and the sound of the ethnics,

holding his boy in the car

colic screams shaking the windows

cowed by the snowstorm


he thought his sister's car was tomb-like



the way the dome light made him want to sleep forever

petroleum-based interior carpeting that he could smell

and imagine melting into the boy's skin


it was a hearse, then.



Her boyfriend worked doing something in the grocer's on the first floor -

night stocking, maybe she had mentioned,

which

always made him think of Ted Bundy

and Richard Ramirez.


who would want to say their job was 'Night Stalker'?


There was a short, consonant 'ping', and the Cutlass's engine light

went on, which seemed to happen every time it was left to idle in the cold

like this.


He got a flash of the Serpentine Belt whipping undone and the

engine somehow exploding in one of those moments of all-senses shock

you often get when you're about to fall asleep

and the mind decides to conjure some bizarre cataclysm,

usually accompanied by some great 'whooshing' noise,

or,

less often,

the odd sort of explosive 'PANNG' that you might imagine happens

in the split second an atomic bomb shreds you into constituent particles.





Looking over, the light had abruptly gone out. She said it did that, sometimes.

He didn't trust it.






Alex had somehow fallen into a fussy sleep in his arms,

but a sympathetic jolt at the thought of the engine exploding brought him back in to full roar,

and the man felt impotent to do anything about the discomfort of the boy's awful colic,

except what all parents seem to do instinctively, regardless of effectiveness:


he rocked him back and forth,

saying quiet nonsense things


until even his own mind felt passive and vacant.

09/06/2012

Posted on 09/06/2012
Copyright © 2024 Ryan Narce