"Sure I'm crazy," crooned Billie Holiday on Charlie's car radio, "crazy in love, I say."
If confronted, Charlie might have claimed he was only too tired to bother changing the station, but actually he was enjoying the schmaltzy tune, drumming the thick tempo on his steering wheel as he cruised home on a deep moonless night. He felt peaceful as a lullaby; the three or four drinks he'd had at the bar went down smooth and easy as sweat down a working man's back. He felt as if he had just emerged from a hot bath.
Putting the '93 Toyota Tercel into second gear, he started to climb what one old-timer had told him was the "third steepest hill in Ohiuh." You could tell the old-timers from the way they pronounced Ohio. An "uh" on the end like an exhausted sigh, like they were too beat to finish the long vowel and just gave up.
It was like some club you only gained membership in once you had pissed away most of your life doing crap work for crap pay in Appalachia, and instead of a ring or a lapel pin you got a twang and a gap in your teeth.
Had Charlie been less immersed in musings on his own unpromising future, he might have noticed the glow dawning atop the crest of the hill ahead of him. Instead he was unprepared for the pickup truck which, barreling toward him from the opposite slope, smashed into his right headlight hard enough to spin him rudely a full 90 degrees.
The impact was so great that he was momentarily unable to see through open eyes. When vision returned, he was looking through the vertical wrought-iron bars of a cemetery and a small, hysterical part of his brain was sure he had joined its population.
His second hormonal response, after shock, was rage.
Charlie completed the spin he had started with such speed that he nearly did enter the graveyard, spotted his prey's taillights near the bottom of the hill, and gave chase. Righteous images of revenge bloomed in his mind like blood through a clean white bandage. He could see his quarry was driving a sparkly silver Ford F-150. Probably some well-off contractor from Columbus or Cleveland. He should go back to his happy bungalow in the suburbs and stop taking honest work from real men, like Charlie, gritting his teeth and cutting his fingers on old rusted tools and drinking cheap piss beer and playing pool on a warped table with no 14 just two 12's and the bartender Brittany never remembers his name and---
His pursuit was overzealous or perhaps his reaction time was slowed by the recent head trauma. Either way, he failed to realize that the truck had slowed down upon reaching the bottom of the third steepest hill in Ohio. Charlie's second impact was too much for his already battered brain stem and he lost consciousness.
If confronted, Charlie might have claimed he was only too tired to bother changing the station, but actually he was enjoying the schmaltzy tune, drumming the thick tempo on his steering wheel as he cruised home on a deep moonless night. He felt peaceful as a lullaby; the three or four drinks he'd had at the bar went down smooth and easy as sweat down a working man's back. He felt as if he had just emerged from a hot bath.
Putting the '93 Toyota Tercel into second gear, he started to climb what one old-timer had told him was the "third steepest hill in Ohiuh." You could tell the old-timers from the way they pronounced Ohio. An "uh" on the end like an exhausted sigh, like they were too beat to finish the long vowel and just gave up.
It was like some club you only gained membership in once you had pissed away most of your life doing crap work for crap pay in Appalachia, and instead of a ring or a lapel pin you got a twang and a gap in your teeth.
Had Charlie been less immersed in musings on his own unpromising future, he might have noticed the glow dawning atop the crest of the hill ahead of him. Instead he was unprepared for the pickup truck which, barreling toward him from the opposite slope, smashed into his right headlight hard enough to spin him rudely a full 90 degrees.
The impact was so great that he was momentarily unable to see through open eyes. When vision returned, he was looking through the vertical wrought-iron bars of a cemetery and a small, hysterical part of his brain was sure he had joined its population.
His second hormonal response, after shock, was rage.
Charlie completed the spin he had started with such speed that he nearly did enter the graveyard, spotted his prey's taillights near the bottom of the hill, and gave chase. Righteous images of revenge bloomed in his mind like blood through a clean white bandage. He could see his quarry was driving a sparkly silver Ford F-150. Probably some well-off contractor from Columbus or Cleveland. He should go back to his happy bungalow in the suburbs and stop taking honest work from real men, like Charlie, gritting his teeth and cutting his fingers on old rusted tools and drinking cheap piss beer and playing pool on a warped table with no 14 just two 12's and the bartender Brittany never remembers his name and---
His pursuit was overzealous or perhaps his reaction time was slowed by the recent head trauma. Either way, he failed to realize that the truck had slowed down upon reaching the bottom of the third steepest hill in Ohio. Charlie's second impact was too much for his already battered brain stem and he lost consciousness.
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