Intersections

© Pete Carter

The Girl

April held it in her hands.

Looking at the laminated portrait in the daylight, she decided it wasn't her worst picture.

Her smile was close to perfect now that she had her braces removed. She thought that having the hairdresser cut her hair in straight bangs this time around gave her an ‘Egyptian' look that made her look cool.

The wrinkled old bag inside at the registry had tried to convince April that each of her previous seven tries at the photograph were just fine, but April knew adults were often in a hurry to go nowhere to do nothing.

And April would not be rushed on this day.

It took very little wheedling to have her father drive with her to the driving test and then have him leave with her mother right after. That way she could drive home all by herself when she was ready.

Upon passing the test, her parents had left April with the usual bucketful of, “Be careful”, “Watch your rearview” and blah, blah, blah. Why they couldn't get it through their heads that all people eventually grow up and become adults was beyond her.

They weren't bad parents; they just couldn't see reality when it came to her. It was easy for them to accept things like thousands being killed in some far-away war, daily increases in gas prices or even a black president, but if she stayed out past the midnight curfew it would cause a tiny world-ending apocalypse right there in the living room.

Poking the remote with her sharpened thumb nail, she climbed into her newly-purchased 2002 VW Jetta that was the perfect color red.

April pulled out of the parking lot, took a left on Spring Street and waited at the light before taking the right onto McLennan Ave.

In the middle of McLennan Avenue stood an assortment of orange and white clad men intent on destroying the road. A fat man, whose hairy belly peeked out of the top of his pants, stood in the middle waving flags like an enormous dumpy bird and directed her to drive around the destruction to his left.

But in the middle of the road she was diverted to sat a filthy puddle. Black and deep with a new slick of multicolored oil floating atop; there was no way she was driving her car through that and then driving to the mall to meet her friends.

April stopped the Jetta in the middle of the road much to the consternation of surrounding motorists and the jiggling flagman, who became more agitated and began waving his flags in more and more frantic circles and yelling.

The radio was loud enough so she couldn't hear the fat idiot, thank God.

An opportunity presented itself as the situation continued to degenerate with her refusing to move, the surrounding cars beeping constant choruses and the red-faced flagman moving closer to a coronary, in the form of a side alley. It was plenty big enough and after a quick right that included some more flag waving one would not find in the manual and a few displaced orange cones, she scampered down the side street.

The Jetta cruised down the alley and she smiled congratulating herself on avoiding the pile of muck when she hit a bump.

It started as a knocking noise in the front of the car, rapidly travelled towards the rear tires and kind of hovered right around the trunk. It was as if some was tapping on the floor asking for entry. She slowed down and then sped up rapidly to shake it loose, but the irritating knock remained. Stopping the car, April got out and went to look at the rear tire.

Sticking out of the right rear tire was an arm.

She nearly fainted right then and as her vision cleared and gorge receded was able to focus. It was clothed in a plaid sleeve that was chaffed and worn around the cuff and ended with a hand clenched in a gnarled fist. The arm disappeared into the blackness of the wheel well. Who would leave an arm in an alley? Some sort of rejected medical waste more than likely from some truck, she decided.

April contemplated for a minute or two and then decided if she drove to the mall with an arm sticking out of her tire; it would definitely affect her popularity. She had worked so hard gaining friends after growing up a fat, ugly girl. And going home like this was out of the question.

Her parents would be totally pissed.

She would have to listen to, “Why weren't you being careful?” or something else remarkably stupid like, “We told you not to run over people!”; like she planned this or something.

April went back the car and grabbed some paper from the front seat, which happen to be a tri-fold flyer from the registry of motor vehicles about driving safely and after going back to the tire, wrapped the wrist and being careful not to damage a nail gave a pull.

The arm resisted even though the hand seemed to open in submission. As the tug of war progressed over a few minutes, the young girl finally realized leverage was the answer and placed one high-heeled foot upon the rear quarter and tugged.

April just barely retained her balance as the arm relented and came free from the wheel well. She held the arm up and saw the ragged flannel sleeve end abruptly in a mass of what looked like shattered bone and dripping tendon.

She held it away from her and dropped it in a meaty thud. “Yuck”.

The car didn't look any worse for the wear except the almost unnoticeable spattering, so she decided leave the arm to its own devices, climbed back in her car and drove away.

The Boy

He found little relief in sleep.

To Glenn, it was always a requirement of life and although he never enjoyed those pieces of dark inactivity he came to understand their necessity.

Even growing up, although he was otherwise termed a well mannered young boy, his episodic bouts when it came to bedtime reached legendary status among the family.

Glenn would start right after lunch devising plans to avoid sleep; intricate, elaborate plans that, to his imagination, involved phantom deliveries, synchronized lights switching on and off and dryer alarms. While in his parent's reality it was akin to something more like hiding someplace new in the big old house using sheets and cardboard.

When he was very young, it was quite easy to hide because of his size. But as he grew larger it became more difficult to find those ingenious places. Glenn fought this by becoming more and more inventive in his spot selection.

His parents always viewed this as part of the parenting game and in truth enjoyed hunting for him as much as he liked to hide. They would discuss hunt strategies over dinner and he would listen, silently smiling and counting the extra hours he would glean before bedtime.

The main rule being once found he would go directly to bed, after brushing his teeth, without the regular child-type whining and accompanying adult cajoling. This brought them all endless hours of enjoyment until the night he nearly died.

Now at the age of twenty-five, Glenn had grown up to be an unremarkable man in an unexceptional job that involved people talking at great lengths about the most insignificant things.

At this point of his life, he was happiest when away from work. The constant battle it provided made him sometimes wish he could be small again; to be able to hide someplace tiny and dark so responsibility wouldn't find him. Instead, he had to settle for escape whenever possible. So when an opportunity presented itself in the form of a coffee or lunch break, Glenn would go on long walks. A particular opportunity found him walking down Courtland Blvd.

The Dilemma

Like most homeless people, he never started out with that particular goal in mind.

Tom's childhood was a filled with a smattering of victories and death. The victories came in the form of the regional spelling bee finals where he advanced through the ranks spelling such gems as, “Burnoose”, “Apoplectic” and toughies like “Disambiguation”; the deaths due to his proclivity for playing with matches.

His road to homelessness began its first step on the day he attended the November spelling bee semi-finals. Tom had been cutting a wide swath through the competition that day and all that had been left was one girl between him and the trophy. He studied Valerie's Spelling Bee Supplement during the intermission before the final, flanked by his mother and prayed to stop sweating. His mother told him to stop fiddling with his nose.

He never really liked his snub nose. It was a pimple of a thing that sat in the middle of his face. Tom would try pulling and prodding at it constantly, subliminally in some cases, with the idea that perhaps unremitting stimulation would make it grow.

Kids, of course, would always think the worst and termed him ‘Nose picker Tom'; a moniker that stuck with him throughout his short educational career.

But here in his glory days, all that seemed petty and Valerie Caruso was all that stood between him and the state regional.

She wore her auburn hair in twisted rolls that drooped onto her shoulders, wore red glasses that perfectly accentuated her braces and sported a glint in her eye that thinly veneered a competitive spirit that wouldn't stop at anything but total victory.

The two of them, the last two, stood upon the stage glistening in adolescent glandular sweat under the bright lights of the old wooden stage.

They traded blows back and forth dispensing of the toughest words the giver, Mrs. Katzenbaum, could give them until she gave that ‘word' to Tom.

The word that ruined Tom's life.

Floccinaucinihilipilification.

And even though he stalled by asking for derivation, use in a sentence, part of speech, language of origin, and alternate pronunciations, he ended up doubling the last “l” where none should have been doubled at all. His mother told him later in the car that he should have remembered that etymology through sound translation follows clear-cut rules and rarely, if ever, uses the letters l, q, v, x, or y, or the letter c unless followed by h, and words almost always end in either a vowel or the consonant n, although it had nothing to do with that particular word.

When Valerie Caruso stood up and spelled the simplistic word “Knickerbockers”, she would be crowned queen and move on to the nationals. He was knocked out.

That was when he knew she had to die, so he lit her house on fire.

She lived in an apartment building.

The inferno killed dozens; some silently, almost peacefully, in their sleep suffocated by the black haze of smoke.

Others, young and old, died after the fire burnt their flesh to ashes while screaming in agony. Valerie was out at the time.

He laughed when they told him about the funerals and asked how they could be held with just the bits of bone they sifted out from amongst the charred wood.

Tom was convicted and sent to a state hospital. Although receiving the best in state provided medical treatment over the years, he continued burning structures throughout his life. After being released from one program, he would burn something else down immediately.

He always kept a book of matches in his top shirt pocket, when not in an institution, and had some, until recently, in the top pocket of his plaid shirt.

He had, as of date, been living in an alley off of McLennan Ave.

What was left of his mortal coil was presently residing on the top of the axle of April's red Jetta.

Intersection

Glenn found himself standing on the corner of Courtland Blvd. and 9th street waiting for the image of the little man walking to appear on the opposite corner.

A red Jetta pelted out of an alley across the street and attempted to turn a sharp right on Courtland. At the moment the car's front wheels were turned to the stops, what was left of Tom, who had been wedged above the rear rigid axle, fell out and jammed the right rear emergency brake.

The car turned over in an elegant barrel roll, hitting a passing garbage truck before landing on the roof which sent sparks popping across the pavement and sliding into a pole.

Tom's remains ejected from the pin-wheeling car and through a bookstore window destroying the display of the new self-help book entitled, “You Can be a Better Person.”

Glenn saw this all happen scant feet in front of him and for some reason ran to the car. If he had depended upon his lifetime of training, he should have run as far away as his feet could carry him, but contrary to previous actions and life experiences, he ran towards the wreck.

When he got to the car, he fell immediately to his knees and yelled, “Can you hear me in there?”

The road had been relatively quiet in this afternoon hour and the few onlookers that were on the street stopped in silence.

“Can you hear me!” he said again, as a meager crowd stood mute.

From somewhere in the wreck that used to be a car, from someplace in the mangled mass of German steel came a response.

“Yes...I'm here.”

He turned his head and commanded the crowd, “Call for help!”, then he swiveled back to the voice in the car and said, “Don't worry, help is coming. What's your name?”

“ April. I'm stuck under the seat and can't move, God can't anyone help?”

“Relax, April. I know something about small places and you'll be fine.”

“But, I'm so scared and God it hurts.” She started sobbing.

“Listen April,

‘When I was a small boy I loved to hide. I loved to find somewhere warm and dark and listen to them wander around the house looking for me. I felt so secure in the little places and knew that someone who loved me was searching for me.

There was one afternoon I found the best place ever to hide. It was in a cold air duct behind an ancient grill in the hallway. The bolts were loose, so it took very little coaxing to swing it out and squirm in feet first.

The duct seemed to shrink the further I squirmed in, but my flannel Transformers pajamas seemed to glide across the sheet metal of duct. I had to cross my arms in an ‘X' across my chest to finish getting all the way in and pulled the grate back over the hall in the wall with a piece of string I tied on it. The duct accepted me there. It seemed so lonely before and now it held me tightly.

I breathed shallowly while my parents searched for me, laughing quietly to myself while the searched all my usual haunts. I could see their feet tapping in exasperation through the grate as they met in the hallway.

After some time, they ultimately gave up and shouted out the, “Elephants are free” pass code and waited for me to appear.

When I tried to leave the vent, something grabbed both the slippers sewn into my feet. The duct snatched the tips of my toes and held my feet tight. Struggle as I might, my legs just slid inside my all-in-ones.

It was then I decided to yell for help and the duct squeezed me tight. It didn't want me to leave being lonely for so long. I could feel its gentle hum trying to lull me to sleep; telling me a bedtime story.

I couldn't yell, could barely draw a breath as it coiled tighter when something starting nipping at my feet. Something that must have lived in the heater down below reached up and grabbed my ankle with sharp fingernails.

It talked in wheezy breaths and promised not to hurt me as long as I kept quiet, allowed it to protect me and as long as I remained true to its love.

I was there for hours until a police dog found me in the grate. They ripped out the wall and peeled back the duct like a can opener. I can still remember the metal screams as they cut through her skin and the joy it felt as they pulled me to safety.'

“Were you O.K.?” said April.

“Yeah. They said my toes got stuck on the folds of the sheet metal and if I'd moved around much more, I could have fallen twenty feet through the duct. So don't you worry in there, this looks like a good car and she'll keep you safe until help comes.”

“Do you think?” she said, the crying reduced to sniffles.

“Sure.” He got down as low as he could and reached up through a small crevice between the smashed roof and the driver's door. Glenn reached around until he was up to elbow and lying flat on his stomach. He felt something; her hand.

“Do you feel that?”

“Yeah, it's my hand.” She gripped his hand tighter from deep inside the wreckage.

They held hands until the ambulance arrived.