Little Splits

His intentions were honest now, finally.

"How long do you really wish to suffer?" Asked Robert. "That's kind of heavy now right?" He took a drag and looked up Vine, his car was calling, go home, laundry, mail that thing, call that guy, 20 other things that he wouldn't do.

"Yeah, that's good. I like that. That's good."

He thought about his day and the rest of the time ahead. At least it was sunny. The girl who was crying walked past both of them, head down, still crying.

"What's goin on with your finances?" Robert popped up.

"Oh shit, I don't know. Same thing, still chasing my tail- things are okay though- don't know why. I mean, I can't say really other than giving it up y'know? That's what I keep doin' and seems, well, still...still alive....somehow....didn't think so 4 years ago."

The trees canopied the one lane road, the hill was endless, it climbed and fell. The turns were unpredictable, there was no flow to them but this was a neighborhood so nothing made sense. People started building shit anywhere in the 70's. House after house, on-top of house, on-top of house. The stop sign gave them a few ways to go.

She stopped the car. Turned off the engine. It was a coupe, quick, stealth, she looked so fucking good behind the wheel. She flashed looks fast. He caught every one. He couldn't control himself any longer. She started it and then it all became a game of blink. Blink first. He didn't blink, he blanked and then snorted, "fuck...
"I wanna kiss you right now."

"No, you can't." She was serious. "Cause then we'll start fucking and who knows what that'll lead to."

That shut him up.

"Damn, I'm glad somebody's thinking."

A coyote jumped from the hill into the roadside. The coyote stopped and stared. The couple stared at the coyote. They all stopped for a moment and stared at each other. Then from the front left of the car, two more coyotes appeared and stood with the first, they turned and stared at the couple in the car. He turned to her and said, "I want to kiss you right now."

She looked at him and held his gaze and she too was burning in this moment. It was fierce, it was raw, it was animal, it was fucking sex coming at both of them. She opened her lips and said, "Someday, when we fly across the bridge on your bike...going 100 miles per... I will sit behind you and I will pull a chicken bone out of my boot and I will stab you in the neck."

He said he would welcome that gladly.

The coyotes were joined by about 22 other coyotes now. Some began to fight and bite
at each other but a group of them stood patiently....watching...waiting.

As he put his head down that night he wasn't aware of the fucked he had shrouded himself in. He was so far down the rabbit hole, he had covered his entire head in fucked....

All he could do was think about the distraction of her and how it might offer some sort of solution or some real fucking chaos.

But that was 4 years ago.

We couldn't have fit any more in if we tried

It was a Ford Econoline van, brown, '77, the year that punk broke...but this was '86, punk was dead, jokes were in, barely.

My father asked, "Can you get it in writing?!"

We welded the sliding door shut in upstate New York, Niagara or Buffalo, maybe Corning. The engine blew outside Greenfield, Indiana. The differential failed in Benton Harbor. Radio stolen in Joliet Illinois. Windshield smashed repeatedly about the head, neck and shoulders.

A brown van need only be brown and a van to draw suspicion...we were pulled over at least once every 6 days.

We logged mile after mile, hour after hour, endlessly for years at a time. We were not on the road, we were in the road. There was no end in site. Homer talked to us in our sleep. We lived in shadow, as ghosts of ghosts. No one wrote to us, no one could call us. We were living, breathing cartoon characters, swerving the soggy states like ding dongs.

New shoes and pool halls made me happy out there.