Journey Back, Cont’d

I have no idea what possessed us.

Kenny’s got shotgun that day, and he’d been complaining most of the way about his warm soda.  We were in the last leg home, and the warm weather made short work of the sodas from the machine at school after about 20 minutes of California sunshine.  He kept sloshing it in his hand and I could hear the liquid fizz and slap on the thin aluminum.

“Toss it out!” somebody yells, and the roar of the wind and the blaring music blend to make it a cacophony of loud kids and road noise and distorted guitar.  “Toss it out!  See if you hit that old guy!”

The idea was evil, sinister.  It caught like wild fire.  “YEAH!” the thunder rose, “YEAH, THROW IT AT HIM!  THROW IT!”

Kenny’s a spineless little whelp and he does as he’s told or as he thinks will make him popular, so he hits the button and sends the window slicing down into the car door.  Not all the way, but enough so he can stick his hand outside with the can held between his puffy, marshmallow fingers.  He’s got a shit-eating grin on his face and his frog-eyes are staring straight ahead when he does it.  For a minute, I get a glimpse of his profile.  He’s like a mayonnaise sculpture, with foamy spit bubbles just inside his lips, and that fuzz on his face catching the bright afternoon sun and glinting, his soft cheeks and swollen jowls seamless.

The whine of the motor to retract the window seems deafening to me, and we’re really huffing along now, launching down the final approach to that great hill ahead of us.  There’s a moment of still clarity when I see everything like in slow motion, and he flicks his pudgy-but-not-fat wrist, those marshmallow fingers releasing the top of the quarter-full can.  He never aims, never looks where he’s tossing it, keeps his eyes dead forward, that stupid, split-lipped grin on his face, the scar from where the dog tore his lip as a child a white slash over his talc-colored face.  It takes off with a mind and intellect all its own, a missile now, an intelligent bomb, and turns end for end as it sails through space in the clear, humidity-free No-Cal air.

I’m driving and I can’t afford to take my eyes off the road, but I can’t pull them away either, and the can topples on a graceful arc punctuated with tiny diamond droplets of shimmering Sprite spewed from the top before centrifugal force pins it to the bottom of the can.  The tumbling stops partway through its course.  The can sinks with an assassin’s accuracy and speed I would’ve said was impossible.

The bottom of the can rang loud enough for us to hear it over our din and the deafening crash of music, a sickening dink! which sent it flailing and spilling its guts off into the day.  The old man caught it right behind his left ear, about halfway up his head.  It couldn’t have been a more accurate throw.  And it was pure, unadulterated luck.  Dumb, blind, moronic luck.  Stupid luck.   Shitty luck.

We all cry out simultaneously, some in horror and shock, some in amazement, some in disbelief.  I don’t waste time reacting – my foot sinks farther to the floor and the V6 reacts with no hesitation, slamming us into the soft, thick seat cushions and really takes off, zipping into warp drive and getting up that slow, easy rise before the steep incline.

Robby’s screaming “YOU GOT HIM! HOLY SHIT YOU GOT HIM! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”  He sounds like a macaw speaking, some old pirate’s bird, because the laughter strains his face beet red and the veins are jumping out on his neck, his eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down his cheeks.  He’s doubled over in the back seat – no seatbelt laws then, so he didn’t have one on – and banging his fist on the empty seat behind me.

Me?  I turn the music off, and I whip around, but the car’s gone beyond the bend and the old man is out of my view.  I ask Robby what happened, what happened dammit, what happened, did it hit him, did he get it?  Even though I knew, because I saw it.  Robby’s saying the old guy’s hands shot to the violated spot and he dropped to one knee, right there just beyond the shoulder of the blacktop on Kirker Pass Road, about five miles or less from our home town.

Just an old man walking down the road, minding his own business, not hurting anyone.  And now I look on that and it could’ve been me, it could’ve been my dad, or someone I care about.  And a group of rowdy kids being stupid sent a soda can on a deadly trip out a moving car window.

I think about that old guy from time to time, and wonder if he’s all right.  If he got up.  If the hard edge of the aluminum cut his scalp, or if he got a concussion from three stupid teenagers doing something stupid and thinking there were no consequences, there were no ramifications, and there were no penalties to be paid.  It never even crossed our minds.  It never occurred to us that he didn’t deserve to be hit because he’d been walking on the side of the road.  But I knew this time I couldn’t ignore that memory, couldn’t keep it inside anymore, because it was wrong.  Wrong.

If you’re still alive and out there, mister, I’m sorry.  I genuinely am.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

Journey Back

The sun’s strong; I can feel the wind in my face when the windows go down, but it’s crisp and cool.  Must be either early spring or late autumn, and I don’t remember now which.  I remember the car, though.  It was my mom’s 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, fully loaded, power everything, cushy crushed velour seats and Landau top.  All white, a vision.  Her six cylinder power plant was revving up as we rocketed on toward Kirker Pass, just at the edge of Concord, CA’s rolling Diablo Range hills.

We’re all of 15 and 16 years old.  I’m driving; first with my license, so I suddenly became popular.  Those are the kinds of friends I had – got something they need?  You’re the best friend they’ve ever had.  When they can get it somewhere else, they will, drop you like a bad habit, never look back.  They’ll lie in your face and not blink, and when they’re caught lying, they shrug.  “Oh well.”  That’s their big expression for everything — “Oh well.”  They don’t say it with a trace of sympathy.  It’s a verbal slap.

They’ve been a clique since first grade, maybe before.  They all went to the same grade school for all eight years of it.  St. Peter Martyr Elementary School, in a shit-ass run-down area of town on the verge of being a slum and too dumb to admit it.  Across the main road there’s a neighborhood now you’d call cracktown, if such a drug existed then.  I met those “friends” when I was in sixth grade, and went to the school for the first time.

So we were supposed to be “friends”.  But I guess I didn’t pay my tenure enough, because I wasn’t the one they wanted to spend time with unless there was no one else.  They preferred each other’s company to mine.  But when I got my license first … well, then I was the central person they wanted contact with.

The story’s simple.  They’re like kids of any other time.  They like to get booze, because they’re not supposed to have it, and they like to get weed or crank because they’re able to, and they like to spend their weekend nights cruising around with each other in somebody’s car, getting stoned or wired or drunk.  Or all three.  And there we are, my “friends” and me, hurtling up toward Kirker Pass on the gentler slope leading to it, with our book bags and our shit-don’t-stink attitudes and our immortality and invincibility locked into our heads.

I’m pressing on the gas and gaining speed, launching the Olds toward the ever-rising grade that would eventually rise almost 900 feet in less than five miles.  We get a good enough head of steam going up this western slope, and we’ll make it to the top fine.  If not … well, the Pass is a car killer.

We’re hurtling along and we’re screwing around the way teenage boys do, behaving badly, being jackasses basically, and we’re on the last flat before the vicious grade starts.  We’re loud, the music’s louder, and we’re swigging our afternoon sugar fix of Cokes and Sprites in cans.  We’re going maybe fifty, racing toward sixty, and I’m greasing the ball bearing in my ankle for the lead foot to start dropping.  The gas pedal sinks and the RPM roars.  I’m moving fast.  What do we see ahead?

A man, walking off the side of the road, just strolling northeast, beyond the gravel shoulder.

I don’t know what possessed us.

To Be Continued

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

C.o.C.: Hardbody

Image by moriza via Flickr

Some of the people I noticed on my commute weren’t necessarily riding the train with me. Some of them shared my walk from the train station to the office where I worked.

Backstory: The company I worked for had a campus sprawled over various areas of Big City.  This is called a “Metropolitan Area” scheme, if you’re wondering.  Two buildings on the same street faced each other, one on the west side and the other on the east side of a north-south thoroughfare.  So, a lot of people who worked for said company hoofed down the long street from destinations unknown.  Hardbody was one such individual.

When I first started with the company, I didn’t know the shuttle bus schedule and frankly, I didn’t want to work that hard first thing in the morning, so for several months I just walked up the street.  It was a long walk for me and hey, I’m fat – I could use the exercise.  Why not?

For a time, I tried to keep up with the other walking commuters as they strutted down the street with their type-A commuter’s gaits.

That didn’t last.  Did I mention I’m fat?  Well, I’m out of shape and a smoker too, so no, that didn’t last.  I soon discovered I couldn’t keep up, even when I tried.  I walked as fast as I dared without inducing a cardiac episode, and reminded myself smoking after this ordeal, no matter how appealing, was a disastrously stupid idea.    One day, through the pain-induced haze and tears, I heard a rapid footfall behind me.  It was the familiar clip-clop of high heels.  I’d gotten used to being passed by women in high-heeled shoes (and everyone else, fat, thin, young, old, disabled – didn’t matter, everyone passed me), so when I glanced up, I didn’t expect much.

Instead, I caught the posterior view of one of the most amazing female specimens I’ve ever seen.

Her clumpy heels didn’t slow her down.  She strode along, her sprayed hair bouncing with each step, but nothing else did.  Her body had no notable fat – at least not through her clothing.  She was taller than I am in her heels, and her clothes fit every curve and angle of her body.  Her hips swung as she walked, and even her glutes didn’t vibrate.  It was like she was carved from stone.

I stared, amazed, as she put distance between us, and wondered if I could count her ribs if she wore a bikini.  Then I noticed her thighs, from which you could bounce a quarter, didn’t make contact at the top where they attached to her pelvis.  And in a moment I realized there really is such a thing as too thin.  She’s an amazing physique to be sure, but I couldn’t help wondering how many vertebrae show through the skin on her back and whether her iliac bones protruded when she wore more revealing articles.

Still, her athleticism astounded me, and I pondered the hours in the gym, her commitment to diet and discipline, as she smoldered out of my sight.

Over the course of many months I gained endurance enough to be less slow (never fast) when I walked, and I always used The Hardbody as my benchmark.

I didn’t really mind the view either.

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

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C.o.C.: The Friendly Woman

I first noticed The Friendly Woman after a couple of days of my commute.  I tend to observe people in general, and I don’t often forget a face.  I’d seen her my first trip, and here she was again on my second trip.  She had a masculine hair cut – no style to it, parted on the left, cropped short around her circular head.  She sat in the northwest corner of the train station, dolloped onto one of the uncomfortable benches of wrought iron and cedar, varnished to a high gloss, her face buried in a romance novel.  Her rotund body bulged so she seemed like a beanbag collapsing into the slats.

When I walked in, I gave the station my usual precursory scan.  I always check a place out when I walk in – see who’s there, get a feel for the populace.  Not many people huddled inside the depot; Curly Sue was in her corner, at the other end of the row of benches from The Friendly Woman, riffing through her iPod songs.  A bald man with his foot in a walking cast shuffled advertisements out of his newspaper, his Parkinsons tremors shaking his pate and hands.  A man with his arm in a body-embracing sling leaned over a lacquered tree limb cane with a rubber foot on the end, a low-crowned cowboy hat snugged down over his ears.  A young man tumbled through the doors with a small Igloo lunch cooler, his hard hat’s hollow plastic clattering against the floor, the benches, the cooler.

I sat down between Curly Sue and The Friendly Woman, which is when I noticed the latter’s gaze on me.

When she saw my eyes shift to her, she didn’t break her stare.  Instead, she smiled.  “Hi,” she said, and her voice was soft, warm, welcoming.  I couldn’t help responding with my own weary smile and returned her greeting.  She went back to her bodice-ripper, and I shut my eyes to pray.

The next morning, she caught my attention as I entered the building and greeted me with “Good morning,” in her usual, chipper-but-unobtrusive sing-song.  And so it went, every day.  Sometimes she’d make small talk about the weather, or the train, and asked where I stopped at the other end.  Other times, when the weather warmed into summer, she’d comment on how pretty the train station grounds are relative to others she’s seen along the line.  I agreed with her; the flowers and plants were pretty if not beautiful.  The train station building was too hot, without air conditioning, to wait inside, so many passengers – more than 20 at times – would crowd the edge of the platform and await the train, swatting mosquitoes and fanning gnats.  TFW and I would chat quietly for a few minutes before she returned to her novel and I paced.  I always pace.

When the tragic accident I called Not a Typical Morning happened, she didn’t complain.  She never commented with the others in the station in a calloused, uncaring way.  She only made a couple of phone calls to arrange another method of transport.  Oh, and we didn’t exchange greetings that day.

When autumn’s bite returned the chill to the air, I didn’t retreat back into the train depot.  I would wait on the platform and let the cool, brisk winds brace me, wake me.  But I’d see her by her northwest window, bundled in a parka with her hood drawn over her head, book in her hand, dolloped onto her bench.  In my head, I always said, “Good morning.”

I still do sometimes.

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

C.o.C.: Curly Sue

Cast of Characters, part 1.  The people I observed while riding a commuter train to and from work everyday.

I noticed Curly Sue first.  She’s sort of a bookworm-ish type; glasses, academic, studious look to her, but her high-energy and tense presence screamed type-A.  Her tresses fell about her shoulders and down her back in ringlets.  They weren’t too tight, or too small, and were perpetually wet.  Her near-black locks matched her rich, dark eyes.  When she walked it was with intent, purpose, never sacheting or meandering, and her pant material swished and zipped as her feet swung in rapid, choppy steps.

Most days she wore black pants and a quilted jacket.  I first noticed her in March, which isn’t all that warm ‘round these parts.  I found Curly Sue most mornings sitting in the train depot, her iPod chirping its tiny clicks as she rattled through her playlist selections.  She sat on the hard wooden bench, stiff-backed and proper, as if she were uncomfortable sitting still.  After she set up all the desired songs, she’d pop up like a Jack-in-the-Box and pump her feet back and forth in their fast, smooth arc to walk to the end of the platform and wait for the train, zip-zopping out of earshot before the door swung closed.

Curly Sue never spoke or smiled, never gave notice to anyone unless someone spoke first.  She had a rock on her finger the size of Gibraltar when I first noticed her, but seemed far too young to be married.  She carried a huge backpack, and a tote bag in her free hand.  Her bird-like motions and energy always made me feel like I moved in slow motion, sluggish, lethargic.  If I tried to keep up with her I’d be breathless and sweating despite the cold.  She wore crisp, white sneakers for her walking commute at the end of the line in Big City, but I never saw which way she went.  I never even saw her get off the train … or on it, for that matter.  She’d go to the end of the platform and then I didn’t see her anymore.

I started noticing, when I took later trains home, Curly Sue rode in the upper deck, in the same car I did.  I would acknowledge her with a slight nod and trace of a smile, but if she returned it I never noticed.  I didn’t mind.  She spent her commute home on the phone or working on her computer, and as we neared our stop I often found her huddled in the door wells of the train car chatting with another young woman, about her age but heavier set and mousy.

The only time I saw Curly Sue talk was the day a stranger asked about other train stations in the area.  She offered supporting information in a friendly, warm and welcoming voice and tone with The Friendly Woman to the stranger.  Curly Sue strode out of the train and down the ramp to the parking lot in her frenetic strides and I’d stop at my car, parked much closer than hers.  Thank goodness.

You’ll meet The Friendly Woman tomorrow.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.