I woke up with a mouth full of blood. Lying on my side, the hard curb cutting into my hip. I could feel my watch was gone, my wallet. The sons of bitches even took my shoes.
My fault. Everybody told me that District 2 is the most dangerous section of Ho Chi Minh City, that I should stay away from it. But that was where I had to go, because that was where he was.
I still had the postcard he sent Mom in my pocket. At least they had left me that.
I had to find out for myself.
Some truckers are psychopaths. Not in the cut-off-your-arms-and-leave-you-in-the-desert way. That’s just hitchhiker lore, same as the ghost rider and all that shit. No, I mean a guy that picks you up and then holds you captive for six hundred miles while he does a number on you, asks insinuating questions, plays good cop and bad cop at the same time. By the time we rolled into Paterson I was in tears. He’d just pulled his rig into the parking lot when I bolted into the diner and locked myself in the bathroom. I avoided looking in the mirror. Damn him.
The blizzard hit before we could get to Badger Bob’s cabin. The bullet in Roy’s leg pained him, but the cold soon took care of that, the blood freezing his trousers to the saddle so he couldn’t fall out.
Lord, it was cold. The north wind blew down that long plain with never a tree nor hill to stop it, drifts piled high as your shoulder. We was all snowblind by the third day and might have missed the cabin altogether had not Badger Bob seen us coming and fired his rifle.
He was especially happy to see our horses.
Dearest Omari,
This is not the New York our father spoke of. Many things he told us have proven to be true, but he was wrong about the city itself. He attributed his success here to hard work and what I will call moral authority, that feeling that he would not be denied.
I have brought both to my work here, but it has not helped. It is a cold place, uncaring. How can one man make an impression when there are thousands standing behind him, waiting to take his place?
Even the boldest action will not pierce the indifference.
So, like, you won’t believe this shit. Seriously. My mom found a joint in my bag. It wasn’t even mine. Sufjan asked me to hold it for him. Anyway, she had a total meltdown. Said I was “on drugs” and a bunch of other retarded bullshit. We got into it, and I went to my room.
Yesterday morning I got woken up by these two dudes in khaki who shoved me in a van and drove me to this godforsaken wasteland. They wouldn’t tell me anything.
So I am stranded here for the duration. Outward Bound.
Fuck my life. Seriously.
Every bridge and castle has the same story of some luckless sod buried in the pilings, having fallen in during construction or otherwise come to harm.
We prefer to believe that places are haunted. It’s better than the alternative, which is that when we die we are simply gone forever and before too much time has passed will be forgotten by everyone.
Even we masons are not immune, for though we build monuments of eternal stone we become disconnected from them in the long chain of time. Our names are never spoken, our stories never heard.
Better a ghost, then.
Günter took his cello case and walked up the stairs into a city he did not recognize, a city no more. The air raid sirens had begin screaming late the previous afternoon, and he had dutifully gone down to the cellar to await the all clear as he had many times before. This time it never sounded.
The cold air smelled of burned meat, acrid wood, powdered plaster. No buildings remained standing. The Frauenkirche was gone, the Royal Library, the Kirchewald Apartments.
In the streets lay blackened logs. He could see they’d once been people.
Mozart’s Requiem, he thought. Perfect.
The Colonel sat astride his mare at the hill’s crest, his spyglass winking in the morning sun.
“That rooftop, there,” he said to his adjutant. “The colorful one. You know about that?”
“Ah yes,” said the young man. “It is a very old tradition in this valley. It is said that the colors serve as a reminder to the villagers.”
“A reminder of what?”
“In winter, that spring will come. In summer, that we should appreciate God’s gifts as they are given. It gives solace to all who look upon it. ”
“Makes a splendid target, anyway. Bring up the artillery.”
I made the run from Tucson to Tucumcari in six hours, pushing my gauges to make up for lost time. Least that’s what I told myself. Truth is I just like going. I live for the run of it. You set me down, I’m nothing but itch, like a greyhound you hold by the collar. I don’t answer to nobody, not even the dispatch. Oh, I get along with them. You got to, you want to work. But I know when I sign off that they are sitting chained to a chair somehwere and I am out here, rolling on.
Life was hard then. Winters came just after Halloween and stayed until almost Easter. Summertime there was more work than ten men could do, but winters were filled with nothing but empty hours. The men could get away to the woodshed where they kept their whiskey, but a woman was just plain stuck. Nothing to eat but root vegetables and salt meat, children always on your nerves.
It’s no wonder she went crazy, you ask me. They came and locked her up in the county farm for the rest of her life. After the funerals, they tore the house down.