A small road in the mountains traces the course of the shallow meandering river. The
gravel state-highway bends in and out alongside the current following
it back upstream between two pine-covered hillsides. Downstream the
water rejoins a larger estuary just after it passes through a dying
mill town that hasn't employed any mill workers since the 19th
century. Dilapidated grey and light brown factories dot the banks of
the larger river downstream, and pole barns collapse quietly into the
clearing. Every man-made edifice is made of wood and is quietly being
reclaimed by the woods.
The tortuous road
connects the small town of Abisqua to the interstate on the other
side of the wide coniferous ridge. It takes about forty minutes by
car to reach one end from the other, but the current record was
twenty-three flat going downhill from the highway back to the town.
It has been a year and a half since that record was set, and the
title-holder has since died, tragically, in a violent collision with
the nursing home. By some accident of chance, none of the residents
got hurt in the accident.
The crash
demolished the cafeteria of the home, and the fire department
condemned the entire structure. As a temporary measure, the town
relocated the two dozen suddenly homeless seniors to the only
building big and warm enough to house them all, which was the
supermarket, which dated to the nineteen eighties and was now over a
hundred years old. The old folks are sleeping on cots in the aisles,
and have milk crates for night stands, where they keep their soaking
dentures and meds.
It was awkward at
first for the townsfolk to have to ask an arthritic grandmother to
get out of bed so they could get to the Hamburger Helper, but as
often happens in these circumstances, people adapt. The owner of the
store was a little bit resentful, since there was little he could do
about the old folks stealing coffee yogurts in the middle of the
night, but he adapted too. He stopped stocking batteries, and he put
the liquor behind a locked display case. He had a TV set and some
plastic chairs set up near the deli counter. And he even installed
hand rails on the shelves after one old lady slipped in the middle of
the night in a puddle of yogurt on her way to the bathroom and broke
her hip.
Some of the
shoppers have developed relationships with the various elder people
whom they now see regularly, and some families have reconnected with
their estranged grandparents. While they shop, parents have taken to
leaving their children with the group of seniors who congregate by
the deli counter, where the old people tell the younger generation
about the wars they fought and about the wolves in the woods around
the town.
For the past month
or two since the crash, out of respect for the deceased, no one has
attempted to break his record of twenty-three minutes. There has been
an unspoken moratorium on racing generally, and most of us have found
better things to do with our time, like drugs.
Heroin mostly, but
whatever really. We are so bored we could claw our eyes out with the
needles that we reuse and reuse, but that would make shooting heroin
hard and would damage the needles.
School for me
consists of a meditative trance state. I am there only in the name
that is dutifully entered into the attendance sheet, and the body
that I transport from classroom to classroom. All of my concentrated
energy is given over to waiting for the day to end, so I can focus on
waiting for the weekend, and on the acquiring and comsumption of
heroin or whatever drug is in town at the moment. And my friends are
just like me, but so is most of the student body.
Right now, for
instance, I am at the wheel of my uncle's Buick on the way home from
a drug deal. It is a Tuesday night around not very late on a frigid
day in December. We're returning from the nearest town, which is like
ours but poorer and bigger. I turned off the highway and I'm rounding
the first bend of the road into town. My foot lets off the gas, and
the car drifts sloppily through the contour. The snow hasn't fallen
very thickly on the road yet. I urge the pedal down again firmly for
the ensuing straight and then less cautiously. The wheels spin easily
in the loose powder.
