A V of Geese

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Sarah looked around for Steve but he was nowhere to be seen among the bobbing, strobelit heads, all twitching nervously, sweaty under the hot pink lights. Sarah cruised the bar and walked down the line of hems and heels looking for Steve’s familiar cement shoes. Prior to this, the two of them had been dancing away when the lights dimmed and the smoke machines began pumping for a special number.

Sarah sighed and reached for her travel mug and gazed out the windshield at a clumsy V of geese, their formation flapping perhaps twenty feet above the highway she always drove down. She drove underneath the slowly moving geese in disbelief. Their shadows crossed the highway and windshield. Such a clumsy low-flying but effective progression of animal will here where she expected only tailpipes. She had been thinking about her conversation in bed with Steve that morning, and the stunning beauty of the geese seemed like an argument against monogamy. Geese=natural (beautiful); monogamy=artificial (therefore ugly). But then she knew Steve would respond that the geese were astonishing in their ability to communicate and move effectively in a flock. It was their organization and consideration for one another that was astonishing, not the play of some wild impulse. She wondered about it and saw the geese stream through the mirror on her left and finally in the rearview mirror. The sun shone purple over the prairie. Sarah reached for a cassette and shoved it into the deck. It would be dark soon. She staged a losing battle with her will then smoked a cigarette.

Losing. Some of us were born to lose. Some of us fail classes by the way we walk in the first day. Some of us are denied applications for jobs on sight. Some of us—well, me—are walking down the highway too discouraged to even raise a thumb. Why allow the cars the dignity of not stopping? Ignore them. I’m losing. If they stop it’s just pity. I’m walking myself to death. I know of no better futility then to sand my legs away with miles of asphalt. Croaking buzzards wheeze by. I see a mirage in the foggy dusk: a barn. Keep walking. Oof. Slow down. Hey, they’re slowing down. Stopping. Looks like a woman traveling alone. I don’t want to approach her, I’m probably frightening.

Frightening lightning brightening the sky in a flicker flash rumble crash. Lightning flickers across the prairies of Piatt county touching every blade of grass. Lightning warns of impending thunder that rattles the dishes in the cupboard and makes the cows moo. Lightning swoops over the city through radios and televisions and windows and cars and streets and alleys. Lightning lights up the telephone poles and rains needles into the receiver. A wail somewhere and lightning is there inspecting every facet and crevice. Lightning sees a perfect cross-section of time, an elaborate photograph strewn across a landscape etched in golden profile. In a flash of lightning a story in which no time passes takes place.

Golden fish turn on axes. Watch the people swimming by. Watch one approach the other. Watch the other react. Wonder about food. Watch them flicker and hear their muffled shouts. See one of them push the other. See the other react. Look as one of them produces a glint. Look as the other one turns red. Wonder about the food.

Red flows through the pipes. Red makes the board light up. Red makes a noise. Red stops and starts again. Red wanders across the floor beneath the fishtank. Red trickles into a vent and meanders down angled dirty metal until it ends at a grid hanging above a long drop drop drop drop drop onto white carpeting. From across the white room behind a television, laughter becomes a gasp and footsteps clomp across the ceiling of the apartment below, whose occupant, Steve, looks up as he hears the yell. He turns down the television. The upstairs neighbor is running back and forth as Steve tries to guess what happened and arranges sliced bananas on peanut-buttered bread.

A few moments later Dave heard the person upstairs turn the television back on. Dave held his breath until he was sure nobody was coming down into the basement. Then he screwed the lid back on the peanut butter jar, dumped it into his knapsack, crawled out from behind the washing machine, and climbed quietly up the steps leading out of the basement. He pushed his weight up against the metal door and tried to open it quietly but—

“Buttered toast, please.” The waitress looks at me funny but I grin because that’s all I can afford. The waitress looks at Sarah. “Get him the Captain’s Breakfast and me too. I’ve got money today.” I feel pretty awkward on the stool. This woman has picked me up by the side of a road in a thunderstorm and brought me all the way to Le Roy for breakfast. I suppose I owe her my life story. I’d rather she think I was dangerous than know. But she takes a lot of papers from her bag and starts grading them. Doesn’t say a word.

Dangerous driving has resulted in this accident. The truck is overturned and surrounded by a blaze of uniforms and taillights and orange troopers wave the cars by slowly. One of them looks at Dave as if she recognizes him. But how can she in the dark rain headlights? He wants to stop to see if he can help but it’s important that he doesn’t right now. He’s got to keep driving at exactly one mile an hour below the speed limit and continue until he’s in a different state, at least. He will need more gasoline soon. He exits at Le Roy where the glow of oil logos above the rooftops lure him. He is quite apprehensive when he pulls into the parking lot and expects people to stare.

“Apprehensive?” she asks. I try to answer yes but my throat is dry and as I finish my third glass of icewater I realize she isn’t talking to me but to the student whose paper she’s grading. Now that I know I don’t have to entertain her I’m quite hungry. Ready to eat in fact. I think the rain is going to stop soon. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be much to lose. A wet figure sits down beside me and orders coffee. Now I am afraid he is going to try to start a conversation with me. In his reflection on the top of the sugar shaker I notice he has a scar above his eye like mine.

Sugar pours down into his coffee and he drops the spoon into the black depths and moves it around. Sugar is strewn over my pancakes. It is in packets piled in dispensers. It’s in glass containers on the bar. It’s in big bags in the storeroom. There’s some in Sarah’s glove compartment. There’s some in the apartment I abandoned. There’s some in Steve’s peanut butter. There’s some in the apartment above Steve’s where the sobbing is only now subsiding. There’s some in the apartment above that and the forensic team carefully dusted it for fingerprints. The dust they used was dark grey in color.

Grey cat scuttles across the tiled roof arching his back against the crescent moon and purring loudly. Grey cat is now three floors above the nasty dogs and lets the neighborhood know it with a mewling purr. Grey cat hops into a windowbox and looks in. A flash of lightning reveals a red stain in an outline on the floor, and a second flash reveals … goldfish. Grey cat manages the flimsy screen and gets in. On the floor is a glove. Grey cat leaves dark grey pawprints, circling the perimeter of the room. Beside the fishtank there is a pile of books which makes it easy for grey cat to get a paw in. He bats the fish for awhile and then decides to see what else is in the apartment. A sink for drinking water from. Garbage to knock over. Which causes a yelp from beneath the floor.

Flimsy premise, ancient narrative, murder. Recognizable from any angle. So recognizable, in fact, that other things were recognizable as it. The lightning, a red stain, a forensic team. So familiar. Are its parts interchangeable?

“Interchangeable like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” she is saying as we leave, “nonmonogamy.” “But the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle aren’t interchangeable.” I reply. “Look,” she says, “do you want to get a room?” “Well, no…” “I’ve never done it with a stranger before; Steve said it’s great.” “No, actually. I’d rather just walk.” “Dave Smith?” “No, officer, I’m Mike.” “You’re under arrest.” “For what?” “Look at the scar. That’s the guy, all right.” “Ma’am, are you with this man?” “No, we were just talking.” “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Metal ran in an extensive and intricate network in streams across the countryside and densely through the city. Metal channeled the blood, and metal screws held Sarah’s glasses together as she left the parking lot and exited Le Roy onto the freeway. She felt sad to have missed a chance to get involved with a crazed dangerous person like Mike. Had he really committed a murder before she picked him up? She thought about the geese and drove home. The metal surrounded her and insulated her. The metal basement door had been rusty and buckled and screeched. The curtains two floors up had parted as metal rings slid along a metal rod. The metal tags hanging from the cat’s collar had tinkled as the cat sharpened his claws on the curtain. The chainlink fence had rung as Dave tried to climb it, his boots slippery from rainwater spreading across the basement floor.

Slippery was how Dave’s coffee cup felt as he observed the ruby strobes in the reflection in the top of the sugarshaker. And he tried not to shake when one of them came in and muttered something to the cashier and ordered three black coffees. Dogs barked, transmitting information across the fences of the countryside.

Black night, quiet when Sarah arrived home. She flipped on the light and noticed (with relief) that Steve had passed out on the couch with the television set and his shoes on after at least three beers. She went into the bedroom to go to sleep, to touch herself as the tip of the branch touched her window, to think about Mike, to think about Steve, and the cat that came to the window when they were making love, and the crescent moon stuck in the trees. The rocking and the quietness and the dryness of her white sheets she found comforting. She fell asleep with a pillow between her thighs and another tucked under her ear. She dreamed about the lecture on narrative she would give the following day.