Jentil

I

I rise. I gather my personal items-phone, keys, loose notes, my boots. I plant a foot out the door into the sound of that minus rock shifting underfoot. I manage in the darkness and fall into my truck, the lock, the seat, the steering wheel, the ignition. Wheels spin over gravel and glide onto pavement.

These roads and those who built them seem distant now, intocable, as if from a dream. Some giant must have laid this track, over field and stream, under melt of sun, back breaking. His iron arms tore at earth to start fresh, spit black tar and asphalt. In these obsidian hours I find myself dreaming. I'm lost at sea, drifting, alone with the current, a current that roots so deep, that swells up from the depth, from another place, another time, another planet.

I climb a hill, which seems bathed in black. A something brilliant shines from the hill's far side. Cresting the peak, I look down over the town and I see that someone, I'm never to know who, has given me a landscape seared in light. A mushroom puff and hints of heat, winds, and elemental fury. The violence is hours past. All looks calm, though slightly rearranged.

I drive through what remains of town: storefronts, homes, roads, and schools. The iron, concrete, sand, and clay show affect from the blast, but not to such an extent as to have disregarded ionic or covalent duties. A singular act, I think, could not erase stories stamped upon this hardened earth.

The trees and grass e incluso the Himalayan blackberry are mostly gone, burned up or blown away I assume. I think of Ciudad Juarez. I stop the truck, step out, and find my boots set down again on dry earth.

Tears spill upon the earth. For a moment, at least, molecules of ash deceive themselves. “It is raining. All is right again!” they proclaim with shameless joy. For one brief moment they are free from thoughts of decay, of entropy, of destiny. I kick at this fresh mud, spit to the west, and get back in my truck, to carry on.

After a short drive, I arrive at the Nooksack and gasp, audibly. I look upon a bridge of asphalt and steel or some other materials hard as faces pulling earth; I've never worked much construction. I can't make much enlightened or erudite comment on matters too specific. What I can speak to is my shock, my surprise to see that river flowing fast. An unlikely vein mapping route, from mountain, through town and hill, to the sea.

I double back, exit the truck, and grab a stone of sufficient weight. I smash the window of an old neighbor's store. With measured care I step inside. My boots ignore glass underfoot. In aisle 5, Garden Tools, I find what I came for. I grab the spade, a sledge hammer, and reach for my wallet. I shake my head and laugh.


Feeling appropriately outfitted, I cross the bridge again and come upon the newer side of time, a side less dear to me. I pass a Sonic, a Dominoes, a Dairy Queen, spots built for ones who run on gasoline, an oasis between civilizations named for people long since gone. I head to the onramp and pull to a stop beside it.

I bury my spade, in hardened Andisol, and loose a bit of it. I cough and wheeze as a Washington colloid fills my mouth, my throat, my lungs and gut. I grab a handkerchief and dig still further down, one foot, two, five, ten feet down. I work with rising urgency, with staccato violins marking time. A something large, metallic comes to rest inside a burst of particles propelled skyward. I pant and ooze sweat under heavy labor and hot sun. I sit, staring at the sky, in the crater I have formed.

Tephra hangs overhead in a lazy ocre cloud. With a look fixed upon some distant sea, I spit and hit a mark. A sign lays flat; a liquid glistens. 


I think of the factory worker stamping out these massive highway signs, looking like a child come to try his hand at the family trade. The worker stands with sleepless eyes, deep-set and active. “7:40, break's at 11:00. 11 minus 8 plus 20 minutes, 3 hours twenty minutes till my break and then-14 minus 11- another 3 hours till I'm off. Fuck.”

This sign, I'm sure, involved more than one. Perhaps a graphic designer. I see her bent low to the task. She reflects on the simple aesthetic joy of making flyers and designing web pages between other periods of study at 16. Now she, at 35, finds herself charged with ensuring that the Taco Bell logo prints correctly in compliance with corporate Standards for Quality and Uniformity.

Lastly I think of the young man, and I say young man because it rarely was anything but, who plunged that sign ten feet into the ground with the help of some robotic something. He repeated this act, in stretches approaching the infinite. Did he, like any passing motorist, look at these signs and think, “Oh, a Dairy Queen, I had one of those in my home town and, seeing as how I'm reasonably hungry, perhaps I'll stop and participate in a bit of mass culture.”? Or does he too simply check the time and think about his lousy lunch and daydream of a beach some anywhere where maybe the weather's nice and his friends meet up to drink and laugh innocently? When he rises for work, the sun still set, and with a soul full of dread, maybe he slips on that fleece, you know the one he wore to that bonfire two weeks back, that bonfire where his buddy from the Navy came back and told stories of Thailand and his adventures and they all laughed and joked and forgot about the things in life that were not as grand as that moment and in the end our hero skipped rocks with that smart, cute, curly-haired brunette and they talked and kissed a bit and maybe shared a bit of joy, which is not a euphimism but an earnest truth. Well maybe he turns to that fleece when he needs some scent to remind him of a concrete time. I sigh and look at his sign, her sign.

I bend down to it, to a corner, and rip off a chunk. I bring it to my mouth and bite down. It is not an easy task, this chewing of metal, but I know what must be done. I continue. I rip off larger and larger chunks as my confidence and strength grow. I eat every square inch of the sign and start on the posts. They too are of machined metal. In under an hour the sign is erased, gone, devoured. This task complete, I belch and turn back towards the town.

II

My next stop is just beside the off-ramp, one of the first sites to attract strangers to this place. It seems the market research has paid off; I can't help but pull into the parking lot adjacent to the Golden Arches. I exit my truck and walk to the restaurant doors. Some invisible force parts the glass for me, inviting me to step inside; I don't dare decline. The smell is perfectly preserved. This place, I think, really does smell exactly like a McDonald's. I return to the bed of my truck for the purloined sledge. My arms feel longer, stretched to new lengths by the hammer's heft. I see myself, fleetingly, as John Henry and take a giant's swing. The steel hits. Tiles explode in a frantic effort to keep balanced some equation modeling momentum. It's useless. With each swing I feel stronger still. Walls, pillars, and PlayPlaces fall. They're put to rest. It goes on for hours. 

I swing through the night. “...Another day older and deeper in debt,” sung to an unseen audience. The sun rises indifferently and still my work remains, my arms ache from the demand. I'm nearly finished. 

One booth rests in the back of what used to be this restaurant. I know the spot quite well and recall another history, probably from my own past, in which a young boy, no older than 17, would sit in that booth and wait. He never waited very long, five or ten minutes at the most, for her to get off work. They both felt alone though  no one suspected that either suffered from unrequited love. Then why this interaction? Why not someone else? Still, the facts are so, or were so. It seems to matter very little now, now that this booth is gone. In fact, looking back, I'm not sure if I can recall the story that well at all. Or perhaps it was another's story or another story or something else entirely. These thoughts exhaust me. 

I set the hammer down and consider the rubble. I know what I have to do. The eating takes another day. The stone, the plastic, the concrete all make for a lousy meal. Good for sustenance but a challenge for the palate. Echo una siesta. I've earned it. I dream of the young girl and boy, of their story, and wake with a smile on my face.

III

I struggle into my truck and cross the overpass. The truck glides effortlessly under stoplights and turns after three, down an unpopular road, which exists outside the imposition of any grid. I remember navigating it by headlights. I suppose that must be the only way how I remember it, seeing as how this asphalt looks bizarre under the light of sun. I swing into the gravel lot and leave the truck behind.

It's a hotel. It's not the nice one. My brother once worked the front desk here. I remember thinking it was an ideal job, though now I suspect he hated it. It was in a time when we watched movies together. We ate nachos and I was happier doing this than anything else. Sometimes I'd find myself at the hotel late at night. Is that Blood Simple in the background? I can't imagine I was allowed behind the desk. It's all images now, I suppose that all it ever was. My arms are swinging again, more easily now.

The front office is felled and I crash into another room, a bathroom, a sink full of blood. A friend sprints out. I follow. I turn the corner to see four figures driving him deeper into the earth, crashing feet against flesh and asphalt. "Déjale, déjale. Vámanos!" He's tossed in the ditch. A blue Ford Explorer screeches off. I pick my way down the short slope, through the blackberries, the darkness. Was he crying or laughing? Maybe we sat with words unspoken, though I doubt it. I remember him as one does a mirror, shifting. We never spoke of the incident. His brain, it seems, was overwhelmed with poison.

The hotel's gone. I barely mind the eating this time.

IV

Sweat cooled, under breeze of fan, refreshes newly stretched skin. I'm further still along that road, closer to a former home. Dead weight, still bikes, slack cords gawk motionless, with all familiar faces. I remember them fondly, panting. They're of no use to me though I'm glad to be in the midst of something known,, so perhaps I'm wrong.

A party long over echoes through these warehouse vents. Joyous teens spit Monarch air though veils of syrups sweet. A band meshes loud and children wail, in mimicry of peers' delight. The collective air is unquestionably celebratory. It's November. It's a birthday. The cold won't stand a chance. The sound dies out after one last surge, neither furtive nor raucous . Cars fall off and sink away. The building holds its place.

Though, of course not now.

V

My back absorbs broad strokes of light. A long shadow's formed. I stand alone in empty fields.This feels correct, standing here. I'd always been a solitary athlete. I'd play and run and jump with a mind suspended.

For years now, I've missed the grass, fresh cut and soft on knees. How thoughtlessly replaced, en masse, by tires and plastic, multi-use lines laid permanent. I want a ball and friends and some team to play. They're gone now.

I pull at turf in square foot clumps and devour it, greedily and whole. Tears mix with new soil revealed and make mud, stupid, inert mud. I beat my fists, against the muck, and sob.

VI

I've lost track of days. I'm fuckin' tired and little else.

I sit by the river and drink its current, lazily, as if I could or could not be doing that which I'm doing. A sun leans heavy on the river bank. Can't remember the last time it set. I read a few works by Bolaño and revisit one by McCarthy. While drifting in and out of sleep, I find myself wandering two dreams, like dry riverbeds.

The first, the one I remember primarily and clearly, is full of familiar things. Unseen soldiers creep from all directions. I inch down the street, my back pressed against the stucco, no place for air between skin cells and cement plaster. I catch eyes with myself in the shimmer of what would have been called a storefront. Now, of course, it's just plate glass. Reflected, I shine, a pure white calavera, in poncho, mounted on horseback and riding, riding towards a distant smoke, some unseen fire burning in a darkness empty and full of space. In the dream, I sleep. I crumble al suelo, opposite the glass. Then I'm riding. I look back, over my shoulder, to confirm the location of the cooling body. Her muscles tense beneath me and a kind wind pushes features back.

The second dream is little more than images, as I suppose many dreams are. I sense that I'm perched and watching, set as one might position a camera for the purpose of security, a powerless deity, voyeuristic and cold. A boxing ring dominates the scene. It's Mexico or somewhere on la frontera. The ring's lit like it were an operating table. Two heavyweights lurk on canvas, with eyes opened tall and wide frames drinking light. They throw careful blows of all-consuming force. The audience sits in darkness, faces made of sand. A punch hits flesh. A boxer falls flailing al público. Faces melt to horror and evaporate. A careless witness may think it sublimation, if they were to miss that facial cue. Yup -I think- most people'd see it that way, and misinterpret the thing. A once fallen giant rises and plunges again into that oasis of light, to die in the glow of spectacle and competition.

I wake, floating in the calm of an eddy, chilled to my cerebellum, and laughing.

VII

Night, graciously, has come. The air's retained the heat of rays and for that I'm grateful. I shake dry as best I can. It occurs to me that my flesh is less cold than I recall. It strikes me as being undeniably happy, or made of dreams and words.

I'm to carry on. I walk to where my sister, her friends, and I once swam. Crush the concrete, drink the pool, polish off the buildings and their hollow gaze. Now I eat whole barns and well-known dwellings, and fields. Feet, massive and calloused, stumble to each site. Hands, the same, drag in tow. I catch my reflection once, and recall my dream. I smile at the joven staring back, a smile like a tomboy's, three days dirty and correct. I press on to one last spot, the best known building. I pause. Though I know, of course, there to be no room for this, for exception.

I step into the river and wade to center, wet to my shins. I stride down this trail. A desert surrounds, spotted with oases, most likely. I don't dream of straying from this path. Incorrectly, for a moment, I see this movement as regression, as nostalgia, as stepping back. None of these are real. I'm a moron. 

I yearn for that which on the surface appears a desert, filled with the joy, the horror. Life silently kept pace with human understandings of evolution, creating creatures still bigger and more hardened.. Like poets, never soldiers, they refused a dry step. Only to find a grander war, one harsher I would guess, a reality still born in cycle.

At an estuary, I dive forward. From depth, I rise up tall and, just once, shiver from head to toe. Arms stretch, delighted by the exploration of a new wingspan; water drips from fingers clutching air. My heads first feels gravity's tug, back and out to sea, then shoulders, hips, and all the rest splash clumsily into a reflection of the sky. I feel a current beckon, gentle and towards Juan de Fuca, to swim like the whales and feel free, at last. 

Krill, alive and thriving, pass through their baleen smiles.