2.
 Tom was hungry and he couldn't see and the old station wagon wouldn't go any faster. Not only that, but he was broke. His stomach kept signaling that he was hungry. He felt light-headed, and wasn't sure if it was fumes leaking around the manifold through the rusty floor into the cab, or if it was hunger. How long since he'd eaten? That would be the cellophane-wrapped cupcakes yesterday, cheap off-brand.
Near Albuquerque, late in the afternoon, he pulled over to count his change. With the engine off, he felt almost restful. The sun shone through the dirty windshield and laid its glow like a yellow drug in the back seat over Tom's neatly folded clothes and boxed belongings. He didn't have many places to look—the ashtray (he didn't smoke), the cigar box on the rear floor among the paperbacks, the pockets of his other jeans, the breast pocket on his flannel windbreaker. Two bucks. He'd parked the car on a hill in case it wouldn't start. Then he could roll it down and jump-start it in second gear. Provided nobody pulled in front of him. Everything was difficult. Why was life this way? Gravity kept you from flying off into space, he supposed, but it made things fall down. It helped you start your car, but if someone pulled in front of you as you rolled downhill, you had to jam on your brakes and then you were stuck with no place to roll, no way to build new momentum. Two bucks and thirty two cents. That was every penny.
He sat back and drew a deep breath. Being hungry made you tired. He'd just outrun a terrific storm that had swept down from the Rockies, moving east toward the Mississippi Delta like a mountain range of smoky gray air. Like a burning building, but wet instead. Cold. Dismal. Hard to drive in. No wonder he was tired. You had to sit hunched, squinting, blinded by gusts of rain breaking on your windshield. The wipers, on max, could only provide glimpses. If you were broke, or hard-pressed, or just plain loved the feel of roads passing under your car, you kept moving. It was a great country, an immense country. You kept driving, possessed by a burning urgency, with the black rainsqualls at your back and the water hammering in your face. It was like being a mile underwater. It weighed down on your spirit like a mile of ocean water. It sure made you tired. Made your legs tense, your back sore, your shoulder ache. No wonder he felt this way.
He couldn't remember if he'd ever been in Albuquerque. He had maps in the car and he'd study them tomorrow. Yawning, he walked to the corner and surveyed his world. At least he was warm, for now. It was good to stretch his legs. Cold, though. He shivered. And he smelled snow in the air. The sky looked like gray paste. A couple of little grammar school girls waited at the light on the other side. For a moment, it was like, is this it? Is this the whole world? The universe? Life? At one time I was a child and waited at a corner for the light to change. The red hand winked away, replaced by the little white man. Now I am on the other side of the street, crossing the other way. The girls were in no hurry, chattering, shifting their heavy school bags from one shoulder to the other. What did they see in him? A thin, unshaven man, in his 30's, but he probably looked older, in need of a bath.
In the corner store he bought a carton of milk and a plastic-wrapped loaf of sandwich bread, day old and on sale. He had a few coins left and, on a whim, bought a packet of licorice gum. For old times' sake.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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