Three Little Nails.

I could pack my car and leave right now. No one would know I was gone for at least two days. How cliche. It’s not even raining. When people leave like that, mysteriously, all-of-a-sudden-vanish, it’s always raining. The windshield wipers struggle to push all the water off the windshield, making the struggle to leave that much more dramatic, you might just die on the road, but you would be fine with that wouldn’t you? That’s why you are leaving. But it’s not raining, and I wouldn’t be fine with dieing on the road. I almost did that when I was a kid. Two electric paddles brought me back to life. I don’t want to chance it again. But I could leave right now. That could be my testimony. Right? Me and the road and my car with three nails in the back right tire no passenger side view mirror a bum radiator pipe tires that need to be rotated because they “are wearing unevenly” and water building up under my feet rotting the car from the inside out because I can’t find where the damn leak is. We would hit the road, all of us, and drive south. As far south as I can go. Miami? Maybe. I would stop there I guess. But I would keep going south. I mean to the real south. Find a nice little apartment somewhere in Mississippi or Alabama, maybe find a nice little school to coach 5th grade boys basketball at, a nice little church to sit in the pews at, a grocery store with a cute cashier, maybe a nice little diner with eggs and pancakes just how I like them, with a waitress named Sue that has seen too many orders, heard too many jokes, and can’t find enough scotch in the world to make her forget them all, and maybe I could break through and make her laugh, make her feel alive again for the first time. Sip my coffee that I all of a sudden drink, play with the napkins in the napkin dispenser, and watch the local cool kids ride by on their bikes as they laugh and joke about the new fat kid, the whole time I am evaluating them, imagining them on a basketball court, with a ball in their hands, sneakers on their feet, and me on the sideline, giving them all the confidence and encouragement they need to play the best damn basketball this little town has ever seen from their fifth-graders. At night I would write. By candle? No, too predictable. I would write by the blue glow and hum of the fly killer zapper thing outside my bedroom window. Long poems and essays and books about life and death and all the stuff in between, manuscript after manuscript that no one will know about or read until after I die, then I will have them sent to my college professors, all bound and embroidered with the title, “Life and Times of Asher Lev.” No one will know why I chose to put Asher Lev’s name on the cover of the book, unless they know that I love that name, and sometimes wish I could walk into a room full of people and say, “my name is Asher Lev.” Their heads would perk up from whatever was keeping their heads down, and they would know…this guy must have it all together. They will print my book, thousands and thousands of books will hit the stores with lots of publicity. It will be categorized “creative-non-fiction.” Full of half-truths and lies, explaining the wondrous journey I went on for the greater part of my life, leaving DC when I was 24, starting a new life in a small town in an obscure state in a huge country, leaving all my friends and families and memories and regrets and frustrations behind…I wonder if I could, would it work, would it last, how long before I thought about…and that…and why…and what happened…maybe it would last. Maybe I should take off, shake these two strangers hands and say, “sorry, I can’t move in on the 1st, I am leaving.” Because when I look at the room they want me to rent, I don’t think it will help me to forget. My damn car can’t make it. Those nails, those three stupid little nails that I drove across the country with, they mock me, hope that I will forget about them, then when I least expect it, right outside the small town in the obscure state, they will blow my tire to shreds, and I will have to call someone for help, then they will know where I am going and why, and they will tell everyone, and we will have an intervention, and I will be convinced to move back to wherever, and I will continue doing everything I do.

They stood hoping I would move in, pay the rent, and live there starting on the first.

“I am leaning towards yes, can I call you tomorrow?”

~ by kevinthomas on February 26, 2006.