Theo was sitting in the kitchen of the little house he and Ian had bought west of campus, practically at the city limits. They’d had to stay inside the city for Ian’s job—if you worked on the Wahredua police force, you’d better live in Wahredua—but Ian had been even more of a country boy than Theo. They’d found a spot in what Ian called the boonies, even though it was five minutes to a CVS and seven minutes to the Piggly Wiggly. It wasn’t a trendy house. It wasn’t old in a fashionable way—no mid-century design, no period craftsman detail. The tuckpointing needed work, the chimney was on its way down, and in May, Ian had stripped the floors and sanded them and now, of course, they were never going to get finished. Now when Theo walked around the house, he picked up wood dust on his socks, the cotton sticking occasionally where something—whatever Ian had used to strip the stain, maybe—left the boards tacky.
At the kitchen table—thirty-eight dollars at the flea market outside St. Elizabeth, chairs included, everything the color of Pepto-Bismol until Ian had refinished them—Theo swallowed a Percocet because his leg never really stopped hurting and then cracked open a can of Southside Blonde. They’d been in St. Louis, stopped at Perennial, and picked up a few four-packs of the beer. Ian had wanted the IPA.
If history were a roadmap, Theo thought, you could see exactly where your life went off course. Exit 2 when you were supposed to take Exit 1. Left instead of right. Highway instead of surface streets. If history were a roadmap, you could take a pencil and trace a new route: jink back at the next intersection, cut up this alley, merge onto the ramp, and you’re back on track.
For example, instead of telling Ian that you didn’t have time to go back and pick up some four-packs of Hurry On Daylight, you shut your fucking mouth, let him take the McCausland exit, and flip around. Then you’re not hitting I-270 at rush hour. Then you’re not right in the path of that semi when it blows a tire, the trailer slews, and however many fucking tons of steel hit you like a slapshot.
He drank two of the Southside Blondes; his mouth tasted like sweet malt and lemon and hops, and it seemed like a good idea to be outside. What did he have inside? Inside was the unfinished floors, the flea-market table, Lana’s plastic train that he stumbled over on the way to the door, and it flashed its red lights and made electronic chugging noises. Inside was a fucking tomb.
The September night was sticky and warm; they didn’t have streetlights in the boonies, but the light pollution from Wahredua dissolved into a haze, particles overhead like huge grains of pollen drifting in the blackness. Theo made his way down the front steps, stumbled again, and fell. He was wearing a Blues t-shirt and mesh shorts; he scraped his knee on the cement walk. From inside the house, the train’s cheery little song chased after him. He used the Malibu to get to his feet—the only thing the car, new in 2010 and with fewer than thirty thousand miles on it—was good for now that Theo refused to drive. As he limped down the street, he realized he’d forgotten his cane. By the end of the block, his hip would be screaming at him. Who cared, though? Let it scream.
When Theo got to the end of the street, his prediction was right: his hip was on fire, his whole leg ablaze. He stopped at the state highway, glanced left, glanced right. No headlights. He had this vision of hobbling out into traffic, lights, the blare of a horn. He knew, firsthand, the momentum behind a tractor-trailer. A lot of times out at the farm, they had to shovel up roadkill—deer occasionally, but more often raccoons or possums or skunks. Shovel was the right verb; usually, what was left was a mess of bones and flesh and organs, some of it already mashed into a paste. If you used a snow shovel, those had the best edge on the blade, you could get some of them in one go.
He turned and headed toward the city, toward Wroxall, toward the light. A pair of headlights appeared, racing toward him. He was on the right-hand shoulder, walking with traffic, and now he took a step up, toeing the white line on the asphalt. A second later, the truck blew past him, a wall of air rattling sticks and leaves across the highway, the receipt from a Conoco sticking to his sweaty calf. He kept going. He was on the white line now.
When the next pair of headlights came into view, he staggered a few steps to the left. He was winded now, out of shape after barely more than a month, his leg bitching like crazy. He was in the middle of the lane, his gait uneven. The sedan was lime green; the windows were down, and Kanye was pumping steadily out of the speakers. Somebody shouted, “Get off the road, asshole,” and laughter chased the sedan into the night.
Theo trudged on. The world was underwater now; part of his brain knew that was from his homemade cocktail. Everything was undulating, flexible, pulsing closer and then retreating. Light, when it appeared on the horizon, shimmered. Two lights. Headlights, the edges of the beams marked by iridescent cones. The thrum of the wheels transferred through the asphalt and vibrated in Theo’s ankles.
He closed his eyes and leaned left.
Brakes screeched. A horn blared. The sound of tires fusing to pavement came with the hot stink of burning rubber, and then there was a loud crash. Theo hadn’t felt anything; part of his brain informed him that was shock. He wasn’t ever going to feel anything again. He could just drift away on that underwater current.
But he didn’t drift away.
He took
