David
It was five minutes to Friday and I was speeding like hell.
I didn’t get a good look at him until after I pulled over. He seemed so small and sad in the road. Wrinkled, too. I remember thinking of E.T. If only I had a white-knit blanket to wrap him in. A bicycle instead of a truck. Maybe then he’d still be walking. Maybe then he wouldn’t be crying for home.
“Oh my god,” I breathed.
It was five minutes to Friday and I had been speeding like hell.
Late Thursday night, if you want technicalities and truth. I’d been to the bar on Connally Street, the one with the bartender that divorcees like to pretend resembles Ben Affleck. I drank just one beer but stayed long enough to have downed five or six. Sat there forever and a day, thinking dimly over an empty, foam-speckled glass, shaking my head every time Ben offered another round. He no longer asks me if I’m waiting on someone. He knows better than that.
Come eleven forty-two, the urge to leave hit me like a full bladder—pressing, important, impossible to avoid forever. I wanted to be home right then and there, to blink and appear in my bed, alone in the dark with my thoughts. Once there, I could conduct my usual routine in all of its melancholy and empty space. Reach across the sheets, groping the shadows for the pillows that I arrange like a body. Press myself against them. Wish they were warm. Wish they were her. Whisper “baby” where her ear should be. Tell her to go back to sleep. Tell her I’m fine. Pray to dream of nothing but probably dream of childhood or guns. Wake up to cold pillows. Repeat.
I nodded to Ben and he whisked my glass away. It was clean by the time I stepped outside.
It was five minutes to Friday. I was speeding like hell.
I wasn’t more than a mile from my house, flying down a country road like a goddamn hotrod. The radio screamed Springsteen loud and proud, the bass thrumming through my Chevy with the power of blood through veins. My windows were rolled down. Wind whipped through the truck and mussed my hair like a brother. I peered through clumps of trees and half-hidden houses for my turn-off. It’s all so new to me—being alone. On nights like this, I have to get away from it somehow.
It was five minutes to Friday.
And then there he was, standing in the middle of the road like an apparition or ghost, angel or messenger. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he had been waiting for me.
I turned the wheel and it didn’t matter. Mashed my foot as hard as I could against the brakes and it didn’t do a damn thing. Prayed to God and nothing happened, stopped, changed—but isn’t that how it always goes?
He didn’t even flinch, blinking at my headlights with a surprise as gentle and sad as Christ’s in the garden.
Then I hit him.
I felt one tire lurch over the man. The back tires were luckier and barely kissed him; if my eyes were closed, he could have been a bad pothole or small animal. I swerved off the side of the road, two tires slamming into a ditch, one skipping like a stone from dirt to air and dirt again, the other barely touching ground at all. My seatbelt jerked me back against the driver’s seat, so confused with inertia that it cracked my skull against the driver-side window. Fireworks erupted across my vision. Springsteen wailed and moaned like a mother—a high whine emitted from my truck’s engine.
I gingerly felt the side of my head for blood. My fingers came away clean, yet still, they trembled. I dared to peek at my rearview mirror, and there he was, lying in the road, looking like no more than a pile of bloody clothes.
“Oh my god,” I said again, and again, and again. I shoved open my car door and staggered toward him, my every step wobbling and wandering in horror.
The man lay on his side, gasping in a funny, raspy way. If it weren’t for the tires of my truck, I’d say he had a long history with Luckies or Winstons, perhaps even the Camels my grandfather once favored. He was certainly old enough for it.
I crouched beside him. My taillights washed the man in red so soft it was nearly black. I couldn’t tell what was blood and what was my truck, but it didn’t matter—it was all my fault.
“Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
The man groaned. He was so old everything sagged—arms, stomach, chin, hopes. The white hair on his head was little more than the stuff of dandelions. I wondered if it could be blown away, and if any wish would be enough to save him.
“Sir?” I tried. No response. My hands fluttered to the man, but they kept jumping from neck to chest to arm, unsure where to land. He was as wrinkled and soft as an English bulldog; the instinct to pet him crossed my mind and left it just as quickly. Like many old geezers, the man’s blue eyes were permanently watery—or maybe it was only tears. My insides wrung themselves with guilt.
“I hit you with my car. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I told him, and I don’t know when I started crying, but I must have been by then. The taillights of my truck wobbled and streaked across my vision like stars, piercing the monsters and murk of the tree line. “I’m going to take you to the hospital now, okay?” I fumbled for my cell phone, for the three digits that had been drilled into me since I knew what a phone or an emergency was.
“No.”
The word was as firm as a human touch.
“What?” My hand hovered over the keypad, too taken aback to even hit 9. The man shook his head as hard as anyone in his right mind.
“No hospital.”
“But… but you’ve been hit. I ran you over. With my truck,” I said stupidly— as if he possibly needed reminding. He scowled.
“No shit, son. What the hell you’d hit me with?”
“A… a truck?” I didn’t quite understand the question, I suppose.
The man propped himself up on an elbow whose skin had been scraped clean off, asphalt like popcorn ceiling digging directly into vulnerable flesh and blood. It must have stung like hell, but the old man didn’t so much as wince. Instead, he squinted hard at my truck, its headlights blazing off-balance into the ditch.
“That a Chevy?”
“Yes, sir.” I looked left and right, paranoid of oncoming cars. Thursdays were not the choice of most loners, but lightning could always strike twice.
“What model?”
“A Silverado,” I said distractedly. The night air was warm and clammy, like a fist in the summertime, ready to swing, surprise, strike. A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and fell back onto the asphalt with resignation.
“Sir—”
“Put that away,” he grouched, pawing at my cell phone.
“But—”
He gave me a hard look. I stopped. Swallowed. Surrendered my phone to my pocket, then checked the street again. Was that an engine I heard or only the wind? Desperation tightened my throat, as if by a drawstring.
“Please let me take you. If not to the hospital…, somewhere. Your house. A clinic. Anything. We have to get you out of the road.” I wanted to say more. To beg him on my hands and knees. Let me save your life. Let me try. Please please please, God, do not let me fail someone else.
The man’s eyebrows raised, slow and sardonic as hell.
“What, before another hot shot like you comes ripping ’round the corner and does us both in? What a bright idea.” He even rolled his eyes at me, the old bastard. Then, caving, he motioned for me to help him up, the flab of his arm wobbling with the movement. I reached for his hands, but all he gave me was a pat on the knee and a smile so grim it was almost apologetic.
“You’re gonna have to carry me, son. I can’t walk.”
I gathered him in my arms and headed for my truck, tucking him carefully against my chest as if he were a dear child. He was so light and delicate, his breathing even more so. It was a wonder he was still alive.
The man craned his neck at my Chevy.
“Are you putting me in your goddamn truck?”
“No hospital,” I promised him.
We came around to the passenger side. With a little difficulty, I got the door open and made the seat decent, shoving aside dirty napkins, straw wrappers, and receipts like a bird clearing an old nest, then set him down.
“Damn right. I’ll tell you where to go. You just listen to me and follow my directions and we’ll be just fine. Capiche?” he said. A bead of blood crawled along his creped skin toward his elbow. Farther down, the right leg of his jeans was black, but his eyes were blue and wet and clear and wouldn’t let go of mine. How could I refuse this totally helpless stranger?
“Okay.”
I started the engine. The man fumbled with his seatbelt, unable to buckle it in place. I waited until he gave up, grumbling to hide his embarrassment, before doing it for him.
He straightened up, confidence renewed.
“Now punch it, Margaret.”
“Excuse me?”
“Punch it, Margaret. How old are you?”
“Thirty.” Though I look older. I always have. However, I never looked older—not significantly, anyway—until this year. A frown flickered across the man’s face and was gone.
“Aw, forget it. Just drive.”
❧
I let the old man order me all over town—off the country roads, back down Connally, across the railroad tracks, and into downtown. His shirt hadn’t been red earlier, but it was red now. Air rattled and rasped between his parted lips, sometimes succumbing to a polite, wet wheeze. He sounded like an accordion, one too tired and old to play what should have been natural. I tried not to look directly at him.
“Now turn right… and here we are,” he finally said.
Dairy Queen glowed before us like a mirage in the desert—astounding from far away; up close, nothing worth the spit in your mouth. Countertops and old-fashioned tables shone from years of grease, nearly silver despite their dents and dirt. Every window was smudged with fingerprints and traces of paint pens. People as mushy and damp as old pillows occupied a few booths here and there, all citizens of ice cream, of the great, golden, neon cone.
Yet beneath minimum wage, this Dairy Queen, to these people, was someplace like beautiful. Immaculate. Holy. A brilliant, rundown, sparkling paradise, salvation and savior to the dying.
“This is a Dairy Queen.”
“Yes. And?”
“Why the hell are we at Dairy Queen?”
The man’s entire face puckered—forehead, nose, mouth, eyes, chin, and all—offended with every fiber of his being.
“To go through the drive-thru. Jesus, don’t young people go out anymore?” he snapped. He settled back into his seat and crossed his arms. “Pull forward. I know you know where the gas pedal is.”
My face burned hot and red, stinging as if slapped by the comment.
I was glad for it. I deserved much worse.
We pulled up to the speaker. The man leaned so close I could smell the mints on his breath and the copper of his clothes.
“Order me a soft serve cone, please. Dipped in chocolate.” Before I could answer the speaker, he added, “You’re paying. I think you knocked my dadgum wallet outta my ass when you hit me.” He patted his backside for extra effect, though it was so flat I’m not sure how anything stayed in his pockets for long.
I ordered the ice cream and paid without really doing any of it. I was not in the truck—not really. I was back in the road, back in the bar, back at the graveyard.
When I handed him the cone, the man’s eyes twinkled with a delight far younger than I thought him capable of. For a single instant, I could see the father behind the grandfather, the son behind the father, the boy behind the son, the child in the road…
“Where to now?”
“That parking spot right there,” he said, pointing to the spot nearest the DQ sign. I touched the wheel but didn’t turn it. “Don’t even think about the hospital.”
I parked without another word. The man dug into his soft serve, grunting happily, covered in so much blood that my head swam in the smell of it. It burned my eyes and nostrils and brain, every breath deep as a cut.
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“What are you crying for?”
“You… there’s so much blood.”
“You think this is a lot?” He barked out a laugh. “Shit, kid, you haven’t seen anything.”
Two tears rolled down my cheeks, mourning the man I’d been an hour ago, a year ago.
“Aw, quit your crying. Here. Have a lick. It’ll make you feel better. Always works for me.” He waved his cone in the air, dripping soft serve onto my center console.
“I’m okay.”
“Clearly you ain’t, and I’m not asking.”
I took a polite, awkward lick of his cone. The soft serve was so sweet that my eyes welled with a fresh wave of tears. Blushing, I handed the cone back and looked out the window, watching moths swarm their almighty cone.
The old man dragged in a deep, steady breath; I heard music in his throat.
“Daddy used to take me here when I was in grade school. Every Friday, when he got paid, we’d get ourselves soft serve cones. Felt like kings of the world. We used to park in this spot. ’Course, he drove an Impala. You could take the top down, if you wanted, early in the mornin’ before the sun got too sharp,” he said. He looked at me sideways. “You got a daddy?”
I nodded.
“You still talk to him?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
I shifted my weight in my seat.
“Um… It’s complicated.”
The man fixed me with a look so dry it could have evaporated the very water from my blood. “You hit me with your goddamn Silverado. We’re beyond complicated.” Then, kindly, “Want another lick?”
“Sure.” I took a bigger lick this time, snagging a sliver of chocolate.
“Why don’t you talk? He’s around, ain’t he?”
I curled my hands around the steering wheel, as if to drive myself far away from the old man and our conversation.
“Yeah. Yeah, he is, but… my brother died. In January. And we haven’t really been able to… talk about it. Or anything else, really. Not since it happened.”
The last phone call I had with Dad was in March. Now, two weeks from Halloween, the silence between us was louder than ever. Sure, he didn’t call, but neither did I. We blamed each other, I think.
“You got a wife to talk to? Girlfriend?” the man tried.
“She left.”
My fault, of course. I wasn’t good for anything after the funeral. Not working, not driving, not cooking, not reading, not talking. When she lay down at night and felt for me in the dark, I played the part of pillows. Unmoving. Unresponsive. Cold. For five months, she practically lived with a ghost—or maybe just a loser—until she didn’t.
“How’d your brother pass?”
I swallowed, preparing to deliver the short, matter-of-fact answer that was so simple and yet so difficult to say. I don’t know how he did it; hell, I can hardly bring myself to say it. Some things must never get easier, no matter how many times people ask.
“He shot himself,” I whispered. I sounded very small. I felt very small, like a body or baby curled up in the road, wishing for a blanket and crying, crying, crying.
“What was your brother’s name?”
“Ray.”
Ray was tall and funny and shy and smart. He used to eat his cereal without milk and hated mint toothpaste. Didn’t care for sports but loved to dance, to read, to laugh. A good person. Better than any of us were. If the roles were reversed, he would be calling Dad every day of the week. He wouldn’t point fingers. He wouldn’t go cold and give up.
And yet…
“How old was he?”
“Thirty-two.”
He did give up.
“I’m so sorry,” the man said, and I could tell he meant it more than words. I only nodded, my throat too tight for a thank-you. He sighed and settled deeper into his seat, as if preparing for a long drive. We didn’t say anything for a while after that, passing the cone back and forth until it was gone. Even then, we stayed put, dappled by the shadows of moths worshipping their saving grace, their neon cone.
“You know, son, it’s been thirty-seven years since I’ve seen my daddy. Thirty-seven years, can you believe that? Some days, I sorta feel like… like a kid lost in a big supermarket, not knowing where the hell my daddy went or how he disappeared so suddenly, wonderin’ who all these people around me now are and why I can’t seem to ask ’em for help…” He trailed off, lost too far down Memory Lane for me to follow. But I could follow the feeling. I knew its name. Crowded loneliness. That’s my name, that’s my life— aisles full of nothing I need and no one I know.
The man’s eyes shone gold with neon.
“But things don’t have to be that way.”
“I know,” I said automatically. I said it a lot in the wake of Ray’s death. By now, “I know” was nothing short of instinct, a natural jerk of my knee to your pitying hammer. It wasn’t your fault. I know. He loved you. Yep. Know that too. Don’t give up. Sure. Don’t blame yourself. Don’t make me laugh.
“Do you really?” the man asked. I nodded.
“Good. Let’s go,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder as fathers and football coaches love to do, then hacked enough to uproot a lung.
“Let’s go? Where? The—”
“Not the goddamn hospital,” he wheezed, sticking a finger as gnarled as dead wood in my face. “We’re going to your dad’s.”
“What?” A laugh escaped my throat; it knew to get out while it still could. “No.”
“Yes. You have to fix this. Now.” He nodded to the road. “Come on. You know the way home.”
And because I knew he was right as much as I knew I missed my father, I put the car in reverse and headed back down the road to disaster. I did not turn on the radio. I did not speed. I let the night sing and opened my ears to God.
❧
“So what were you doing?” I finally asked the man.
“Huh?”
“On the road. What were you doing? You weren’t waiting for me, were you?” As stupid as it was, I had to ask. I had to know.
“I was crossing it.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“My mailbox is on the other side. I forgot to check it this afternoon,” he said simply.
“Do you want us to go by and check it?”
“If it’s not too far out of the way.”
It didn’t take five minutes, maybe not even four, before we were back. I spotted the mailbox, crooked and eerie as a hag on the side of the road, and eased off the gas.
“We’re almost there. But after this, we have got to go to a hospital. Okay?”
The man didn’t respond, probably too pissed or stubborn to agree. Irritation pricked me like a thorn.
“Okay?” I repeated, glancing over at him.
I wish he were pissed; I wish he were stubborn. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t listening, his head lolled over the seat belt like a doll’s. A bolt of fear struck me.
“Shit. Hey. Hey. Wake up.” I grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. His sleeve was wet and warm with blood. “Damn it, say something! Don’t die on me! Come on. Please. Please!”
He lifted his head just barely, a flower taking its final drink of sun before succumbing to long and cold November.
“Punch it, Margaret.”
A final, rattling breath of music with no melody.
Then he was gone.
I pulled over again and got out of the truck, dazed as a drunk. The hospital was on the other end of town and utterly useless. The man was dead and warm in my passenger seat. My father’s place was four miles away and too far. Even if I crawled, I’d never make it.
I vomited right there in the road, splattering my shoes with beer and soft serve. Without thinking, I ripped my phone from its pocket and punched in my dad’s number from memory, the way I used to as a kid.
He picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?”
My cell phone was heavy in my hand, like a brick. I imagined the damage I could do with it if only I had somewhere to throw it, or what I might build in better circumstances.
“Are you there? Where are you?”
I checked the mailbox. It was empty. No point in crossing the road at all. No point in dying, or speeding, or drinking, or crying. The mailbox was still empty, my brother was too sad for words, my wife is not my wife, the man was still dead, and everything, everything, was my fault. I sank to the grass and hugged my knees to my chest. It was dark and late and lonely. Instinctively, I reached to my left for pillows, for her. My hand found the man’s wallet instead. The leather was smooth and thin from years of use. It was soft as skin and close enough. I caressed it absentmindedly.
Dad’s voice softened.
“It’s after twelve; the least you could do is talk to me,” he said, then asked where I was, though he already knew—ever since Ray shot himself, Dad has tracked my phone’s location like parents do their teenagers. He worries, I know. Shit, I do, too. Everything considered, we should all worry for one another more; maybe it would be enough.
I flipped open the man’s wallet and tugged out his driver’s license.
The sky must have opened up.
My father spoke, asked me questions, repeated himself. I could not answer him or listen or do a damn thing, my ears closing up like fists and my phone lost to the grass. Slowly but surely, like Judas to the tree, I walked to the middle of the road and sat down, tears as guilty as silver streaming down my face.
“I’m coming to get you, okay? I’m coming.”
He had my name. Not the same middle name, or even the same last name, but our first names were the same.
David.
In that way, we too must be the same—David and I. And though we started very differently, perhaps we strangers will end as altogether the same man. Perhaps I would have been him, if given more time.
Headlights swing around the corner, tires pounding fast and hard as hooves on the road.
I am at the Dairy Queen, missing my father and crying into soft serve so sweet I could die. I am waiting in the road. I am dead in the ditch. I am weeping and wondering why I didn’t ask.
I, David.
Jolene Reed is a junior at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, pursuing a degree in Creative Writing. She is the author of historical fiction novels Red, White, and Bleeding and Iced Milk, along with the children’s book Fitzgerald. Her poetry has appeared in HUMID and is forthcoming in Applause. Jolene loves vintage fashion, music, and gas pumps. When she is not writing or attending class, she enjoys drinking coffee and spending time with friends. You can follow her on Instagram at @authorjolenereed for announcements, upcoming events, and all things books.
