Longview
A Short Story
The air smells. The ground is sour. Nobody lingers. They just pass through.
I see him on the side of a 76, his face distorted by a bead of water rolling down the front windshield. I can’t see his face but I can see his hoodie and a pair of jeans that are far too big for him and keep getting bigger because he’s got a full-time job smoking blues and smoking meth and getting more cash to smoke more blues and smoke more meth because he’s constantly withdrawing from smoking blues and in a constant psychosis from smoking meth. He’s got one hand on the handlebar of a bike that he found somewhere and he’s leaning down so far that it looks like he’s checking the PSI limits on the tires but no, he’s not reading anything at all.
He’s dreaming on his feet while the rain comes down hard and he’s oblivious to it because he’s numbed out and he’s dreaming a different life where he’s no longer chasing after pills and powders but he’s working at the mill like he used to do back when he was capable of such things or when he was a teenager and just smoked weed and drank and there was that girl he loved and she graduated and ran off to Portland or Seattle or one of those cities because nobody who’s anybody ever stays here. No, they just pass through this place between Astoria and Seattle and he wishes he’d done the same but now there’s no leaving because there’s no money besides what he can steal out of somebody’s glovebox or the steaks he can steal from WinCo or if it’s real bad the cans and bottles he can get out of as many recycling bins as possible so he can get his ass across that bridge into Oregon and pray they don’t turn him away from bringing Washingtonian recycling to an Oregon BottleDrop or charge him with fraud because the last place he wants to be is in jail because in jail he can’t get well and in jail he has to remember who he is and not what he’s chasing after and not what he’s lost which is everything including the pants falling off his ass and so he clings to a bike he won’t have tomorrow while the dark clouds hanging over this place unzip and piss all over him just like life pisses on him and just will not let up.
He can see a better life. Just not from here. Just not today.
The rain comes down. His image is distorted. The windshield wipers do their thing and then he’s gone.
The air smells. The ground is sour. I don’t linger. I just pass through.
This was really sad and real Carson. I have never been to Longview but this made me feel like I've known it my whole life; and this light given to a man like this is just really, really nice.
Cool stuff Carson!
I'm going to die. Cry. Die crying; cry trying—trying to cry … This moved me, and. If. Since you know the man who sees a better life for himself—if you do (or did) know him, that is—then you'll know why I can't get myself to open up here. But. Yeah.