Every place felt like the last place. The last place I'd want to end up. The last place I'd ever see. The end of history. The interminable now after which there was nothing and before which there were dreams. I was awake today, had been asleep yesterday, and would be dead tomorrow. And I mean, hooray, right?
Hooray if that were actually the case, but somehow it was always today. They promised me tomorrow. They wrote it on the goddamn calendar. But I went to sleep like a kiddo waiting for Santy Claus - and woke up today. Still today. Same old truck in my driveway. Same old freezer of instant burritos. Same empty pack of cigs on the nightstand. Same nightstand, same bed, same cursed body, the only part of my life that can measure the passage of time. Like it had run off into the future just to get older, then travelled back in time to hang with me and my brain again.
where it was always
goddamn
today.
today.
today
today
today
today
That's what the alarm says before I can shut it up. And you know what today means. It means we're driving the truck. Yeap, let's go drive the truck. Let's go raid the burrito stock. Let's go waste today on the edge of a lost tomorrow. Maybe it'll be different, right? Nah.
Aaaaanyway....so what's your story? Don't wanna talk, huh? I mean, that's fine, I can ramble on if I must. If you twist my arm.
Let's talk about burritos. The sausage ones are decent, but bacon and cheese is the best. Yes, I know it's not a goddamn burrito, but that's what it says on the package and I don't decide what they decide to call it. It's good, whaddaya want from me? Pop that piece of shit in the microwave for like 30 seconds and it's the best part of the day, right at the very start if it weren't for the fact that I'm sick to death of that garbage. But gotta eat just like getting out of bed, none of what I will describe to you would be classified as a voluntary act if I'm being honest, which I will be cause that's really the goal here. You put one foot in front of the other because if you don't you might lie down on the ground instead, which is mostly fine except that someone's gonna happen along and kick you, or worse yet ask what's wrong. You keep placing your feet on the sidewalk like a little wind up toy because it's the only way to stop yourself from face-planting, same as you open and close the fridge as if part of an electric diorama so your stomach doesn't start yeling at the top of its lungs, bending and bleeding acid all over the place.
Anyway, I recommend a burrito in the morning. If you drive a truck you get hungry. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make any sense. All I do is sit in a chair, and I'm famished. I'll eat frozen burritos, or a bowl of ashes, so long as it keeps the furies away. And so long as they got bacon and cheese flavor. Yes, flavor. That ain't real bacon, I don't know what it is.
I'm standing in the driveway. The truck is in the driveway. Can you guess what's in the truck? I'll bet you can. Yeah, you got it. That's right. The driveway slopes down into the street. The street lies perpendicular to the driveway. The horizon lies perpendicular to the street, which makes it parallel to the driveway, I guess. The other side of the street slopes up into another driveway. If you were standing in that driveway, it would be sloping down, and mine would be the one sloping up. The road itself slopes both ways. That's so the rainwater ends up in the gutters. It's raining right now. Like, a good bit of rain, but highly atomized. Heavy but thin. Weighty and ballistic. It's a morning like yesterday evening, ashen clouds uniform in their usual formation. I grind a worn butt into the pavement with a rubber soul on an aging sneaker that looks like it could be made from my truck tires, in other words both are a mess. The driveway is so steep that I could tumble end over end if I just fell forward, gaining speed until my brains dashed out by the time I hit the curved bottom of the curb, assuming that was how I happened to land. The moon is still out, somehow underneath the clouds which doesn't make any sense but I don't want to question her in case she's listening.
And that's when I notice that I left the headlights on. They are still dimly glowing, and I can already tell the battery'll need a charge. Luckily, I got an old generator in the garage, so I set that up. This is definitely how I wanted to spend my morning. And you know I don't even know if that ain't true. Maybe this is a nice surprise if I could turn around and think of it that way. I mean, it's gonna make me late, so that's not great. But maybe being late is a nice surprise, too. Maybe next a jet engine could fall out of the sky and squish my head, wouldn't that be a nice little surprise. Anyhoo, the generator's generatin' and I've got a styrofoam cup of coffee sat on the flat bit of the engine, whatever that is. I just drive trucks, I don't work on them. They've got people who do that. Compartmentalize. Diversify. Devalue. Keep that shit in rotation.
I get a phone call and don't answer it. I know who it is already. I mean, I guess I could show YOU who it is, but then I'd have to answer the phone and I don't want to, so I guess you'll just have to guess, huh? I'm not supposed to tell you about the stuff that's not happening. I can tell you about the crow hopping across the crest of the street because that's happening. I can tell you he turns his head and fixes a black eye on me and there is something inside it, something almost glowing, and the eye is of a size that would allow me to reach my whole arm in and drag out that thing like dipping into an oil well, the cornea peeled back -- does a crow have a cornea? I don't know what it is, but it's there, and it is oh-so-familiar. But I won't tell you who was on the phone, because that ain't happening. Maybe if she calls back. Oh shit, you didn't hear that.
So the battery has batteried, the headlights are off and the day is still the same shade of night on account of the weather. But it's time to get moving. So the garage gets shut up, and I get shut up in the truck, and now I'm headed down the road.
There isn't much to be said for the outskirts. Truck stop donut shop pit stop pop and coffee soda sticking to the diner floors and shattered sidewalk all the way down off the highway and across the bridge into the city proper, where you could take the final ramp out of limbo if you had a reason to. I was headed around the proper, though, the truck route, the highway. I was headed from the Eastside to the Westside to make a dropoff and a pickup and then a dropoff and then a pickup and then another dropoff. On account of traffic, the best route is to go all the way around the city, and since whether dropping off or picking up, the route takes me to the opposite side, this means a full loop around the loop each time. I'd say it's like 9:30 now. So we'll drive in circles until about the next 9:30. And then we'll head home to the old pad and its burritos and stale air and time, and prepare for another day of circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. By god, the circles. How many styrofoam cups and cigarettes do I consume in a twelve-hour shift? I don't know, I've never bothered to count, probably would lack the mental capacity to do so. The circles are my mind entire. My mind is the highway. When I dream, if I dream, there is a wheel in my hand, and I am turning left, because the route goes counter-clockwise. I could go clockwise because it's all the same, but that is against regulations. I am always turning left. At the local bar in the other twelve hours, I lean off the right side of my stool because I am still turning left with a second set of phantom hands on a phantom wheel. And just like you did just now, some schmoe will ask me, "Hey, man. What're you doing there?" And I'll say, "I'm turning left dickhead. What's it to you?" I mean, I'd say that to a schmoe, but you don't look like one. I wouldn't be telling you all this if you did, right? Right. That's obvious.
So I manage to make it some distance through my 12 hour left turn before she calls again, and this time I answer the phone, because when you're driving a truck like this you have to answer the phone. That's a regulation, too. So I pick up the phone and say, "Hello?"
And she says, "What are you doing?"
And I say, "Considering that it's.......approximately 11:30, what do you think I'm doing?" And she hangs up and I feel bad, but really, I don't look at the receiver while driving, and I was kind of in boss-dispatch mode, you know? So I said what was on my head, and if she didn't like it, she'll figure it out on her own. What good will it do me worryin about what I said? Right?
I guess I've been talking for a while now, sorry about that. I may have got sidetracked on the topic of burritos. And something about a bird's eye. But trust me, I just remembered why I was telling this story, and we're not even there yet. This is important preamble. You can't just jump straight to the reason. We need the reason for the reason. And the reasons for those. We need to set things up. We need you to be me for a bit, and this is all, I'd say, in service of that. You've got to be me to understand the reason. Reasons for the things I do. In any case, I'll be right back, I gotta go you-know-where.
Aaaaalll right, where was I? I was talking about eyes, right? Black eyes. That was what she had, the eyes that followed me when the rest of her had melted. Polished orbs floating just over my head. They were brown, really, but you couldn't tell that, they were so dark that the iris and pupil were one, just a black orb, scrutinizing, tallying, keeping track of my mistakes as I suppose someone had to. Like the eyes of the truck cab, cause they have those too, you know? They watch you, they whirr and click and sometimes blink, and they total how many times YOU blink, or look away from the road, or nod off for a bit in the midst of your left turn. So today and every day for some time, I had at least two eyes watching me, following the movements of my fingers on the wheel in such a way that each bone of my hand had to operate independently of the rest, and they had to talk to each other to stay in sync, to keep the eyes happy.
Neither of these watchers had the glow, though, that was something else, something I felt I should know. If you've seen the glow, you'll know, and you'll wonder just like I did, why you recognize it, and from where. That day, its light could even distract me from the watchers for a few minutes, as I wondered over what to name its hue, whether it sparkled or shone, but most of all how and when and where I had seen it before. And how I could arrange to see it again.
Oh shit, that's right, I was supposed to tell you about her when she called, right? But I don't really need to. You've already guessed everything you need to know, and probably more that I couldn't tell you anyway. Let's just keep rolling, keep turning, eh? That's better for my own mental health, and probably yours as well.
I see that other fella had to turn in for the night, huh? Well, no big deal. You'll be the one who gets to dig into the meat of the tale.
But first, let's talk about my truck. As you may have heard, I'm no mechanic. I'm not going to be telling you all about horsepower and injection pumps or whatever garbage. I'm going to tell you the important stuff. Like how the steering wheel feels like the skin of a synthetic alligator. And how in the rain, there is no way you are keeping the fog off of that window glass no matter what combination of heat and A/C you throw at it. I'll tell you that almost right there next to the shifter is a lever that if you pull it, the whole trailer pops off and spills down the highway, crushing god knows how many commuters and setting off an alarm down at HQ somewhere so they can flip your killswitch if they think you've gone rogue.
I'd tell you that nothing aches quite like a leg on the gas pedal for twelve hours every day for a lifetime. It's an ache that sets off a special shade of blue in your cranium and I see it when I close my eyes. I'll tell you there's a particular radio station out there, the El Dorado of stations, audible only at a few key points of the loop that shift by the hour, that at certain times - that shift by the mile - plays the best goddamn blues you ever heard in your life. And I don't recognize a single tune, and they'll never play them again, and never tell you who was on, or if they do the channel's already cut out by that time. I'll tell you that by sunset my eyelids are buzzing. My throat is dry. My stomach is sad and burritoless. And the cab is the same temperature inside and out because the heater gave out an hour ago. I'll tell you that SUV drivers think I can't flatten them with a single twitch and so they drive like invincible maniacs, but lemme tell you right now that at regulation speeds this monster will go straight through an apartment complex like it were Jell-O pudding if it ever flips.
I'll tell you, because most people don't have occasion to try, that if you stare at the same spot for long enough, the aetherial fabric flips back and you can see the gnomes busy turning the gears of the universe, locked up in hamster wheels by God or Marduk or whoever. Now, don't go lookin at me like that. I ain't gonna turn into a gnome from just a few minutes of glaring. That's right, that's my truck, that's my iron giant, my flying coffin, the bane and provider of existence, legendary Turner Of Lefts. It's some old piece of shit, anyway.
The story? Yeah, what do you think I been doing? You're hearing it right now, buddy boy! Where was I? Eyes, watchers, glows, trucks, and hamsters? Ohhh yyyyeaeahh! The meat of the tale! Well, we'll get there won't we. It's not like I've got any place to be. What? No, this is how I sit. I was telling him all about it if you'd been listening. Just lemme keep things moving, will ya?
So we're on the highway with the city to the left. The city's always to the left. Ain't that obvious by now? I shouldn't have to explain logistics here. So we're driving with the city to the left. You live in the city, you know what it's like. There's towers and hotdogs and people, and a lot of the latter are crazy. But maybe that's people's fault, not the city, I don't know. When it's midday like it was then but the rainclouds are holding the night in place, the towers full of people are swallowed by the fog from a distance. You can only see the lights they've left on to keep the planes away.
Sometimes, I kill animals. Not because I want to, but because they run out onto the road and you can't slow down when you're in a mechanized slaughter wagon. They run out and get stuck on the grill or ground beneath the wheels. And the former means I gotta peel them off myself. Usually that only happens to the taller ones, dear or cattle, or birds. Birds will be jammed face first straight through two grill spokes with their neck clamped between them, their legs sticking straight out behind with their tail feathers. All sorts of weirdness happens to deer shapes. Their necks bend backwards and hang loose, so if a breeze picks up as you step around the front of the cab, it's like they're swinging their mangled heads to say hello. Cows stay the most intact, unless they happen to be facing forward. Then it breaks up their heads something awful, knocks out all their teeth, jams their own horns down into their brains, which shoot out their eye sockets and all over the truck face. Pets are small enough, they just get destroyed under the tires and I don't really have to see what's left. People are tall enough, but I've never yet had to peel one of those out of the grill, thank God.
Now, just hold your horses, this is a crucial step in the tale-crafting process. And yes, I find it quite necessary to communicate the projectile brain-spurting of pulverized cattle. I am a holistic man in a holistic world, and you don't know me till you've polished the grey matter off a hood ornament at least once.
There is one truck stop on the loop. Just one. One beautiful, crucial stop on the Hell-turn. Regulations allow its use once every six hours.
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