Thu, 19 May 2005

The God, Whose Arms Are Bent In The Wind
The child has moved its fingers far from each other, to spread the hand out wide, to press against the glass, to watch the frost evaporate from the warmth of the skin, to form a hole to see through, to watch through the snow to the driveway, to see the arrival of the van, to feel the body stop being tense, to feel the knots in the stomach release, to see the doors of the van open, to see the lights in the kitchen turn on, to feel the body turning away, away from the window, as the waiting had finally ended.

There were these kids in the neighborhood and I guess they were mostly okay kids, they were all depressed like kids are, and they had all the stupid little ritual in-jokes kids do, and they hung out at the graveyard, and that’s all fine, I mean, these are kids. Only so somebody was going around the graveyard and breaking headstones. And so everybody thought, you know, these kids, and. Okay, so this is right after Diana. So I was you remember how I was just all the time I would just sit there. So I was sure they were gonna get at her grave, so. God. So I got this gun.

The weatherman had been at his job for thirty-nine years, same suits his wife bought him when he got the job, one of those anchors you don’t really notice, something that shouldn’t ever change. But sometimes they’d cut to him and he’d just stare into the camera, just for a second or so, so you’d never even notice until you thought back on it later, when the gaps grew longer, and weird little slips in his speech would pop up, he started comparing stormfronts to armies, armies gathering on the horizon, and he started ending his report with “so please, be careful today”, until the anchorpeople started breaking character, confused. The last day he predicted a shower of roses would blanket the earth, and the kingdom of heaven would be at hand. Then he took off his mic and walked off camera. That’s the last I ever heard of it.

Nobody ever called her Sheryl. Most people did not know her name was Sheryl until they saw it on the news. There was a picture of her standing in front of a roadside marker, the spot where the first settlement west of the Mississippi River once stood. She’s looking to her left, at something not visible in the picture, something the other two girls in the picture haven’t noticed. The expression on her face is hard to make out on the television screen. The flicker of the VCR pause as it inches the tape forward further blurs the image. If you get up close to the screen, your face against the glass, the feel of the static on your skin, you can almost see it, almost figure it out.

When I worked at the rest stop, this kid and his parents stopped to use the bathroom and dart off. The kid forgot his wallet in the bathroom. I picked it up when I went in to clean, and inside there were two crisp new five dollar bills and a business card he cut out of construction paper. I walked around for half an hour, looking for the family, but they were long gone. An hour later, the kid walks up to me and asked me, very timidly, if I had seen a wallet somewhere. I went to the office, got it, and gave it to him, and he said thank you, and ran off. That’s what I was doing when it happened.
(12:06.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #