Hopping Home with Ed and Jim

The afternoon was normal. I sat atop the metal ladder and chatted with Jim over the top of the aluminum shelving between aisles twenty-three and twenty-four. I turned away from Jim for a second to sneeze. I wiped my nose with the bottom of my Centre Megamart apron. I looked down at aisle twenty-three. I have been fronting premade pie crusts for an absurd amount of my life, I thought. "No, I'm working a double this weekend. I don't think I'll get out in time." Jim looked disappointed. "I guess I could try to switch with someone." Jim looked up. "I'll let you know." I had been a lousy gambler all my life. The carnival was in town, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I never asked anyone to switch, and I missed Jim's party.

After my double I went out to my lonely car in the lonely parking lot under the tall white lightpost. I sat on the hood of my red clunker, shoulders surrendering inward, neck stretched low. I looked down at my stupid shoes. What kind, what symptom of a, where should the...I straightened my back, trying to crack the tension out of it. I leaned back slowly and finally laid down completely, legs dangling off the side of the Dodge.

Bells rang and some old woman answered. She said, "won't it stop?" The next and last stop on this train is...warm and inviting, who could refuse? The bells were counting down the ties in a cord attached to a hulking steel orb cast in deep black. The ties slid down and down until eventually, a yellow-caped hero revealed himself. It was this kind of eventuality that slowed progress so. It was this anticipation that momentum consumed and languished therein. And I stirred and stirred this ingenious machine's tanktop - but it was weak and lethargic and refused the warm air.

It was this cartoon scenery that called us all back. It was this nursery tale that swatted and gashed us, our faces mangled and throats sore. Against an ancient brick wall the black orb pounded, weakly at first and more weakly thereafter. There are carpets of course and such traditions well-noticed. A fire on the crossties shimmered in the rain. We doubted so much and counted our chances, in a redrock hotel on the Utah frontier. A shadow moved up and shifted in the crackway, the door was less open than closed.

Anticipation personified as a blackboard under fire by an impotent brainstorm of timid white chalk. The blackness retreated as the scrawling lay siege, propped up by the classics, bold-face texts and maybe six or seven magazines. Its hand was shaky and it's sketches suffered, but more directly, the board grew unwieldy - and what remained, of course, was misdirected passion, aimed anywhere but the board — that's generous — aimed away from the board. Hope grew out of this meaningless fog, it was the hope for a cleaning, a fresh start, more daylight, shifted responsibilities, crafty excuses, all things hardly head-on.

When the board cleared up and the blackness returned, the walls eroded and deposits formed. It was a false sense of security, indeed, a trap. There will never be order when the clean slate is restored. May the texts be erased and bold-faces scorned, may the periodicals be shredded and foundation fall. I want to peel off this hood and build a new engine, I thought, but I got in my car and drove straight home.