l i f e
poetry burning
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christopher@30seconds.org
"Wha..."
"Stop the fucking car! Now!"
He grabbed the wheel at the top and pulled sharply to the right. I tried to work the clutch and break, but with my hands ripped free and half my control gone, nothing felt right. Then I remembered...emergency break. I reached under his arms and pulled. I pulled hard. The car was out of control already, but we swung around and the faint smell of burnt rubber wafted through the windows, mixed with the dogwoods, and fresh cut grass.
We sat sideways, the motor still idling. I threw up my arms and turned to face him but he was already out of the car. The door buzzed and I shut off the key.
"Shit."
What else to say. We we're sitting ducks for the cops. Sideways in the middle of a residential street; skidmarks thirty yards long. What the hell were we doing? What was he doing?
I killed the lights and as the headlamps tucked themselves back into the body of the car I lit a cigarette. The digital clock on the dash read 3:00 A.M. I kicked open the door and stood up, taking in the surroundings. Pellyn Wood. Not bad. Fairly low key. Houses far off the road. No lights coming on. Good. Okay. Ditches. We missed the ditches. Car...okay.
He was pacing back and forth to the left and behind the trunk. I saw his cig bobbing up and down with his long, bouncing stride. I could always tell in a group where Scott was. His walk was unmistakable. Straight out of Monty Python. Well, not quite, but close. Bastard. What was he thinking.
"Got to get rid of them man."
"What?"
"The work, no good. Gotta go."
I played dumb and replied, "What work?" Knowing full well he was talking about the stack of papers in my car.
He whirled around and his fist left a sizable dent in my trunk, "This fucking work! The fucking work right in here! Right...under...this...lid." He hit it harder with each word and a smile spread across his face. He grew soft. I could tell he was near the end. "Right in here man" And he tapped the lid softly with his index finger, taking a drink with his free hand. For the first time I noticed he still had a beer and I realized I wanted one too.
I wanted a beer and he wanted the work. They were both in the same place. I stood there thinking. I had to give Scott the benefit of the doubt. Things weren't going well for him lately. I knew that. Things weren't going too well for many of us. This tightly knit group. Who were we kidding. A bunch of kids. Drunk kids. All the time since the wreck. All the time.
But the work. Scott and I'd gotten the work done. Sized it all up. Put perspective on the situation. Adjusted it until it made since to us. We'd given the pain a rhyme and meter. We'd composed. Night after night we shot pool at the club down the road in Mattews. Game after game. The songs in the jukebox played on and we sank ball after ball until the colors blurred and finally the doors closed.
"Here."
I opened the trunk. The papers lay spread in the shape of our skid. The outline of a half-moon. An oriental fan. Of the couple beers left, one was leaking from where it hit the jack. I grabbed the other as Scott swept up the papers like a deck of cards. He closed the trunk and evened them up on the lid. He straightened the creases where he could, pausing at certain pieces.
"You know..."
"Don't," he said, and continued.
I have no idea what he felt. I never asked, but In one final motion, as I drank my beer and watched, Scott lit fire to our work. Together we stood there while it burned. The car, a crazy sideways, both doors ajar. In a few minutes there was nothing left to tell the world of the wreck, our thoughts, and our feelings.
Nothing left at all, but a pile of ash and a still summer night...
goodnight 4.14.98
