Trash in a Ditch, Pt. 5 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
The horn signaling the hour-and-a-half lunch break blared, and I jolted awake to the sound of my Chevrolet Lumina’s door slamming shut. I’d climbed into an oven that reeked of scorched plastic and molten metal, so I rolled down the window, stuck my head out, and waited until I felt steady enough to drive without passing out.
The morning shift had stripped my nerves raw, compressing a week’s worth of strain into hours. Dazed, I started the engine and put distance between myself and the faces that recognized me—faces that might demand answers.
Through the window, workers from other workshops in red and green smocks slid out of view, alongside highway crews in reflective vests. Broken people stranded in this town, far from home and any semblance of destiny. Jobs that barely paid enough to keep a roof overhead. They endured it all, along with the desert and brain-melting heat, because they had no future, because what mattered in these people had died years ago. Their options narrowed to one or two cliff-edge jobs to cling to, while the world kept spinning.
A sidewalk newspaper rack made me slow, though I drove past. I needed to buy a paper to see if any article mentioned a missing child. Had police visited that dirt road near the oil field? Maybe an alert would announce they were hunting the killer. I’d scrubbed the blood I’d spotted in the dark, adrenaline sharpening my eyes, but must’ve missed stains blended into the dirt—blood the child’s wounds had spat when a tire burst his torso. An ultraviolet flashlight would expose cornflower-blue spills. Cops would collect samples, send them for analysis. Or would they assume someone hit a coyote? Would a cornered note in the paper beg the driver who struck an animal to notify animal control? A coyote dragging a mangled leg, bleeding out as it wandered the desert in a nightmare of pain, though a bullet to the skull would’ve sufficed.
As I drove, I startled awake again, catching myself sliding my left fingers under my sunglasses to rub my eyelid. Sweat pooled, teeth clenched. How had I avoided crashing? And now I worried in advance: when I’d hit the child last night, the day’s papers had already gone to print. Any news would break tomorrow. Maybe right now, at that dirt road cutting through the oil field, four or five patrol cars encircled the spot, forensic cops crouching over clues.
On the way to Wendy’s, I spotted two police cruisers prowling the streets. For minutes one idled ahead of me, garish as a parrot among pigeons. They didn’t know who watched them. If they did, they’d rip me from these people grinding through routines, loving others, enjoying life, pairing off, reproducing. The penal system would digest me, and I’d become a nuisance to dozens of eyes that’d rather drag me to a backlot and shoot me.
In the Wendy’s parking lot, trailer trucks walled off the view. A trucker leaned against his cab while chatting with an old man in a vest studded with flag pins and NRA badges.
After parking, I climbed out and arched my back until it cracked. Against the blue sky, bird silhouettes with splayed wings fluttered like kites caught in a draft. I weaved through dozens of parking spots, dodging cars reversing or hunting spaces. In the single-story building’s windows, jutting above the sea of heads, busts of people carried trays heaped with food. From a candy-red pole, the logo’s pigtailed girl smiled, her red braids perked upright.
Inside, I claimed a table near the back but facing the entrance, close to where the woman usually sat. Waiting in line, I stood behind a group of workers in paint-speckled coveralls. Their chatter made me wish for a mute button to block even the reverberations rattling my skull. They spoke to fill silence, parroting phrases others had recycled, mimicking cadences and accents. Truth and worth depended on majority approval.
At my table, the first bite of burger coated my tongue with ketchup and meat juice as if I’d spent the morning gargling sand. By the third bite, she walked in. I clamped the burger between my chin and tray while tilting my head to fix her in my monocular vision. With each step, her blonde hair floated like a feather. Gold hoops swayed from her earlobes. A gym bag hung from the shoulder opposite me, and she wore a sleeveless Lycra shirt with gray yoga pants. Her tanned skin glowed, freshly showered. In profile, her ass curved like a half-globe, the pants clinging to solid thighs, tracing every contour as if she’d walked in naked.
She veered toward a table at my nine o’clock, trailed by her boyfriend, a man around thirty-five. Most of his ash-blond hair hid under a beige hat. His thick belt buckle glinted under fluorescent lights.
At the table, she set down her bag and exchanged words with him before he joined the line. She shifted her hip, distracted by her phone. When she switched her weight, the pants’ fabric outlined the inverted, rounded M of her vulva.
I swallowed a bite to douse the heat flash surging through me, my heart pounding like a skydiver’s. I wanted to grip her nape and devour her mouth, those flamingo-pink lips. Slide my hands under the Lycra hugging her back, hike it up to knead the taut skin along her spine. Squeeze her ass. We’d stagger like drunk dancers, knocking trays from customers’ hands, until a table jarred us still. I’d rip her clothes off, lay her across the table, and mount her like a baboon.
She settled into her chair, thumb gliding over her phone. Features Photoshopped at birth, that hair, that body—crafted by generations of good genes mating with good genes. Her lips curled into an unconscious smile untouched by grief, untainted by intrusive thoughts.
I nibbled fries, head tilted, hidden behind tinted lenses, stealing these minutes while she shared her break with her boyfriend.
He returned with a tray of soda cups, fries, a burger, and a salad bowl. I glanced down to avoid detection. Couldn’t let him wonder why I always sat this distance, facing her. I timed my glances—deniable if questioned. Sometimes I turned toward windows or the clamoring crowd. If caught staring, I’d claim I was zoning out. But when my gaze trapped her, I savored her image like caviar.
Over lunch, their lips shaped silent syllables. Smiles, coded gestures. She laced fingers with his, plucked invisible hairs from his shirt. At some joke, her laugh pierced the din. Drunk on mirth, she doubled over to rest her chin on his arm before straightening with catlike eyes. Her lower face split into a grin as if handing out thousand-dollar bills.
Why did the boyfriend keep stabbing lettuce leaves between comments, ignoring her? He should’ve hugged her, smothered her with kisses. Maybe he’d grown used to his luck, or only those who lacked it noticed, those who’d burned through relationships expecting doom, unable to forget the darkness festering in human minds. Like a centenarian, I envied teenagers’ ignorance, decades still ahead before they’d learn their consciousnesses would settle among body parts screaming in pain.
When his phone rang and his face turned professional, she fiddled with her own device while chewing. He nodded at the void, stood, and crossed the room. His tucked-shirt belly bulged like a half-inflated balloon. Two diners sidestepped him as he strode like he owned the place.
The guard was gone. I relaxed, spacing burger bites and Nestea sips, fixating on her as she tilted her face to check her skin in a compact’s mirror for barely-there creases. Her hair cascaded over one shoulder, baring the opposite side of her neck, where the sternocleidomastoid muscle strained under the weight.
I ached to caress that tan skin, scratch an itch mid-spine. Her hair would drape my arm. In my mind, she cupped my cheek, slid her palm to my ear. How would foreign skin feel—skin that wanted my touch? The memory of such sensations had eroded, unrecreatable by hours of thought or fantasy.
I snapped from hypnosis to my trash-strewn tray, forty minutes left before returning to the soul-crushing job that bought my hours cheap. I’d hit and killed a child, then hidden him in my trunk. The spark I’d briefly contained faded, replaced by swampy cold, that of a reanimated corpse shuffling through a mausoleum.
What did this woman feel, loved and loving, with her aristocratic grasp of pain? What was it like to wake up wanting to live? Did I crave her to replace her boyfriend, or did I mourn being born unlovable, this lump of broken and disfigured flesh? Beyond fantasy, would I even want a partner? My presence would poison her like radiation, warp her into a light-sucking tumor. People didn’t matter enough to me; any woman would realize it in weeks.
Besides, I knew the drill: inane chats about office drama, her friend squabbles that’d feel apocalyptic to her. Filling silences lest she think us doomed. Remembering compliments to keep her valued. Endless shopping hours, holding bags, bored enough to stab my corneas. Abandoning movies and books I liked for hers. Curbing opinions to TV-sanctioned takes, lest she deem me negative. The marathon of impressing her and her circle, competing daily with lurking men. Sacrificing solitude, craving it while she recharged socially. Allowing a job to devour my waking hours so I could one day offer her a two-story suburban home. Reproducing, duty-bound to drag innocents into this dying world.
She’d push me to change, then grow bored once I mimicked her desires. Stranded in the desert, oceans and miles apart, I’d endure calls where she’d repeat some new man’s name—how funny he was, how intriguing his opinions. How I shouldn’t mind, because she thought of him as a brother. They’d evict me from the house I’d helped pay for. If I’d stupidly bred, child support would crush me, funding a kid taught to call another man “Dad.”
Better to admire beauties like this Wendy’s goddess from afar. I’d cherish her like a fresco on a crumbling wall of this rotting universe, while others lashed themselves together with barbed wire to avoid being pulled into the dark.
When the boyfriend returned, he planted his phone-hand on the table, speared salad leaves with the other, then jerked his head toward the lot. She smiled, nodded, tucked her compact away. They left shoulder-to-shoulder.
I slumped. I’d see her the following day, until she stopped coming.
Workers shot glances at me, the weirdo with sunglasses and scars under one eye. One muttered to his tablemate. I’d hogged this table too long. Behind the counter, minimum-wage teens wondered how to eject me without triggering an explosion.
I shoveled the remaining fries, then dumped wrappers on the tray and trashed it, freeing the table for those who deserved it.
-----
Author’s note: I wrote this novella about ten years ago. It’s contained in my collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s song is “Trailer Trash” by Modest Mouse.
The horn signaling the hour-and-a-half lunch break blared, and I jolted awake to the sound of my Chevrolet Lumina’s door slamming shut. I’d climbed into an oven that reeked of scorched plastic and molten metal, so I rolled down the window, stuck my head out, and waited until I felt steady enough to drive without passing out.
The morning shift had stripped my nerves raw, compressing a week’s worth of strain into hours. Dazed, I started the engine and put distance between myself and the faces that recognized me—faces that might demand answers.
Through the window, workers from other workshops in red and green smocks slid out of view, alongside highway crews in reflective vests. Broken people stranded in this town, far from home and any semblance of destiny. Jobs that barely paid enough to keep a roof overhead. They endured it all, along with the desert and brain-melting heat, because they had no future, because what mattered in these people had died years ago. Their options narrowed to one or two cliff-edge jobs to cling to, while the world kept spinning.
A sidewalk newspaper rack made me slow, though I drove past. I needed to buy a paper to see if any article mentioned a missing child. Had police visited that dirt road near the oil field? Maybe an alert would announce they were hunting the killer. I’d scrubbed the blood I’d spotted in the dark, adrenaline sharpening my eyes, but must’ve missed stains blended into the dirt—blood the child’s wounds had spat when a tire burst his torso. An ultraviolet flashlight would expose cornflower-blue spills. Cops would collect samples, send them for analysis. Or would they assume someone hit a coyote? Would a cornered note in the paper beg the driver who struck an animal to notify animal control? A coyote dragging a mangled leg, bleeding out as it wandered the desert in a nightmare of pain, though a bullet to the skull would’ve sufficed.
As I drove, I startled awake again, catching myself sliding my left fingers under my sunglasses to rub my eyelid. Sweat pooled, teeth clenched. How had I avoided crashing? And now I worried in advance: when I’d hit the child last night, the day’s papers had already gone to print. Any news would break tomorrow. Maybe right now, at that dirt road cutting through the oil field, four or five patrol cars encircled the spot, forensic cops crouching over clues.
On the way to Wendy’s, I spotted two police cruisers prowling the streets. For minutes one idled ahead of me, garish as a parrot among pigeons. They didn’t know who watched them. If they did, they’d rip me from these people grinding through routines, loving others, enjoying life, pairing off, reproducing. The penal system would digest me, and I’d become a nuisance to dozens of eyes that’d rather drag me to a backlot and shoot me.
In the Wendy’s parking lot, trailer trucks walled off the view. A trucker leaned against his cab while chatting with an old man in a vest studded with flag pins and NRA badges.
After parking, I climbed out and arched my back until it cracked. Against the blue sky, bird silhouettes with splayed wings fluttered like kites caught in a draft. I weaved through dozens of parking spots, dodging cars reversing or hunting spaces. In the single-story building’s windows, jutting above the sea of heads, busts of people carried trays heaped with food. From a candy-red pole, the logo’s pigtailed girl smiled, her red braids perked upright.
Inside, I claimed a table near the back but facing the entrance, close to where the woman usually sat. Waiting in line, I stood behind a group of workers in paint-speckled coveralls. Their chatter made me wish for a mute button to block even the reverberations rattling my skull. They spoke to fill silence, parroting phrases others had recycled, mimicking cadences and accents. Truth and worth depended on majority approval.
At my table, the first bite of burger coated my tongue with ketchup and meat juice as if I’d spent the morning gargling sand. By the third bite, she walked in. I clamped the burger between my chin and tray while tilting my head to fix her in my monocular vision. With each step, her blonde hair floated like a feather. Gold hoops swayed from her earlobes. A gym bag hung from the shoulder opposite me, and she wore a sleeveless Lycra shirt with gray yoga pants. Her tanned skin glowed, freshly showered. In profile, her ass curved like a half-globe, the pants clinging to solid thighs, tracing every contour as if she’d walked in naked.
She veered toward a table at my nine o’clock, trailed by her boyfriend, a man around thirty-five. Most of his ash-blond hair hid under a beige hat. His thick belt buckle glinted under fluorescent lights.
At the table, she set down her bag and exchanged words with him before he joined the line. She shifted her hip, distracted by her phone. When she switched her weight, the pants’ fabric outlined the inverted, rounded M of her vulva.
I swallowed a bite to douse the heat flash surging through me, my heart pounding like a skydiver’s. I wanted to grip her nape and devour her mouth, those flamingo-pink lips. Slide my hands under the Lycra hugging her back, hike it up to knead the taut skin along her spine. Squeeze her ass. We’d stagger like drunk dancers, knocking trays from customers’ hands, until a table jarred us still. I’d rip her clothes off, lay her across the table, and mount her like a baboon.
She settled into her chair, thumb gliding over her phone. Features Photoshopped at birth, that hair, that body—crafted by generations of good genes mating with good genes. Her lips curled into an unconscious smile untouched by grief, untainted by intrusive thoughts.
I nibbled fries, head tilted, hidden behind tinted lenses, stealing these minutes while she shared her break with her boyfriend.
He returned with a tray of soda cups, fries, a burger, and a salad bowl. I glanced down to avoid detection. Couldn’t let him wonder why I always sat this distance, facing her. I timed my glances—deniable if questioned. Sometimes I turned toward windows or the clamoring crowd. If caught staring, I’d claim I was zoning out. But when my gaze trapped her, I savored her image like caviar.
Over lunch, their lips shaped silent syllables. Smiles, coded gestures. She laced fingers with his, plucked invisible hairs from his shirt. At some joke, her laugh pierced the din. Drunk on mirth, she doubled over to rest her chin on his arm before straightening with catlike eyes. Her lower face split into a grin as if handing out thousand-dollar bills.
Why did the boyfriend keep stabbing lettuce leaves between comments, ignoring her? He should’ve hugged her, smothered her with kisses. Maybe he’d grown used to his luck, or only those who lacked it noticed, those who’d burned through relationships expecting doom, unable to forget the darkness festering in human minds. Like a centenarian, I envied teenagers’ ignorance, decades still ahead before they’d learn their consciousnesses would settle among body parts screaming in pain.
When his phone rang and his face turned professional, she fiddled with her own device while chewing. He nodded at the void, stood, and crossed the room. His tucked-shirt belly bulged like a half-inflated balloon. Two diners sidestepped him as he strode like he owned the place.
The guard was gone. I relaxed, spacing burger bites and Nestea sips, fixating on her as she tilted her face to check her skin in a compact’s mirror for barely-there creases. Her hair cascaded over one shoulder, baring the opposite side of her neck, where the sternocleidomastoid muscle strained under the weight.
I ached to caress that tan skin, scratch an itch mid-spine. Her hair would drape my arm. In my mind, she cupped my cheek, slid her palm to my ear. How would foreign skin feel—skin that wanted my touch? The memory of such sensations had eroded, unrecreatable by hours of thought or fantasy.
I snapped from hypnosis to my trash-strewn tray, forty minutes left before returning to the soul-crushing job that bought my hours cheap. I’d hit and killed a child, then hidden him in my trunk. The spark I’d briefly contained faded, replaced by swampy cold, that of a reanimated corpse shuffling through a mausoleum.
What did this woman feel, loved and loving, with her aristocratic grasp of pain? What was it like to wake up wanting to live? Did I crave her to replace her boyfriend, or did I mourn being born unlovable, this lump of broken and disfigured flesh? Beyond fantasy, would I even want a partner? My presence would poison her like radiation, warp her into a light-sucking tumor. People didn’t matter enough to me; any woman would realize it in weeks.
Besides, I knew the drill: inane chats about office drama, her friend squabbles that’d feel apocalyptic to her. Filling silences lest she think us doomed. Remembering compliments to keep her valued. Endless shopping hours, holding bags, bored enough to stab my corneas. Abandoning movies and books I liked for hers. Curbing opinions to TV-sanctioned takes, lest she deem me negative. The marathon of impressing her and her circle, competing daily with lurking men. Sacrificing solitude, craving it while she recharged socially. Allowing a job to devour my waking hours so I could one day offer her a two-story suburban home. Reproducing, duty-bound to drag innocents into this dying world.
She’d push me to change, then grow bored once I mimicked her desires. Stranded in the desert, oceans and miles apart, I’d endure calls where she’d repeat some new man’s name—how funny he was, how intriguing his opinions. How I shouldn’t mind, because she thought of him as a brother. They’d evict me from the house I’d helped pay for. If I’d stupidly bred, child support would crush me, funding a kid taught to call another man “Dad.”
Better to admire beauties like this Wendy’s goddess from afar. I’d cherish her like a fresco on a crumbling wall of this rotting universe, while others lashed themselves together with barbed wire to avoid being pulled into the dark.
When the boyfriend returned, he planted his phone-hand on the table, speared salad leaves with the other, then jerked his head toward the lot. She smiled, nodded, tucked her compact away. They left shoulder-to-shoulder.
I slumped. I’d see her the following day, until she stopped coming.
Workers shot glances at me, the weirdo with sunglasses and scars under one eye. One muttered to his tablemate. I’d hogged this table too long. Behind the counter, minimum-wage teens wondered how to eject me without triggering an explosion.
I shoveled the remaining fries, then dumped wrappers on the tray and trashed it, freeing the table for those who deserved it.
-----
Author’s note: I wrote this novella about ten years ago. It’s contained in my collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s song is “Trailer Trash” by Modest Mouse.
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