Like Living
He owned a
motorcycle and had a black belt in karate. He was blond and Italian. Taking
classes. Wanted to be a detective.
Brought in the cycle for show and tell; it went with an essay he read to
class. Then that news about him stepping in front of the train out of Atlantic
City. The line to Philly stops in Absecon; stops in Egg Harbor. That’s where he
did it, just near the crossing, just beyond Hoene’s Café where you can get eggs
anytime of day, and pork roll and real locally made scrapple which is a mush of
meat scraps—pork, beef, even deer around here—formed into a loaf and sliced and
then fried, damn it’s good especially when it’s crusty and I don’t mind telling
you I like it with ketchup. And a little bit of maple syrup spilling off a pancake
to sweeten it, too, is nice, and though I haven’t had any in years, it makes me
think of the south Jersey Pine Barrens, and of usefulness, a gastronomic
pragmatism, using all the parts just like in a good hot dog, what the hell, and
I don’t know why my student stepped in front of that train, except we love to
ask why, to try and understand, but I wonder about his buddies, the other cops,
his family, the Emergency folk called to the scene, the volunteers looking for
parts, how they live with it, how the sound of the train makes them feel, how
living in Jersey is like living anywhere, some train always coming, some tracks
always ending nowhere.
Hold On,
Please
When I woke
that morning and went out to my little blue car with the paint peeling off the
right side and opened the door to get in and found the note from my boyfriend
telling me why he was leaving me this note in the middle of the night instead
of knocking on the door and waking me up to talk or fuck or get some water or
maybe a beer, that he was going to shoot himself because he couldn’t stand it
anymore, I stood there reading his loopy handwriting like it was some kind of
crazy love letter or a poem or a joke or a grocery store receipt or a brown
leaf blown off the yard and into my car, but how could it get through the
window, what is this? Is it for me? Shit, I better call him, and he didn’t
answer, so I called his best friend, who said, yeah, J shot himself in the mouth with a rifle on the north end of
Brigantine beach, and I said that’s a
cruel joke, why would you make a joke like that, and the friend was dead
calm, and said it again, and I said what I said again, only this time edging
toward screaming, and you’re a jerk to
say this thing, and why are you
saying this, and he said call the Brigantine police, and so I hung up and
called, and they said, hold on, please,
and that silence was a space I know as a wound, as a pocket without a bottom,
all the loose change of my life slipping out into the dirt.
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