| 
Are we allowed to put short stories up here? I hope so. Well, this story here won second place in a short story contest. The guy who beat me and I are thinking of starting our own mini-zine. Fun times. Enjoy.
Zero Degrees of Separation
It was a Thursday night in the spring. I had just stumbled out of the car and gained balance on the nearby pavement. My friends had gone in to pay for gas, but I didn't feel like walking inside of the conveiance store with them. The thick, bullet-proof glass is too depressing, isolating the cashier from any human contact. The security cameras are disheartening as well, "disheartening" being true in the purest sense. The mechanical eye which whirs and oscelates inside of a metal skeleton does not embody a heart, only steel gears and wires, peering down on wary customers behind an oval, mirror-like riot-gear shield. And so, waiting patiently for my comrades, I sat with burning eyes, tired and ragged, on the sidewalk which, due to the county officials' ability to color inside the lines, linked directly to the roadway.
As I sat there, I turned to view my surroundings. The streets were clear and vacant, no cars to be seen, and the landscape boasted little of any trees or foliage. And then, cradled in the gutter, I saw a plastic soda bottle, obviously Pepsi. The streetlight above rained down light upon it, its shadow stretching so small in the night, seeming so insignificant in value to anything or anyone. Its story then struck me right there. BULLSEYE! Like an arrow through the heart. I saw a sweet sincerity and holiness in that mass of plastic and I could only guess at the adventures that occurred in its little litter life.
Imagine the classic Midwestern scene, a complete embodiment of NOWHERE, U.S.A. Miles and miles of empty road stretch on and on with a crazy serpentine will to see how far it can go before eventually dropping dead from sheer exhaustion. Small tuffs of wild grass grow everywhere and the towns lie in a serene duldrum, the winds blowing with leisure and sloth. The origin point lies at a public reststop on Route Who-Knows-Where? To turn left is to view scattered puffs of weeds and other vague foliage which normal folk remember by sight and experience while botanists remember through latin definitions and long caffeine-fueld nights of study. To turn right is to view the same, the ultimate simularities, which repeat over and over in this uneventful area of calm.
The restroom is small by any standards and made of the darkest, oil-stained concrete. The floor, which has been icy cold for decades, is speckled with spit-out gum of vagrants and passerbys, eventually tatooed in gunk by the elements. A long, almost unbearably long stretch of space lies between the two choices of rest, and in the center of this stretch is a soda vending machine. It is plugged into the buzzing electricity outlet which has escaped from the murky concrete for air. Its outward signs show pure commercial optimism and satisfaction, an image of a cold drink with glistening condensation waters sweating down the plastic label on its side. The brand name of the drink is written in fancy cursive created by a team of advertising moguls somewhere where the wild things roam and loom in tall skyscrapers, skykickers, skypunchers and skykissers. This vending machine glows with a happy face straight from manufactured bliss, which is strange and foreign to the apathetic and neutral workings of nature, and there is no one to see it for miles around. The only living objects to take daily notice of it now lie dead in pools of grease and gunk that inhabit the building, mosquito legs and spider hair trapped in their worshipping stance of the heavenly glowing obelisk. There is nothing more than this.
A boy, a field worker, 17 years old, thirsty after a long day's work, stands in the center of the street, facing the old and abandoned rest area. In that moment, in the still night, he is the nexus of this tiny world, but to him he sees only a vending machine, only a rest stop. He steps up to the machine with dry lips, fumbling in his pockets for change. In the corner of his eye he can see markings on the wall. They are rare artifacts of the rest stop, and its only written history. What's seen there are handprints and scribbled messages of those who have visited this place in the past. These handprints, created by grease, grime, dirt, soot, ash, gook, or what have you, are tiny storybooks which are as of much importance as the writings of the most advanced of civilizations. The way that DNA leaves information about genetics, handprints leave information about how a person lived. These hands that have created these imprints each could tell of an infinite amount of adventures which could only be guessed and pondered at for eons. These hands have worked in fields, worked in factories, thrown baseballs, driven cars, picked flowers, thrown baseballs, broken glass, washed dishes, pummeled heads, picked up children, lit cigarettes, caressed shot glasses, donated at church, loved their neighbor, and have given high fives. These hands are sacred and holy in the way that all rare and unwanted things are. The marks that have been left are barely noticable, driven deep into the dark sepruchal walls by the ware of time. The boy does not notice these things, these miniscule majesties. All he sees is grime on the wall. All he wants is a drink.
And finally his hands clasp a huddled mass of quarters which he slowly tips into the coin slot. Calloused fingers press the desired button and the bottle comes clanking down, swift and fast, like a guillotine blade.
"Hey! Jim!" He turns around to see his friends calling him from the window of their pick-up truck. "Hurry up! Let's get a move on!" He quickly grabs the bottle, the nerves in his palm jumping from the coldness, and climbs into the bed with rusted corners that are so brittle and so weak (Oh Time! Must your dog-toothed smile gnaw at everything you see?). The truck's motor slowly turns and turns and moves and groans until it creeps onward. As the trees begin to blur from the speed, the boy opens the cap, the bottle releasing a small sigh of fizz, and then plunges the cool soda into his scratchy throat. It fills and soothes every crevice and he is happy. He holds the plastic bottle with both hands around its girth and stares up at the sky. The moon hangs like a crooked painting, no cloudy vapors around to shroud it from anything. It shines so bright unto all underneath it, and the boy cannot help but stare at it with gleaming eyes. This moon which acts as a lonely witness to all the dark-night happenings and feelings looms gigantic and legendary. This same moon that stares wide-eyed upon the wide-eyed boy is the same moon that looks upon all the French beaches that he will never see. This is the same moon that hangs over cats in cardboard alleyways. This is the same moon that, unfortunately, even with the power to tug all the oceans in one triumphant motion, tried and failed a tug at the hem of Christ (thus ensuring its eternally pale appearance). It is the same moon that peers down over the men in suits with cellphones (the boy never dreaming of needing one) who eat dog-eat-dog for lunch and drink martinis at expensive clubs. They do not see the moon. All they see is letters, bold and tall, that read "PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!" The boy has no money to put anywhere, and his mouth is full of teeth and cola and saliva. There is nothing more than that.
And the boy, for one moment, sees past his dull eyes and sees the entire scene around him. The treetops become frames that throw glorious balls of praise skywards. The sky turns into a blank and shining canvas and the wind whistles and rushes by at immeasurable speeds. And as the cosmos trembles and forms an awesome crescendo, the omnipresent moon opens itself up in one slow, graceful movement. He sees it. He sees the pupil of the moon which does not blink but stares deep, deep into him. The void inside of it makes his bones creak and shake like Hiroshima, making him snap his teeth in grim anticipation. And then it, the moment, is over. He looks down and the bottle is gone. He had dropped it and now it lies far off in the distance, dull and trampled. He does not see this. All he sees is the lines of the road, endlessly blurring into one. There is nothing more. He tips his cap over his eyes, dirt caked in the corners, and sleeps.
A cold wind blows and I shiver a bit, clutching my shoudlers. The street light flickers and the bottle looks upward at the sky, the electrical light creating a shining aura around it. For an instant I feel it. It permeates me, this feeling of unity, of comradery, of connection to all things. It is a warm awe that consists of something larger than anything ever imagined. It testifies that everything is holy and pure, every person and every piece of trash, and all their stories are connected together with tiny golden strings of divinity. I finally realized that there is only zero degrees of separation and I should never let anyone tell me otherwise.
"Hey!" I snap my head back, out of this vision. I see my friends, all smiles, waving at me as I stand on the cracked sidewalk. "Let's go!" I join them and together we leave, cozy and sleepy-eyed in the clear spring night.
"If home is where the heart is, then I got evicted this week (Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains)"
|
