatable mattress with an electric pump, still packed into a plastic box made just for that purpose; a pair of fishing poles, a tackle box, and a cooler that he’d filled with groceries that morning. In the back corner there was a small gas generator and a full five-gallon gas can. There was still enough space left in the back of the truck that Will had to purchase a couple of nylon cargo straps to keep it all from sliding around.
He climbed into the cab and started the truck. Beside him were the rest of his worldly possessions. His sleeping bag was rolled up on the floor of the passenger’s side with his pillow. Against the door was a box containing his farewell gifts from the office. There were several cards, a medico-legal death investigation manual, a framed photo of him grimacing while he pulled the clothes off a decomposed corpse, a pewter beer stein and a toe tag with his name on it. He hadn’t given them much time to put together a party. There were two other gifts in the box, given to him privately by his partner. One was a more or less anatomically correct inflatable female, the other was a bag of weed. Will knew where the love-doll came from; a case his partner had been out on just a few days before Will quit. A frantic son-in-law had pulled it from a closet and begged Will’s partner to get rid of it before his wife showed up to see her dad. It was new and still in the package. Will glanced back through the rear window and looked at the plastic box with the camping equipment and motorized pump. If he ever got desperate enough, he at least wouldn’t wear himself out blowing her up. He didn’t want to know where the dope came from, and didn’t ask, but accepted it just the same. His badge was supposed to be in the box too, but Will had found it. He’d turned it in when he quit, but his boss must have put it in the beer mug, wrapped up in a wad of bar napkins, just before they’d stuffed Will into a cab after his send-off. He wouldn’t have found it if the two drinking glasses he’d saved for himself weren’t already packed. The badge was on its way back to the office via FedEx.
Will put the truck in gear, but before pulling away, looked once more into the back of his new vehicle. A week ago, what he owned, while still not a lot, probably wouldn’t have fit into a fifteen-foot moving van. What he hadn’t sold, he’d given away. What he couldn’t give away, he tossed into a dumpster. Yet, for a moment, what little rested behind and beside him seemed like almost too much.
He picked up a pair of sunglasses from the dashboard. It was a very nice piece of eyewear. The price asked for them was ridiculous– well over one hundred dollars. They were his as a result of impulse, and he’d gotten them for nothing. The sunglasses had been displayed in the showroom of the dealership where Will had bought the truck. Will had noticed them when he first arrived. When the salesman was working on the paperwork for the pick-up, an uncontrollable smile on his face he couldn’t be blamed for– Will hadn’t dickered for an instant and the whole sale had been agreed on in about fifteen minutes– Will noticed the glasses again while sitting the salesman’s cubicle.
“Well, then!” the salesman said, slapping the pen on the papers and turning them around for Will to sign. “Everything’s in order. The bank says go!” The man chuckled and gave Will a wink. “One little scribble and you’re out of here in one hell of a ride.”
Will stopped peering over the edge of the cubicle and faced the man. He smiled. “Some nice shades you’ve got over there.”
The salesman raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
Will gestured over his shoulder with his pen. The salesman tilted his head and looked toward the counter where the glasses were displayed.
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, forcing his grin into one of disbelief. “Can you believe what they’re asking for those things?”
“An outrage,” Will said.
The salesman kept shaking his head, even while he directed his eyes toward the unsigned papers in front of Will.
“I want ‘em,” Will told him.
The salesman looked up and raised his eyebrows again. “Whoa, buddy! You’re in a spending mood today.” He gave Will another wink. “Did a rich uncle die or something?” He threw in another chuckle.
Will was tempted to say, No, a rich father, but he just returned the salesman’s grin with one of his own. He tapped his jaw with the pen and watched the salesman’s eyes shift between the papers, the sunglasses, and the pen bouncing against his face.
“Uh,” the salesman shifted in his chair. He pushed another chuckle out. “If they give you any problems with the check,” he tapped the papers with a finger, “send them over and I’ll be glad to vouch for you.”
Will quit tapping his face. “Nah… I want them in the package.”
“Package?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Throw ‘em in with the truck.”
The salesman shifted again, lifting his butt out of the chair for a moment, settling back down with a slight forward lean over the desk. “Well, I,” he said in a low voice, “can’t really do that.”
“Sure you can.”
The salesman shook his head. The smile was still in place, but it appeared to Will that the rest of his face was struggling to keep it there. “No, really,” he said. “I’ll admit there was a time when a guy could throw in a few extras for a client, but…” he shook his head, as if saddened at living in times that took all of the fun and playfulness from the business of providing quality transportation, “those times are gone.”
“This is a cash deal,” Will said. “Sure you can.” Will clicked the pen. The ball retracted, taking its legally binding ink with it.
The salesman sat for a minute, his smile gone. He looked at the paper, then at Will. He sighed and the grin was back. “What the hell, huh? What the hell…” He rose and clapped Will on the shoulder as he exited the cubicle. Will watched him stalk across the showroom floor and snatch the glasses from the display. Before disappearing around the corner with them, Will saw him reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.
When the salesman returned, Will was slouched in the chair, twirling the keys to the truck around an index finger. The salesman put the glasses on the desk. “Can’t let a man drive out of her not properly accessorized, right buddy?”
Will stopped spinning the keys. He put the glasses on. The price tag was still attached and it dangled across his nose. The salesman settled into his chair and reached for the papers. He made a little grunt when he saw Will had signed them already. The salesman looked at him. “Anything else?” Will asked. The tag flipped and came to rest between Will’s lips. He blew it out and it flipped up and came to rest on the frame above Will’s left eye.
The salesman laughed.
Will stood and extended a hand. “Thanks.”
The salesman stood and accepted the handshake. It seemed he was about to add an obligatory closing comment, but Will was already out of the cubicle.
Will adjusted the frames and checked himself in the rearview mirror. They were indeed a sharp pair of shades. He liked them better than he liked his new truck. He wondered how long he’d enjoy them before he sat on them, or left them in a bar. Pulling into the street, he turned the radio on. He’d yet to set the tuner for the stations he liked. A CD would have been better, he thought, settling for a head-banger station. The truck was equipped with a player, but he’d divested himself of his stereo even before he’d bought the truck, and all of his discs had gone with it.
It had taken Will over an hour to get out of the Twin Cities. He didn’t suffer the usual tooth grinding frustration at being locked behind mile after solid mile of brake lights, or the mad lane changes of idiots trying to squeeze through the merest gap in a neighboring lane to steal another inch closer to home. Even the sight of someone yapping on a cell phone had no effect on him. Will was high above the snarl in his new truck, the sun’s brutal angle neutralized by his magnificent shades, and he knew it to be a very real possibility he’d never again drive on a road with more than two lanes, which made him wonder. What was he doing, driving away from a present he’d been comfortable with for the past fifteen years, into a past that was never really his? Mexico, Costa Rica. That was where people ran away to. Switzerland, Monaco. That’s where people went when they had more money than sense. Skip off to Nepal or Tibet, hang with the lamas and strive toward a “higher level.” Go back and finish med school and disappear into some third world shithole, build a clinic, play Dr. Livingstone and redeem the past that was his.
He pushed the speedometer past seventy five. If anybody was supposed to go where he was headed, if it was a destination worthwhile, there’d be a freeway to it.
- * * *
Soooo…. that’s what’ll be occupying me for the next few months.