WHAM!
The slammed door behind me rang as I sank to sit on the concrete step, my face red with contempt, twisted and bitter. Yearning for catharsis, I stood, pounding my fists into the brown stucco to my left. My hands were left chawed and oozing blood as I quickly and exquisitely felt the consequences of my outburst. Wincing, I picked stray bits of stucco out of the area of trauma, slipped my perfectly worn, faded sneakers on, and began to walk.
It was a summer night, the kind of time when the light from the sun has changed from harsh white to a glazed orange, and the sky appears to be on fire. Long shadows are cast eastward; a chill sets in the air as dusk approaches its close. As I began my journey, I had no semblance of a place in mind: the only aim was to get as far as possible from home. With distance as my goal rather than destination, I could walk forever. Summer nights tend to last an eternity as the earth finds itself in a limbo where the sun is beneath the horizon but the sky remains bright. I had full intention to make use of this seemingly unlimited time on my hands. Hands jammed into my pockets and too-big shirt fluttering in the latent breeze, I reached the end of the block and was faced with a simple decision: left or right? Left would take me down, through small, awkwardly connected streets lined with small houses built uncomfortably close to each other; right would take me up to the dense web of trails at the foot of Ben Lomond. The intersection had fazed me, pulling me out of the twilight-induced stupor and back into reality, where I chose to take a left. Refusing to let my consciousness drift in the direction of what had transpired over the last few hours, I pulled out the millennium-era MP3 player I had stolen from my dad, navigated to the hidden folder that I had painstakingly set up, and pressed play.
I knew Spiderland by heart, every chord and beat and lyric, but it was a darkly scintillating, thrilling listen every time. I ran my earbuds underneath my cheap red cotton t-shirt, and my ears were met with a hushed voice narrating:
“Don stepped outside. It felt good to be alone.”
The two simple sentences were all that was needed to pull me in. The anxious, quickening strumming became my reality as I closed my eyes, trusting my feet to keep to the sidewalk. I could feel the lines separating the concrete panels underneath my thin soles. The breeze had fallen asleep, and it reeked of near-ubiquitous boxwood shrubs. Without wind to give it life, the night rapidly stagnated, muggy air taking a sinister tone as the streetlamps flickered to life, suffocating the street with their orange glow. The guitarist came down on a fuzz pedal, the tone corroding, but rather than reach climax, the song had exhausted its runtime, fizzling out for thirty seconds as the next track began.
“I won’t be back here…” murmurs the singer. “Though… we may meet again.”
I reached the end of the lane faster than I expected, my rumination coming to an abrupt halt as I stepped off a curb, expecting more cement and instead being met with an uncomfortable jerk as I blindly stepped into traffic. My eyes shot open as blinding white headlights glared at me from 50 yards, daring me to continue my path. The speed limit of the road was only thirty miles per hour, but I would lose a fight with any car at that speed, let alone the hulking Chevy Suburban barreling down at least ten over. Scrambling, I sprinted forward, tripping over my feet in haste, coming down hard on the rough asphalt and skidding. The Suburban noticed me at the last second, swerving to the right and slamming on the brakes, narrowly missing me, barely regaining control as they overcorrected into the left lane and finally evened out.
I laid there, sprawled on the blacktop, bathed in the orange light from the street lamp above me. All was completely still as I lay there, my heart pounding with primal energy. Everything coalesced to make a perfect moment: the feel of the pebbles on my skin in my recumbent pose, the downcast gaze of the streetlamps lining the street, the sound of the cars in the distance. No house took any notice of what had just transpired.
As I caught my breath, there was nothing to do except continue. I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and took inventory: there was a new hole in the left knee of my loose jeans, revealing a bloodied, dirty kneecap, my shirt now had a black streak along the left sleeve, matching the stripe on my scraped forearm. My father’s player was unharmed, but the wiring in my earbuds had been exposed, copper peeking through the cable. I looked like a mess, spotting my reflection in the living room window of a house as I began to walk again: my long hair was mussed, my clothes were now torn and dirty, and my new abrasions paired nicely with those from my father and the stucco wall. All I needed was a cardboard sign to be a successful panhandler. I put my earbuds back in the jack at the top of the player, and the voice resumed.
“The tears ran down his face.”
“Help me” he whispered.
I could have turned back; I knew the way, and had every reason to return home, but I continued my course, or lack of a course. I took a left, then a right, then another left, until I was properly lost, with no way out except to go back the way I had come. The cramped houses blended together in the landscape of inescapable pungent shrubberies and lamp-posts and telephone poles. It was late, and cars were few and far between. A gaudy red sedan appeared, turning onto the lane I found myself traversing. They were playing trashy music at a volume blatantly inappropriate for the hour, and as the car drew nearer, I recognized the driver of the packed car and groaned inwardly. An acquaintance, not a friend, the kind of person who manages to be both so shallow and so confident that they get by on sheer lack emotional depth. His eyes were small and beady, his nose a fat ugly mass that vaguely resembled a cauliflower, but his parents had money, so, in turn, he had friends. He was driving at double the speed limit and I could see a glimmer of recognition in his miniscule black eyes as the car approached. To my relief, the car made no signs of slowing down, and as they passed me, as I turned to try and catch a glimpse of who else would stoop so low as to associate with him, I caught the eyes of a girl in the corner of the backseat looking at me. Her face was expressionless, observing quietly, and she seemed to be the only one in the vehicle not having a raucous, rollicking time. She didn’t belong in that car, I didn’t belong on that sidewalk, and for that brief moment when our eyes met, the setting dropped away and all was still again. Another perfect moment, until our gazes broke, and everything came rushing back, and I stopped.
“With the light she disappeared…” sang the voice.
I looked down at my dirty jeans and my beat-up shoes and I ran my hands through my hair until I had fully taken in the situation I was in. I had left my house at approximately nine P.M., and I judged it to be about one AM. I had no clock on my person, no watch or phone, just my music player and my earbuds and a rumpled twenty dollar bill I had stuffed in my pocket earlier that morning. I had left because my father was in one of his moods, shouting with conviction at anyone who crossed his path, until I made the fatal mistake of defending my sister. She was four years old, smart for her age, but struggled to make it too the toilet punctually. She had pissed on the carpet, and was crying even before my dad arrived at the scene, but the yelled beration was not helping. My barbed resistance turned into a struggle of principle, a clash between father and son. The patriarch was not keen on defeat, and the conflict quickly became physical. I was taller than him, but he weighed at least forty pounds more and had experience. We grappled, my arms wrapped around his legs with my face buried in his stomach. He grunted, took me by the waist, and slammed me into the wall behind me. Dazed, I came at him again, but I didn’t have the strength to do much, clawing at his chest from behind him. He grabbed my arms, flipped me over his shoulder and down on the hard floor of the basement. The breath shot out of me, and I lay totally winded on the ground. There was nothing to do other than get up, and I rose, attempting to take my father to the floor, but my strength failed me, and he was on top of me, pushing my face into the piss-soaked carpet. I squirmed out from under him, stormed off, changed my shirt and immediately walked out of the house. I didn’t plan on leaving forever; that would require preparation that I did not have, and it wasn’t always this bad. One night would be enough, but I had nowhere to stay and no one to contact and no way to contact them regardless. I knew my mother would worry; she always does. Returning in the middle of the night wasn’t out of the question, but I was already growing tired. I had no bearing on how to get back to my house.
“I’m trying to find my way home,” came the singer’s fearful cry.
“And I miss you.”
With these thoughts floating through my head I continued to wander suburbia until I found myself at a park I had visited a few times before. Oaklawn had a large field for baseball games and the like, but, more interesting to me, was the forested section bordering the clearing. I remembered the winding trails and the red and yellow warning sign: BEWARE OF POISON IVY. I deemed it too risky in the dark, declining to enter to the wood at all. The park was totally unlit, refreshing my eyes from the saturated peach haze of the streets. I reclined on the metal bleachers, putting my hands behind my head. As my head took in all that had happened this night, I surveyed the night sky. I knew I would return home as a different person. Initially, my eyes betrayed me, but as they acclimated, little pin-pricks of light began to shine through the black tablecloth of night, like salt spilled by God himself. I thought I would find sleep quickly, but my tired eyes refused to close, drinking in the pulchritude of the heavens above until at last they began to shudder, closing, and I drifted off.
“Creeping up into the sky…”
“Goodnight, my love.”
“Remember me as you fall to sleep.”
