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Photo by Steve Richey
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Some I think wound up more successful than others: most of the time that went into these was not spent on composition, but on condensing the content and eliminating extra words wherever possible.
Runner
The car’s engine hummed but Billy didn’t hear. He was trying control his gasps, wishing the cold, sore feeling in his throat would go away. He checked his watch for the hundedth time. Eleven minutes. Where were they?
The alarms hadn’t sounded yet, but Billy didn’t know whether that was good. Maybe they hadn’t even gone inside. Maybe they’d been stopped at the door. Maybe they were telling some plastic-badged rent-a-cop about the plan, about Billy and the car. They could be telling them everything. It could be happening right now. This second.
With a jerk of his whole body he stomped the brake and pulled the gearshift down to Drive, then froze, and coldly slid it back into Park, eased his foot off the brake, and focused on his breathing. He checked his watch again. Stopped or not, they’d been inside too long. Billy couldn’t wait forever. Very very soon it would be time for him to make a decision.
Decisions were not Billy’s strong suit. This was supposed to be simple. An eight-minute job. He had done his part: run around back, open box, cut wires, send text, lock box, run to car, fire engines, wait. Wait. He hadn’t been picked for making decisions, that was Reed’s job. He wasn’t even an electrician. He had been picked for running. Not planning. Not waiting.
Had he cut the wrong wires? No, no, no, he’d cut the blue one and the white one. Had there been another blue one? He hadn’t seen one in the box. Was it the wrong box? He checked his watch again, fought the impulse to open the door and run. If he’d cut the wrong wires the alarm would have gone off right away. It was supposed to go off, that was part of the plan, but not until Reed and Walt were in the car, and all were happily on their way to Orange.
He tried to slow down his mind. A voice in his head, so quiet it scared him, said he needed to think about where he could go. Must lose the car, but then what? He would run, find a place to hide. He couldn’t go to her place, Reed would know to look there. She wouldn’t let him stay, if she even let him in. When things had started to go bad, and Billy had had to tap Reed for help, things had fallen apart. Collateral damage. At least he was still on his feet, he’d said. Anyway they hadn’t spoken much.
Fourteen minutes. Fifteen. Billy’s throat and lungs were calm now, quiet. He checked his watch without hurry. Fifteen thirty. A man was walking down the sidewalk past the car. Undercover? He didn’t look fat and dorky enough. He looked sort of young and shy. He passed without slowing down, neither looking at Billy nor pretending not to be. Sixteen minutes. A half-shaped thought, about how it was strange that it was becoming easier to wait and not harder, was forming in Billy’s mind. Seventeen. The engine hummed on.
WHAMP! Billy thought it was his head. No, rear window. Behind him. Then a sharp tapping on the glass. Reed was outside his door, Walt on the passenger side. Reed was grinning. His voice only buzzed through the window, but Billy got the words. You passed the test.
He did not unlock the doors. With a cool, careful movement he slid the gearshift into Drive. He would find her, warn her. Maybe they could run together. Sometimes it’s best to just run.
Glimmering
The waters were dark under the stars, and very still. He waited, shifting his weight and rubbing hands against the chill night air, his feet quietly tiring against the hard stone walkway. She would come, he knew she would come.
It had been three years since they’d first met here, unexpectedly and to his great good fortune, after they’d both separately ducked out of a company party turned unbearably cliquish and cold. Both misfits, they had fit together nicely, walking around the basin in the moonlight, exchanging few words. No moon tonight, and he was talking to himself, rehearsing the words he’d carefully laid down days before, telling himself that he’d easily get it right, when she came.
The water caught the lights across the basin, held them trembling softly in his eyes in long lines, like pillars of silver and dull copper. The wind whistled in the trees, brushing a few last dry leaves loose from their perches overhead. The constant sound of traffic was there, somewhere, but he no longer heard. The silence slowly filled him, to the tips of his night-bitten fingers.
Quieting in the silence, he began mulling the matter over once more. No sure reason to expect her, really, not if there were any sense in the world. There had been no plan, no invitation from either to see the other. Just their tradition, strengthened only in its unspoken legacy; the first year after to the day they had met, and the second, neither time commenting on the coincidence. And this was the third time, so it had to count for something. At least, that’s what he told himself, rocking from heels to toes and blowing quick snatches of breath into his hands to warm them. Surely it had to count for something.
He had made ready as much as he dared; he’d showered and shaved both before work and after, and combed his hair into a precise and uncharacteristic form that the wind had almost completely dissolved. But he had no flowers, no gifts, he wore no cologne or dressy clothes (did men still wear cologne, really?). He’d brought only the special words, his words, and they fell outside the tradition as well, though he hoped it wasn’t enough of a stretch to spoil his chances.
His watch was at home, and he refused to look at his phone. He did not know how long he had been waiting, and he didn’t care. He couldn’t decide whether he was anxious at the suspense or pleased to have more time to practice his speech, though that had long ceased. He was looking at the lines of light, held and dimpled by the water, and he was feeling very still.
Much, much later, as the sky was incontrovertibly beginning to pale, he straightened his spine against the bench back and sat up. The lights were gone, the morning was overcast. The waters had become uneven, and bulged softly in the gray directionless coming dawn.
“I don’t know how to tell you,” he said to the cold air, wanting to say at least the heart of the words he’d gathered. “But every day since I lost you, I’ve missed you more. I never believed in heaven before you went away, but I wanted you to know that every morning I pray for you. And I just … I just wanted to know if you hear me.”
He whisked his thumb across one cheek, and the other. After a while longer, he stood. The stones were hard under his shoes. It would be a long walk home.
Return
The book was heavy and her arms were tired. It was a long way to go to the bus stop, and she had no time to slow down or rest. The rain had slowed to a patter, and she couldn’t decide if the drops on her bowed neck were from the heavens or the bright new leaves overhead. Putting one heavy foot in front of the other, she walked on.
Twice a week she had to make this journey, twice a week she had to crowd herself into the front vestibule, and fold herself into the aging sweater, jacket, coat, scarf, and hat, and the heavy shoes, and the damned cane, and teeter her way down the drive (past the cars that they kept, though neither of them could safely move any longer), out onto the sidewalk, and up the long hill to the bus, to ride to the other side of town. And today was worse than usual, because the book was so large and heavy.
It was a book about Egyptian art; a photograph of the golden shapes and the great desert was fading but still bright behind its plastic cover. The pharaoh’s tombs, the sunny sphinx, the unanswerable riddles of the pyramid’s air shafts. Glossy photographs and words no one would read. It was meant to be put on a coffee table and looked at, or put beneath a table and overlooked altogether. What business it had in a public library, or in her sister’s quavering arms, she had no idea. But her sister had asked for it by name, last time she had bumped back into the hall before leaving and called out her liturgical, “Anything from town?” Her sister had called down, “’The Hidden Kingdom,’ please. It’s about Egypt.” No surprise in the specificity; the old girl had taken in a whole season nostalgic works. Always very particularly remembered and asked for, almost always available once she was able to find someone to help with the computer.
She finally reached the stop. No bus. She had forgotten her watch. She sat on the bench to wait. The rain began to fall more thickly. She opened the heavy book idly, passed through leaf after shining leaf of big pictures and tiny words. She thought of her sister, propped up on the cushions, holding this slab of cardboard and paper up at arm’s length. It wasn’t surprising that she had asked for it, really; you could see most of what was to be seen without having to focus carefully. A book about beauty, and enormous distances (it was written by an American for an American audience; she wondered idly if there were any books about this written by Egyptians anymore), and the slow cleaning out of the things left behind, winnowing down to true timelessness, whatever that was. Apparently gold and rocks featured prominently. Like in the catholic church.
She closed the book. A young man was standing in under the bus stop roof with her. He seemed soft, and a little embarrassed. Probably shy of strangers in general, like most young men these days. Her alarm faded. She felt puzzled for a moment, then looked at the book in her hands, and remembered that the bus had not yet come.
She pulled the scrap of paper from her inner pocket: “Greatest Lost Ships: Found.” She hoped that it would not be quite so large, but she knew that even if it was, she would carry it home, and later this week she would carry it back.
There was no one else to carry it for her.
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