Friday, May 20, 2005
Roadside Junker
Red Monte Carlo – 1976. Paint: fading. Tires: mismatched. Windshield: dirty. It’s sitting on the shoulder next to five lanes of slow-moving traffic in the smog-filtered afternoon light.
* Mira cabron this pendejo of a car is dead again and I’m out of baling wire to pull it back together. I’d like to lie down and sleep right here; my back is killing me after picking all those strawberries today. But if I stay here I won’t make a dollar for my own supper, much less a little more to send to mi familia - especially if la policia decide to lend me a hand and ask for my papers. I’ve got to get to Watsonville by tomorrow morning or I miss the lettuce harvest. Ay, maybe it’s better to walk out in the open air than to spend the weekend with la migra on a bus to Michoacan. I’ll give it five more minutes to start on its own – then I’m going to have to start walking… again….
* This is a total buzzkill. Total. Buzzkill. I can’t believe this happened here. This place is so totally bogus. It’s like there’s nothing here but cars and pavement. And garbage. Oh hey check out the grooves in the concrete, it’s like you ran a comb through it. That’s pretty cool. Oh! There’s half a bag of funyuns in the back. Awesome. I wish I had a soda. Oh, yeah, I got one here. Still cold. Whoa. That’s a lot of traffic. It kind of freaks me out – all the zombies in their zombieboxes. Heh. Zombieboxes. I like that. Oh! Man! What freeway is this, anyway?
* Keep sleeping, keep sleeping, don’t wake up; I don’t have anything to feed you and you’re so peaceful when you sleep… I should have known his piece-of-shit car wouldn’t be able to handle a little traffic, it’s the same with everything about him; you ask for anything and it all goes to hell.... I just need to get to a bus station, I’m sure I could take it from there, but now here on this concrete ribbon I can’t do anything about anything.... What the hell happened to me, how did I let this happen, and now a baby to protect too, but maybe she’s why I’m here now instead of sitting in that stale room waiting for him to get back to hurting me. I can’t let that happen anymore. Maybe I can flag someone down. Maybe they’ll have something I can feed her. She’s so tiny. She doesn’t need much.
* Oh yes. I’ve been here before. Was that, what, fifteen years ago? Oh hell, no. That must have been 1957. That’s nearly half a century. Fifteen, fifty, hard to tell sometimes.... But the car was noisy then, all those boys laughing and fighting over who got in front with me, and I sat so tall and pretty and I let’em fight and the sun crept along just like it’s doing now.... I can even almost hear them if I listen – except it’s really just the sound of cars rolling past so slow. Cars. All those people. I can see their faces, but they can’t see mine. I’m invisible now. Almost gone altogether. This old car is on its last gasp. And when it goes, well, how far behind can I be? I might as well just stay here, then, till it’s all over. Who’d even notice. Who’d even notice.
* Oh god. god god god. What the hell is that? I can smell it. Blood? Blood! The engine bleeds. Dammit! This was perfect. Now it’s ruined. I know who, too! Look! They didn’t expect me to notice it, but they don’t think fast enough. Fast cars – slow thinkers; dead car, fast – death, car, thought, heartpulse racing, the light is too much, those cars are a tidal wave, crashing down and lapping at my feet till my bones melt and my flesh burns and like hell I’m sitting here in this steel coffin till they come back up searching for me – I may be tender and juicy but I’m not an idiot – I can protect myself – better start now – if I’m sweating this hard it must be a war, and I never lose a war, time to take it to those wolves and those sheep and guhhhhh… mmm… devils.... Take the devil and leave the car – if I can stand in the lane they’ll stop for me, but my legs! are stolen....
The Monte Carlo disappears in your rearview mirror. No one got out of it. You barely even noticed it was there.
