Willie

         Congratulations to anyone who has somehow made their way past the merciless, harrowing, spectacularly gruesome trip that is: being a teenager. They have it the worst, of course.  Teenagers weep without call. They fall to a lump and avoid talking, shutting out light like a pack of mosquitos at the screen door, only to arise moments later and lament the unwillingness of others to care for them. Some friends they have, of course. There is no dispute: the middle teens wear on a soul harder and harsher than an apartheid or genocide. They have to deal with themselves killing them. From inside.
         Yet for all the definite potholes of these years, teenagers do have some (few, really) advantages. They can look at porn and it is seen as somewhat endearing. Petty theft and vandalism rips open old memories in the eyes of shop keeps, causing them to smile real pretty and lean atop their push-brooms, staring into their childhood home. Then there are the feelings; things simply feel different to those kids. Thunderstorms are beautiful and cause either raucous playing or lumpy warm feelings from the inside. Mornings are foreign. Evenings boil blood and velcro veins wide open. The eyes are set at the front of their sockets, ready to absorb and conversely unload. Everything straight ahead is seen beautifully, crystal clear and coffin obvious.
         It was a day. A day. That’s it, just another square in a grid. A rather large grid. Little squares that flooded until they formed massive seas of squares in one massive and then one stops and the rest of the thing just has no where to go. It is a useless pile of squares. It was about nine-thirty, time for the cold to rush in a little - just enough to throw on a light jacket or a sweatshirt if you have it. Time to wash your face, smile at yourself in the mirror, or just run out the door. Just get out, get going, before you talk some sense into you. You watch rivers of people going every which way in their cars, you fall in line, and you make your way.
         “Deep into the heart of an hour-long commercial free set, that was Fleetwood Mac! Next up we have the Eagles, The Doobie Brothers,-”
         Willie didn’t want to hear the radio. Willie didn’t want to be driving in his car. Willie didn’t want to have a car that drove anywhere near Sally on that night. Willie was tired. He wanted to sleep in some beautiful pocket hour with Sally between that night and the morning that followed it, next to Sally as they wove their limbs together. His head would bob and the image of their bodies with ropes of sheets around them, and only the hiss of the rain under his tires or the buzz of oncoming traffic would alert him again. Willie had lost his will to live for a few moments, and he happened to be driving a car during them.
         You know these streets. You know these damn streets so well. Find an alternate route on these streets - one that doesn’t lead to some inevitable. Avoid the path of prickly flowers and go for the clear road for once.
         This was Sally’s party, of course. This was Sally’s going away party, to celebrate her leaving for a summer in Costa Rica working with wildlife. Or plantlife. Or marinelife. Willie had always been fuzzy on details with Sally. It was a disaster when her birthday rolled around in mid-November. He often attempted to phone her, only to reach the local pizzeria. This often lead to many lonely and wonder-filled nights stuffed with calzones. He still skipped over her name in his memory banks, in those little cups of memory that you’re supposed to sink important people in. He had held the long-formed joke, the value that this woman that has stuck herself into his hole and tangled up with his roots was so deep, so engraved in these tiny holes of memory that she has replaced the mesh of its creation and become the essence, the firmament, the hole itself - so much so that when scouring nothing shows up but just another hole, like a limb or an eyeball or a sweat gland. He would explain this to Jake endlessly at parties and when qustioned, to the point where Jake had no choice in salvaging the conversation.
         “Willie, I know. I know I know I know I fucking fucking know. I know! I know.”
It was only on ornery evenings when willie would allow himself to lose Sally and recognize it. Organize it in a visible festival. In some ways, Sally had fallen off the face of Willie’s world, and there she would stay.
         Willie swerved through blurs, dropping hammers’ worth of manuel transmissions as his blood became warmer. His stomach grumbled; he would eat himself silly at this party. He would eat and then drink and then Sally would get on a  plane the next morning and go to London and love everything there and then be gone, goodbye. He hated Sally. He hated Saint Paul. He hated the cars and the rain and my god my god there was nothing worth trying to stop anymore. He felt his veins pulling him towards the end and the eventual end.
         “She’s gonna miss me. I know she’s gonna miss me. She’s gonna miss me enough to throw her body headlong at every little brit that she meets.”
         Now he was crying. The sad little boy, the sappy little emotional boy was crying in his car through the rain speeding in Saint Paul. It is remarkable how quickly, fully and augmented memories fall out of you when you’re crying. Willie saw his 15 year old self, all decked out in pure blue jeans and awkward height, holding out a hand for a tiny girl in a skirt to take while they stand near each other and wave at a dance. There’s no structure anymore. He blinks to clean his eyes. The first time he saw Saly, her hair wrapped in a lime green tie. Car honks and he started up his head. The first time they made love in his backyard during that house party when the parents were gone. She felt so cold and soft in the grass. She bit down on his neck and he felt a rush of sick anxiety run through. He wanted blood.
         
         One time, when they were a few years younger, if they could be any younger,  the two new lovers a-waited a bus stop in downtown Saint Paul. They had just spent the day at the library and going for coffee and Willie wanted to show Sally his house on the East Side. Sally had never really been to the East Side, and she was excited to go.
         “I’m excited to go,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see your house.”
It doesn’t matter how long they had been together at that point. All that mattered in Willie’s twittery heart was that she still made him feel this way after some time. All that mattered to Sally was pushing back and swallowing all her known stories about the East Side (a place where drugs, murderers and rape happens) and still be able to meet Willie’s family without any visible hiccups. She hid herself very well in her words, but when viewed very closely and with a certain guided scope you could tell she was quivering somewhere. She didn’t like downtown very much. She had been told from a very young age that only bad people went near there. Some feelings don’t let go no matter how hard you shake.
         As they stood and giggled and Sally held Willie close and he smiled victoriously a man came near them. He was rough-looking, and not in a somewhat masculinely positive way. He was dirty, his face was carved and corroded. He was an empty basin of a man.
         “What are you, boy?” Willie ignored.
         “What are you, boy?” Sally gave the man a look, which bothered Willie almost as much as the man.
         “What are you, boy?” The man had a head cocked.
         “Get outta here.”
         “Are you a Spic or a featherhead?”
         “Get the fuck outta here!” Willie made a fist that sufficiently startled that sallow husk and caused him to move back. He turned to leave, then stopped. Willie wanted to swing at him.
         “He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no-one accepts his testimony. John 3:32.” Sally and Willie looked at each other, possibly mining the moment for something.
         “ He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no-one accepts his testimony. John 3:32.” The man stood with a slate of expression on his face, not calling for a response, but begging for one in another plane of reality.
         “He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no-one accepts his testimony. John 3:32.”
         “How about you get the hell outta here!” Sally’s voice leapt from her throat so fast she nearly tried to catch it.
         “But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. Timothy 2:12”
         “Well congratulations, you know the gospel. God has obviously done so much for you, hasn’t he.” The man slunk away, brushing the two away with his right arm. Sally shifted in her stilty-long legs while Willie just looked at her. He just looked at her and smiled. He knew there was something behind her - that when it came down to it, to somebody losing something, Sally wouldn’t allow it. She did not stand victoriously after such moments. She just sort of stood there and stared at her ankles with crooked frowning eyes. Her hair latching to her face in the humidity.
         This time, however, after moments of just standing their, sunk into the ground, she peered up after him for awhile. Her frown broke and a key lime pie smile broke and her green eyes pinged with droplets of crystal and her face was red, like she was embarrassed but she was the only one. Willie was lost now. He was a man without a nation, isolated in the ramparts of her eyes. It was mindblowing, life-defying, absolute and infinite. She loved him. Willie had someone love him. Someone not named Mom or Dad, not a fluffy animal or a feeling or a baseball team. Someone. A young woman loved him. He wanted a God when he realized that, that’s for sure. He did better, though: he peered back to her and, judging the time and slight motion to absolutely accentuate the moment, leaned into her and kissed her. On the eye. There wasn’t any laughing however. She didn’t pull him away or laugh or smack her gum like she would in the past. There also wasn’t any nervous sneezing or knuckle cracking or sipping his soda from Willie, either. There was a slight leading move of the head by Sally, pushing slightly in orbit of his face. There was a kiss worthy enough to lead future kissers astray. There was a clean, entrenched, attached, definable minutes’ worth. There were explosions everywhere.
         
         Of course, those were past days. Days that had been cared for, tended to but, like a old turgid corpse, eventually packed away. Now, that essence, that jus d’vivre was replaced with ennui, malaise and je suis raplapla. Nowadays, it was a young woman who was leaving for overseas, and it was a young man deep in the East Side of Saint Paul driving through sheets of rain to be the happiest person to see her go. He embellished, of course. He assumed he was the only one in the car.
         After Willie had gotten to Arcade past Lake Phalaen, the rain was massive. So much water dropping straight down; in different directions; in odd little swirling patterns. The lights from car dealerships, high schools and Italian restaurants kaleidoscoped through the air and landed their giant mesh swirls on his windshield. Why was he here? He had basically just gone in the wrong direction, through an old neighborhood. He took a right just passed Johnson High School, and then another right to a row of houses that shared a fence with it. Willie stopped.
         Willie knew where he was headed. He figured it out about a minute before they got there. That did not change the fact that he had no will to change it. It was his mind awaking and taking over the body again, leading sinew and bone straight on to the first house that Sally lived at. In the grand scheme of things, he could have screwed up a lot greater. He could have driven to a Kentucky Fried Chicken at that moment, or into Lake Phaelen. No, he was just about seven years off on being correct.
         The porch was filled with very grey lawn furniture. It had been pained red. Willie did not like that. The light charcoal color of their porch was necessary. Why did they have to change that? Willie realized it didn’t matter, because the most important element of course wasn’t gonna be there, anyway. The thought the same things about the new door, the tulips that were in front (Sarah’s mother used to have at least a sunflower to keep things interesting), and so on. After he stopped thinking he waited. He waited and waited and the rain came down harder and he waited some more. He was waiting for, as they say, the moment - he had been dragged here by the neurons pulling strings in his head, now he wanted to know why.
         Nothing.
         Why was there nothing?
         Just nothing.
         Willie got a stomach ache and leaned over the steering wheel. He had seen all the teen movies and television shows, at least enough to know that there was some serious flaw in his relationship with Sarah. You see, had he loved her, the sight of her house would have given him all the memories of his past with her, from when she was the tiniest little girl and he was the tiniest little boy. When he met her and pulled on her ponytail and she ran after him and smacked him in the head (that right there doesn’t count, by the way - it’s only real if you don’t have to try, and he tried for a good five minutes before he came up with even the vague outline of that one). Had he hated her, or no longer loved her, or known she was going to break up with him, or known that she no longer loved him, he would have seen the memories with an added level of poignancy, with the soft memories of better and sweeter days trickling like watermelon seeds into his stomach. He was supposed to have something.
         Nothing.
         What the hell did that mean?
         “Why was I here, then?”
         Nobody answered. Nobody cared to let the poor boy know that he wouldn’t be having his magical moment, and that all he’d be seeing would be the film of rain steadily passing down his windshield and the blurriness of all the rest. There’s no visions for “happy to leave her”. The universe doesn’t operate in such vague corners of romance - it’s all cut and dry in the universe’s eyes. Willie figured nothing would happen, were he to stay there all night even. Also, he was running late to meet Sarah and her family for dinner, and thus late to bring her to the party, and thus late late late late late. Willie sat back in his seat and, after striking a pensive James Dean pose consciously, started the car. The side street was wide open, so he decided. He decided to speed. He didn’t like to speed, because he didn’t like speeding tickets. Also it was really rainy out. Also he was in a residential area. Also. He gunned the car and got her going smoothly. Old Buicks run pretty well around 70 and 80 and 90. Willie said “Fuck you!” to the universe - he would create his own moments.
         At Payne Avenue a hearse crossed his path. He was doing 95 and feeling fine. Then a hearse crossed his path. It didn’t so much cross it, actually - it found the path and stopped in front of it. The tip of the hearse covered the most of the left and middle parts of the road. What is funny is to think of the reason why the hearse was stopped in such a position: the poor thing had hit a pothole on one of the East Side of Saint Paul’s notoriously chewed up roads. The driver of the hearse heard a loud pop and felt his car droop to the right side. About two block later he heard a thump and felt the massive vehicle rise. He stopped the car quick, drenched in rain, and opened the back looking for tools. The coffin, carrying the late Jane B. Lauren, was on a set of rollers in the back, which provided easy access. The rollers had a stop that had to be unlocked so it wouldn’t move while the hearse was driving. The man unlocked the stop, hoping to find a jack when he pulled the thing back a little. Certainly, he did find his jack. However, his pulling the thing back a little was a little out of whack, and the coffin flew straight to the wet evening cement. The was obviously embarrassed, but there wasn’t anyone driving around there at that moment, so he figured he was okay and laughed it off. What is a little less funny to think of is that Willie, thanks to the rain and his pining for his moment, did not notice the hearse until about a block away.
         He saw his lights reflect of a car and immediately tried to point the thing towards the open hole in the road. The car slid, badly. He turned further and stood on the gas pedal. His mind was a solid block of panic. The car caught for a moment and went. Another car was coming the opposite direction,  two quick bolts through the storm. He overcorrected to avoid and went into a powerful slide straight off the road (the other car had the decency to stop). He slid straight through a flat part in the curb, flattened to allow customers to park inside of the Dairy Queen parking lot. The car only stopped when it’s right rear fender, clean and white, struck the back corner of the boxy restaurant and spun the car, stopping it in an alley behind the Queen. There was nothing, nothing but the rain and the breathing. He turned on his radio to break the silence.
         “Alright, by request - some classic Pearl Jam with “Yellow Ledbetter”
         Willie turned off the radio. Willie then turned off the car. Willie then threw his head against the back of his seat, felt the sweat drip down over his newly-shaven jaw and down to his collarbone. He got out of the car. The man in the hearse was lightly jogging towards him.
         “What were you doing driving so fast? Huh? Couldn’t you realize you dangerous that was? Don’t you know -” It was at that point that Willie slapped the man. He slapped the man open palm, cupping his hand right around the man’s chin. He had read once that, in a play, you slap people by cupping your hand around their jaw. The hand made a loud soggy pop. The man stood there - still angry, but with a look of confusion he couldn’t place.
         “Are you alright? I mean, are you having car trouble? You were stopped halfway into that street. Do you need help?” Willie spat out. The man dropped his eyes and lowered his shoulders.
         “The coffin fell out of the hearse. I’ve been trying to put it back in. Nobody wants to stop right now.”
         “Well, I’m stopped.”
         Willie and the man picked up the coffin with a little struggle and no talk. The rain had softened, to the point where it was light and even possibly refreshing (assuming you were not already drenched). They closed the doors and walked to their stations - no goodbyes, not even a handshake to settle the issue. They just walked with eyes of steel and fists digging nails into their palms.

         Willie did not return home, as one might have thought. He did not tell the girlfriend that he was happy to leave that he would not be wishing her goodbye and, instead, would be receiving a disappointed earful from his father and a cup of tea from his mother after the ordeal was over. He didn’t even look at the wound - he simply checked to see that his car could still drive without problems, sent Sally a message telling her he’d be late, and was off. He drove with no radio on. The radio wasn’t very consoling in moments like this - it focused on people having nice times, in nice houses or nice bars with nice friends. It played songs that would put smiles on peoples faces. Inside the wounded Buick, there were no nice smiles. There was Willie’s stern face, weary and wet, fighting off the occasional urge to wonder whether he was meant to die right then and there. The road was cold, the car was cold, and Willie was afraid to drive over forty. Willie was afraid to drive anywhere.