Zippo
James Spear
I bought a car for five hundred dollars in the afternoon. I planned to burn it in the middle of the night. Got the gasoline. Dumped it all over the upholstery and the cheap plastic inner workings. Put an old towel where a gas pump should be in an empty field. Even bought a nice zippo for the occasion. Gold not silver from one of those franchise pawnshops. I don’t smoke—disgusting. I think I’ll start soon.
I was staring into the depths of the night. In the flat, black field off the highway. I felt emptiness. As empty as I felt before I bought the car. Before I looked up on Craigslist the cheapest ad I could find. Just needed it to work once. Twice if you consider driving it home first a detail of importance.
I’ve always wanted to blow up a car. Set one on fire. I’m not a degenerate. Nor a sociopath. I wasn’t gonna destroy someone else’s car. Seemed wrong. I thought I’d buy some beater. Give cash to someone who needs it and then destroy what no one cares about. Cross my fingers the explosion doesn’t burn my face or mangle me and leave me alive.
I’m not seeking death. I feel lost. Purposeless. Searching for something to turn things around in my dead heart.
So I thought I’d blow up a car.
When I flashed the zippo, the only thing bright in the darkness other than the stars above, I wept. I thought about tossing it aside. Instead I slid it back into my coat pocket and put my hands over my tired face. I wiped the tears off my cheekbones and beard and stared at the stars for what felt like a decade.
Then I walked home. A long, cold walk.
I left the Saturn in the fields. Another reminder of what a failure I am.
***
I established a life centered on not needing anyone. Being a machine that runs on solar energy. I kept turning away areas that I didn’t want to deal with and people I didn’t want to speak to until eventually I became a day-trader. Isolated from an absurd world slowly crumbling like a sand castle while earning a few percent over the week. Creating nothing from nothing. Digital bullshit that supported a life with no inherent meaning. I’d stare at a screen day in and day out watching red and green candles move in different directions. I’d click buy and sell with my Bluetooth mouse and make a “living.” Moving funds from one account to the next so I could make sure the energy-saving lights stay on, only to do more of the same the following day. My life became a decaying merry-go-round like in a black and white photo from Chernobyl.
***
The next morning I woke up and charged out of bed. I had this feeling that I aimed too low. It was too fleeting of an event. I ruminated about grabbing a few things and getting on a plane and disappearing. Ending up in Brazil or Argentina or New Zealand. Starting over.
I settled on trying to become a hitman. Only bad people because I’m not a monster. But how does one become a killer for hire? I thought. “Ten thousand hours,” that’s what they say. “Ya gotta put in ten thousand hours before you’re a master at it.” I didn’t think I had the constitution to wipe out an entire town. That seemed like a lot of work. I definitely didn’t want it in my search history. I know nothing about the dark web. So I gave up on that dream and went back to bed.
***
When I was a young man I was anxious. Worried. People thought I was too calm but under the surface my brain was a pinball machine. It still is but at least then I felt things. I felt shame and judgement. I noticed intently when a pretty girl walked by me. I felt that excited energy. It’s been so long I don’t even miss that I don’t feel things. They seem far on the other side of the world like a dreamscape.
***
Brushing my teeth is something I do. It’s a thing. At some point in the afternoon I get around to it. I leave some space for water between when I finish my coffee and removing the irreversible stains. I do my best to hit every tooth. Top and bottom. Front to back. The electric toothbrush buzzing and buzzing like that big fly that came through the back door into the house and demands attention as it bounces around the rooms and it takes a half hour to crush it against the shower tile. Then celebrate like it’s the recording of the final out of the World Series. Fists in the air until the dopamine wears off and the guilt creeps in from slaughtering an insect.
Lately, I couldn’t help but consider shoving the electric toothbrush into my eye cavity. Just to see.
***
A day and a half had passed and I had considered starting a petting zoo, becoming a river boat gambler, joining the Peace Corps, and moving to the bayou to become a shrimp boat captain. All were definitively my path. Then all were discarded faster than all modern privacy for the use of a free app.
The constant ruminating was helpful. It made things clear. I couldn’t do things the way I had anymore. Everything had to change. Absolutely everything. Even my underwear. As much I enjoyed the comfort of boxer-briefs, it had become clear that they had done me no favors in this world and would be burned like everything else.
What does one do when nothing is valued anymore? When there is nothing to look forward to? No faith nor hope?
I think they go to the bus station. Maybe not, but that’s what I did.
~ ~ ~
“How much is a ticket?”
“Where are you headed?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I said in my most charming tone.
I realized by the eye bulging out of her head that I had been grinning at her for an uncomfortably long time. Her frizzy, orange hair reminded me of all the possessions I just burned. I was still fueled with a fuzzy feeling of adrenaline percolating across my skin like shiny wrapping paper. I had heard of minimalists. People who sell off almost all of their possessions and stick with the bare necessities and feel like the memory of being molested by a relative had been removed from their consciousness. I could see that. I felt invigorated. Definitely molestation-free. However, the bus ride had not begun yet.
The tapping of her fake nails stopped eating away at the counter. They were all painted a different off-pastel that made my stomach feel like it had eels swirling around in it.
“Where are you headed?” She sounded like a mother that knew she made a mistake ten years later. The impatience did no favors for her dark skin.
“When’s the next one out?” I said.
She cocked her head, “To where?”
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever seems the farthest…” I nodded my head with eagerness like this is normal.
She made that sound only a disappointed girl can make with her tongue and looked the monitor up and down, tapping the keys on a keyboard that might be from the nineties. The jewelry around her neck was elaborate. It didn’t go around her neck once but six or eight times. One of those. I imagined strangling her wouldn’t be very difficult if one was inclined to do so. Then I remembered my hitman days were over and thought about the lack of things to burn.
“There’s a route out to Albuquerque that you can start in two hours and another to Pensacola fifteen minutes later. Both will have connecting rides. Albuquerque multiple. It’ll take days.”
I tilted my head back and said, “hhmmm” loud and contemplatively. Thinking about if my favorite flavor of ice cream was coffee or mint chocolate chip. Then I thought—mint chocolate chip. Who the fuck are you kidding?
“Well?” she said.
It was then and there that I realized how impressive her nostrils were. They were flaring in anger and mint chocolate chip seemed to be of little importance any more. She did a wonderful job of removing all hair in the tunnels. I was convinced if I had a pencil and had the ability to delude myself into thinking she was a Russian spy, I could send it right to her brainstem with a flick of the wrist. Just like John Wick. Sadly, I’ll never know if I had what it takes.
She did her best impression of a frustrated mime and I came to it.
“Ya know what?” I leaned in playfully, “Surprise me.”
Her brown eyes widened and she sighed.
I could tell inside her cranium she was bitching about all the freaks she had to encounter working at the bus station. Couldn’t really blame her. The last time I took the bus was middle-school. I imagined there were two marionettes on either side of her. One a devil. The other an angel. The devil humping the shoulder of that awful grey shirt. The white cloth of the angel on the opposite shoulder fucking her earhole. I hoped neither had a urinary tract infection. A strange thought from a strange man, I thought. Doing my best to avoid the mundane. Unable to cope with the absurdity of existence. Settling on starting over and having to make every choice all over again.
Looking down at my boots out of a lack of visual excitement, I noticed a peculiar liquid pooling in a line ahead of them. It was an amber color and took a moment for the stench to waft into the air. My face curled to one side and I was nodding my head slowly and involuntarily. When I realized I was doing this I came to the conclusion that even my subconscious was already prepared for the elderly woman to my right squatting in broad daylight. Because this is what you get at the bus station. Oddly enough I became surprised. But not by her half-torso and the contents of her bladder aimed in my direction. When the head peeked over the beaten up petticoat that was too small for her, I couldn’t help but be surprised by the two different color eyes. One almost red it was so brown. The other a sky blue. I could only imagine what she must have looked like as a young woman. While I contemplated this she seemed frustrated that I was not bothered by her purposely pissing in my direction. It was confirmed enough when she tried to stare me down during the flow. I wanted to tell her that she should see a doctor, or at least get some antibiotics. At best she had a urinary tract infection. At worst, who knows? I was not a doctor. Just a man with clear sinuses and two basic bitch eyes.
The ticket lady scratched on the plexi-glass four times and said, “hello!”
I didn’t think she said anything previously and did my best to brush off the unnecessary rudeness.
“You’re the next one out. That’ll be 139.99.” Her chin plopped down on her ample breasts and she raised an eyebrow; she literally looked down on me.
I handed her cash and grinned like an idiot.
She leaned forward to slide the cash toward her torso when her nostrils flared. Her head tilted back in disgust. “Did you really go to the bathroom in front of my terminal?”
“No, that was--”
“I can’t believe you went and peed in front of my window!”
“I didn’t that was--”
“Take your ticket and get the hell out of here!”
“You don’t understand…” When I attempted to explain to her that it was someone else, I saw my reflection in the window. It had been a while since I’d shaved and I can grow a beard quick. Leaving myself completely ungroomed wouldn’t normally be that big a deal but the neck hair was so full I looked like a true hobo. A pubic forest connected my torso and my mustache. My eyes were sunken in and darkness befell them. My shirt had a stain that I could only surmise was coffee ice cream. I hoped so. It’s amazing the little changes you can make that cause people to look at you differently. Then I stopped trying to explain things and looked for a place to sit.
~ ~ ~
There weren’t many options available. One bench had a tiny dog sprawled on its side with a string as a leash. It led to a man in a motorized wheelchair. He looked every bit a vagabond holding that string in a disfigured hand that was bandaged. Stains of blood seeped through and I wondered if the dog did it and he just couldn’t part ways with the creature.
Another bench had a man sleeping across the entirety of the steel. His arms hugged a paper bag and his hoodie pulled up to cover the majority of his face. This led his protruding belly to be exposed to the elements. It was red from the cold. The steam from his breathe released at the bottom of his hoodie. It was quite a site.
The third and final bench had an elderly man sitting at the end. He wore an old, wool cabbie hat and was of short stature. He blew into the translucent skin of his hands and the carbon dioxide enveloped his head like napalm. I asked if he minded me sitting there and he said nothing. He crossed one spindly leg over another and took out a cigarette from his inside pocket. It hung in his mouth, unlit.
We both stared out into the grey, dreary atmosphere. Woods and a municipal building in the distance. A mostly empty parking lot in the foreground. The most visually aesthetic images within eye-view being a stop sign planted where no stop sign ever needed to be (a dead end) and the bag lady nearby, still with her ass hanging out and mean mugging me over her shoulder with those two crazy eyes.
I pulled out my zippo and lit him up without saying anything. He gave me a vacant nod and pulled away. The smoke flooded out like a ghost attacking the stop sign. It was unsuccessful in its siege.
“That’s a nice one,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He grunted and looked at it more closely. “My brother had one similar to it.”
“Is he where we’re goin’?”
“He’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”
“Most of everybody have always been dead. Life is the anomaly.”
He grunted again. Then he yanked out another cigarette and offered it. The coat pulled up on his arm and lettering I didn’t care to read appeared when he reached out. “These use to be valuable. I never would’ve offered one in the past.”
“They’re still expensive.” I took the offering.
“Now they’re just cigarettes,” he said.
We sat in silence. The cold bench made my ass numb through the sweatpants. I wondered how many winters the trees had made it through. What it must’ve looked like in the beginning? Were they all saplings together considering they’re the same height? Or did some just show up and others grew quick to belong? To fit in and survive. I knew there was an obvious answer but my lack of knowledge on the subject made it more interesting. The less you know, the more you want to. The more you know, the less you want to. The world’s rough that way.
There was a loud thwack. The man with the paper bag and belly hanging out pushed his body up with his fists and his belly became a deeper red. The hoodie slipped down when he wrestled himself up from the cement and revealed a disappointed face. He stared down at the bag, wet from the broken bottle and sighed. His face became a chimney. Then he tossed the bag across the street into the nothingness of the parking lot.
The sounds of a plane soared above us. It disappeared behind the clouds. A respite from the grey, innocuous day. I imagined where it was going? Who was on it? Why? I came to the conclusion that it’s all no different than anything else. A car. A bus. A plane. We all end up in the same place.
Then the screeching of the brakes on the bus landed about a half a basketball court away. It stayed stationary and waited for the rabble to catch on.
We all got up and made a languid trudge to the door. I realized I had sat in the cold for an indeterminable amount of time and never lit my cigarette. It was loosely held between my fingers. Forgotten. I lit up walking behind the man in the motorized wheelchair. His dog creeping in reverse. It looked at me with suspicion and disgust. I took a pull before entering and dropped it on the cement. I felt nothing.
Then the shadow of the flames appeared on the dashboard. I turned around on the steps and watched the fat drunk burn. I felt something that I haven’t felt in quite some time. Envy. I envied his ability to react with such outrage. To scream and moan. To slap all over his pants and then roll around on the cement like a smoking Pac-Man from both ends.
After the fire reflected in my iris for a moment, I helped put the fat man out with my bare hands. No one said a word about it. It was like it never happened or that it was simply commonplace. I felt different and not only because my hands congealed. For a brief moment, I felt joy while slapping the fire out and afterwards I thought—what an interesting way to start this journey into the unknown?
~ ~ ~
The bus didn’t move for some time because of the accident. The band of damaged outsiders sat in relative silence. The driver immediately used the fire as an excuse to take a piss break and call a friend. In my time of reflection on that uncomfortable and tattered faux-leather seat, cold and immobile, I flicked the zippo and there was no spark. I flicked it up a couple more times and nothing. It was done.
Then I grinned. One of those big grins when something small ignites a happy memory from your childhood. It held for an unusually long time and I realized I am nothing. And I was okay with that.
I leaned to my right and looked directly at the bag lady. She seemed determined to intimidate. Her eyes became narrow and somehow angrier as she clutched the ends of the bags. I placed the zippo on the seat next to her and slid it eight inches across with the back of my hand. She surveyed down and back to me with suspicion. Her blue eye quivered and she sneaked up and snatched it and then slid back down like a boxer in the corner of the ring.
~ ~ ~
Later on, I saw her staring at the gold of the zippo with both hands enrapt around it and could’ve sworn I saw the dim inception of a smile.
The door extended like an accordion and then closed. It kept the cold out in an instant. The bus left the station. The grinding of the gears of the Greyhound reminded me of how I use to grind my teeth.
We were a small community of lost people. Disfigured physically or emotionally or both. Going to somewhere no one ever goes. Quite possibly no one other than the bus driver knew where we were headed. We sailed off like explorers of a wasteland. I knew that traveling this way was another failure. Another nominal choice within an insignificant lifespan. But I didn’t care. Because I couldn’t stop fucking grinning.
James Spear
I bought a car for five hundred dollars in the afternoon. I planned to burn it in the middle of the night. Got the gasoline. Dumped it all over the upholstery and the cheap plastic inner workings. Put an old towel where a gas pump should be in an empty field. Even bought a nice zippo for the occasion. Gold not silver from one of those franchise pawnshops. I don’t smoke—disgusting. I think I’ll start soon.
I was staring into the depths of the night. In the flat, black field off the highway. I felt emptiness. As empty as I felt before I bought the car. Before I looked up on Craigslist the cheapest ad I could find. Just needed it to work once. Twice if you consider driving it home first a detail of importance.
I’ve always wanted to blow up a car. Set one on fire. I’m not a degenerate. Nor a sociopath. I wasn’t gonna destroy someone else’s car. Seemed wrong. I thought I’d buy some beater. Give cash to someone who needs it and then destroy what no one cares about. Cross my fingers the explosion doesn’t burn my face or mangle me and leave me alive.
I’m not seeking death. I feel lost. Purposeless. Searching for something to turn things around in my dead heart.
So I thought I’d blow up a car.
When I flashed the zippo, the only thing bright in the darkness other than the stars above, I wept. I thought about tossing it aside. Instead I slid it back into my coat pocket and put my hands over my tired face. I wiped the tears off my cheekbones and beard and stared at the stars for what felt like a decade.
Then I walked home. A long, cold walk.
I left the Saturn in the fields. Another reminder of what a failure I am.
***
I established a life centered on not needing anyone. Being a machine that runs on solar energy. I kept turning away areas that I didn’t want to deal with and people I didn’t want to speak to until eventually I became a day-trader. Isolated from an absurd world slowly crumbling like a sand castle while earning a few percent over the week. Creating nothing from nothing. Digital bullshit that supported a life with no inherent meaning. I’d stare at a screen day in and day out watching red and green candles move in different directions. I’d click buy and sell with my Bluetooth mouse and make a “living.” Moving funds from one account to the next so I could make sure the energy-saving lights stay on, only to do more of the same the following day. My life became a decaying merry-go-round like in a black and white photo from Chernobyl.
***
The next morning I woke up and charged out of bed. I had this feeling that I aimed too low. It was too fleeting of an event. I ruminated about grabbing a few things and getting on a plane and disappearing. Ending up in Brazil or Argentina or New Zealand. Starting over.
I settled on trying to become a hitman. Only bad people because I’m not a monster. But how does one become a killer for hire? I thought. “Ten thousand hours,” that’s what they say. “Ya gotta put in ten thousand hours before you’re a master at it.” I didn’t think I had the constitution to wipe out an entire town. That seemed like a lot of work. I definitely didn’t want it in my search history. I know nothing about the dark web. So I gave up on that dream and went back to bed.
***
When I was a young man I was anxious. Worried. People thought I was too calm but under the surface my brain was a pinball machine. It still is but at least then I felt things. I felt shame and judgement. I noticed intently when a pretty girl walked by me. I felt that excited energy. It’s been so long I don’t even miss that I don’t feel things. They seem far on the other side of the world like a dreamscape.
***
Brushing my teeth is something I do. It’s a thing. At some point in the afternoon I get around to it. I leave some space for water between when I finish my coffee and removing the irreversible stains. I do my best to hit every tooth. Top and bottom. Front to back. The electric toothbrush buzzing and buzzing like that big fly that came through the back door into the house and demands attention as it bounces around the rooms and it takes a half hour to crush it against the shower tile. Then celebrate like it’s the recording of the final out of the World Series. Fists in the air until the dopamine wears off and the guilt creeps in from slaughtering an insect.
Lately, I couldn’t help but consider shoving the electric toothbrush into my eye cavity. Just to see.
***
A day and a half had passed and I had considered starting a petting zoo, becoming a river boat gambler, joining the Peace Corps, and moving to the bayou to become a shrimp boat captain. All were definitively my path. Then all were discarded faster than all modern privacy for the use of a free app.
The constant ruminating was helpful. It made things clear. I couldn’t do things the way I had anymore. Everything had to change. Absolutely everything. Even my underwear. As much I enjoyed the comfort of boxer-briefs, it had become clear that they had done me no favors in this world and would be burned like everything else.
What does one do when nothing is valued anymore? When there is nothing to look forward to? No faith nor hope?
I think they go to the bus station. Maybe not, but that’s what I did.
~ ~ ~
“How much is a ticket?”
“Where are you headed?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I said in my most charming tone.
I realized by the eye bulging out of her head that I had been grinning at her for an uncomfortably long time. Her frizzy, orange hair reminded me of all the possessions I just burned. I was still fueled with a fuzzy feeling of adrenaline percolating across my skin like shiny wrapping paper. I had heard of minimalists. People who sell off almost all of their possessions and stick with the bare necessities and feel like the memory of being molested by a relative had been removed from their consciousness. I could see that. I felt invigorated. Definitely molestation-free. However, the bus ride had not begun yet.
The tapping of her fake nails stopped eating away at the counter. They were all painted a different off-pastel that made my stomach feel like it had eels swirling around in it.
“Where are you headed?” She sounded like a mother that knew she made a mistake ten years later. The impatience did no favors for her dark skin.
“When’s the next one out?” I said.
She cocked her head, “To where?”
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever seems the farthest…” I nodded my head with eagerness like this is normal.
She made that sound only a disappointed girl can make with her tongue and looked the monitor up and down, tapping the keys on a keyboard that might be from the nineties. The jewelry around her neck was elaborate. It didn’t go around her neck once but six or eight times. One of those. I imagined strangling her wouldn’t be very difficult if one was inclined to do so. Then I remembered my hitman days were over and thought about the lack of things to burn.
“There’s a route out to Albuquerque that you can start in two hours and another to Pensacola fifteen minutes later. Both will have connecting rides. Albuquerque multiple. It’ll take days.”
I tilted my head back and said, “hhmmm” loud and contemplatively. Thinking about if my favorite flavor of ice cream was coffee or mint chocolate chip. Then I thought—mint chocolate chip. Who the fuck are you kidding?
“Well?” she said.
It was then and there that I realized how impressive her nostrils were. They were flaring in anger and mint chocolate chip seemed to be of little importance any more. She did a wonderful job of removing all hair in the tunnels. I was convinced if I had a pencil and had the ability to delude myself into thinking she was a Russian spy, I could send it right to her brainstem with a flick of the wrist. Just like John Wick. Sadly, I’ll never know if I had what it takes.
She did her best impression of a frustrated mime and I came to it.
“Ya know what?” I leaned in playfully, “Surprise me.”
Her brown eyes widened and she sighed.
I could tell inside her cranium she was bitching about all the freaks she had to encounter working at the bus station. Couldn’t really blame her. The last time I took the bus was middle-school. I imagined there were two marionettes on either side of her. One a devil. The other an angel. The devil humping the shoulder of that awful grey shirt. The white cloth of the angel on the opposite shoulder fucking her earhole. I hoped neither had a urinary tract infection. A strange thought from a strange man, I thought. Doing my best to avoid the mundane. Unable to cope with the absurdity of existence. Settling on starting over and having to make every choice all over again.
Looking down at my boots out of a lack of visual excitement, I noticed a peculiar liquid pooling in a line ahead of them. It was an amber color and took a moment for the stench to waft into the air. My face curled to one side and I was nodding my head slowly and involuntarily. When I realized I was doing this I came to the conclusion that even my subconscious was already prepared for the elderly woman to my right squatting in broad daylight. Because this is what you get at the bus station. Oddly enough I became surprised. But not by her half-torso and the contents of her bladder aimed in my direction. When the head peeked over the beaten up petticoat that was too small for her, I couldn’t help but be surprised by the two different color eyes. One almost red it was so brown. The other a sky blue. I could only imagine what she must have looked like as a young woman. While I contemplated this she seemed frustrated that I was not bothered by her purposely pissing in my direction. It was confirmed enough when she tried to stare me down during the flow. I wanted to tell her that she should see a doctor, or at least get some antibiotics. At best she had a urinary tract infection. At worst, who knows? I was not a doctor. Just a man with clear sinuses and two basic bitch eyes.
The ticket lady scratched on the plexi-glass four times and said, “hello!”
I didn’t think she said anything previously and did my best to brush off the unnecessary rudeness.
“You’re the next one out. That’ll be 139.99.” Her chin plopped down on her ample breasts and she raised an eyebrow; she literally looked down on me.
I handed her cash and grinned like an idiot.
She leaned forward to slide the cash toward her torso when her nostrils flared. Her head tilted back in disgust. “Did you really go to the bathroom in front of my terminal?”
“No, that was--”
“I can’t believe you went and peed in front of my window!”
“I didn’t that was--”
“Take your ticket and get the hell out of here!”
“You don’t understand…” When I attempted to explain to her that it was someone else, I saw my reflection in the window. It had been a while since I’d shaved and I can grow a beard quick. Leaving myself completely ungroomed wouldn’t normally be that big a deal but the neck hair was so full I looked like a true hobo. A pubic forest connected my torso and my mustache. My eyes were sunken in and darkness befell them. My shirt had a stain that I could only surmise was coffee ice cream. I hoped so. It’s amazing the little changes you can make that cause people to look at you differently. Then I stopped trying to explain things and looked for a place to sit.
~ ~ ~
There weren’t many options available. One bench had a tiny dog sprawled on its side with a string as a leash. It led to a man in a motorized wheelchair. He looked every bit a vagabond holding that string in a disfigured hand that was bandaged. Stains of blood seeped through and I wondered if the dog did it and he just couldn’t part ways with the creature.
Another bench had a man sleeping across the entirety of the steel. His arms hugged a paper bag and his hoodie pulled up to cover the majority of his face. This led his protruding belly to be exposed to the elements. It was red from the cold. The steam from his breathe released at the bottom of his hoodie. It was quite a site.
The third and final bench had an elderly man sitting at the end. He wore an old, wool cabbie hat and was of short stature. He blew into the translucent skin of his hands and the carbon dioxide enveloped his head like napalm. I asked if he minded me sitting there and he said nothing. He crossed one spindly leg over another and took out a cigarette from his inside pocket. It hung in his mouth, unlit.
We both stared out into the grey, dreary atmosphere. Woods and a municipal building in the distance. A mostly empty parking lot in the foreground. The most visually aesthetic images within eye-view being a stop sign planted where no stop sign ever needed to be (a dead end) and the bag lady nearby, still with her ass hanging out and mean mugging me over her shoulder with those two crazy eyes.
I pulled out my zippo and lit him up without saying anything. He gave me a vacant nod and pulled away. The smoke flooded out like a ghost attacking the stop sign. It was unsuccessful in its siege.
“That’s a nice one,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He grunted and looked at it more closely. “My brother had one similar to it.”
“Is he where we’re goin’?”
“He’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”
“Most of everybody have always been dead. Life is the anomaly.”
He grunted again. Then he yanked out another cigarette and offered it. The coat pulled up on his arm and lettering I didn’t care to read appeared when he reached out. “These use to be valuable. I never would’ve offered one in the past.”
“They’re still expensive.” I took the offering.
“Now they’re just cigarettes,” he said.
We sat in silence. The cold bench made my ass numb through the sweatpants. I wondered how many winters the trees had made it through. What it must’ve looked like in the beginning? Were they all saplings together considering they’re the same height? Or did some just show up and others grew quick to belong? To fit in and survive. I knew there was an obvious answer but my lack of knowledge on the subject made it more interesting. The less you know, the more you want to. The more you know, the less you want to. The world’s rough that way.
There was a loud thwack. The man with the paper bag and belly hanging out pushed his body up with his fists and his belly became a deeper red. The hoodie slipped down when he wrestled himself up from the cement and revealed a disappointed face. He stared down at the bag, wet from the broken bottle and sighed. His face became a chimney. Then he tossed the bag across the street into the nothingness of the parking lot.
The sounds of a plane soared above us. It disappeared behind the clouds. A respite from the grey, innocuous day. I imagined where it was going? Who was on it? Why? I came to the conclusion that it’s all no different than anything else. A car. A bus. A plane. We all end up in the same place.
Then the screeching of the brakes on the bus landed about a half a basketball court away. It stayed stationary and waited for the rabble to catch on.
We all got up and made a languid trudge to the door. I realized I had sat in the cold for an indeterminable amount of time and never lit my cigarette. It was loosely held between my fingers. Forgotten. I lit up walking behind the man in the motorized wheelchair. His dog creeping in reverse. It looked at me with suspicion and disgust. I took a pull before entering and dropped it on the cement. I felt nothing.
Then the shadow of the flames appeared on the dashboard. I turned around on the steps and watched the fat drunk burn. I felt something that I haven’t felt in quite some time. Envy. I envied his ability to react with such outrage. To scream and moan. To slap all over his pants and then roll around on the cement like a smoking Pac-Man from both ends.
After the fire reflected in my iris for a moment, I helped put the fat man out with my bare hands. No one said a word about it. It was like it never happened or that it was simply commonplace. I felt different and not only because my hands congealed. For a brief moment, I felt joy while slapping the fire out and afterwards I thought—what an interesting way to start this journey into the unknown?
~ ~ ~
The bus didn’t move for some time because of the accident. The band of damaged outsiders sat in relative silence. The driver immediately used the fire as an excuse to take a piss break and call a friend. In my time of reflection on that uncomfortable and tattered faux-leather seat, cold and immobile, I flicked the zippo and there was no spark. I flicked it up a couple more times and nothing. It was done.
Then I grinned. One of those big grins when something small ignites a happy memory from your childhood. It held for an unusually long time and I realized I am nothing. And I was okay with that.
I leaned to my right and looked directly at the bag lady. She seemed determined to intimidate. Her eyes became narrow and somehow angrier as she clutched the ends of the bags. I placed the zippo on the seat next to her and slid it eight inches across with the back of my hand. She surveyed down and back to me with suspicion. Her blue eye quivered and she sneaked up and snatched it and then slid back down like a boxer in the corner of the ring.
~ ~ ~
Later on, I saw her staring at the gold of the zippo with both hands enrapt around it and could’ve sworn I saw the dim inception of a smile.
The door extended like an accordion and then closed. It kept the cold out in an instant. The bus left the station. The grinding of the gears of the Greyhound reminded me of how I use to grind my teeth.
We were a small community of lost people. Disfigured physically or emotionally or both. Going to somewhere no one ever goes. Quite possibly no one other than the bus driver knew where we were headed. We sailed off like explorers of a wasteland. I knew that traveling this way was another failure. Another nominal choice within an insignificant lifespan. But I didn’t care. Because I couldn’t stop fucking grinning.