wanted to make peace. You don’t make peace with people who aren’t dangerous in the first place; that’s not peacemaking, that’s just negotiation.
And now that it turns out it didn’t work, I guess someone else will have to make the lying, treacherous fuckers pay for that. Wish I could be there to see that.
Wish I could help.
They had kicked him for looking too closely at his handcuffs, and for looking around the room, and for wiping his face with his sleeve, and for sitting up. Since those were the rules, he’d purposely made a couple of fiddling, fumbling gropes at his cuffs and at the brackets they were attached to, taken the kicks, and let himself subside on his bunk, against the wall, face resting on the window, and pretended to cry uncontrollably—it hadn’t taken much pretending.
With his face on the window, he tried to look like he was finally without hope, overwhelmed by the shock.
“Hang on to your advantage,” he’d been told, over and over, way back when he took the classes in negotiation. “Whatever they don’t know about you, that’s an advantage.” Right now his one advantage, and it wasn’t much of one, was that they didn’t know he was still looking for something he could do.
The water below was featureless. Time hunched, lurched, and hobbled, mocking him with its slowness; if any sort of chance came along, he didn’t want to have to jump into it with stiff and unmoving muscles. He did what he could to ease the muscles without visibly moving. He whimpered and blubbered whenever he had to move a larger muscle, hoping that would make him look broken.
He was hungry and thirsty and really needed to take a crap, but he was afraid that if he asked for anything, they’d decide he was conscious enough to worry about, and they would move him away from this little airliner window, the only real source of hope in his life. Actually, there’s not much life left; weird that I still want hope.
Christ, as long as I’m asking for the impossible, I’d like one more time to hold Kim. Thirty-one years together, and I won’t be able to say good-bye.
HALF AN HOUR LATER. CRESTON, WYOMING. ABOUT 10:00 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
Thinking the word eggs all morning made Jason remember that if there was one thing they did well here in the high country, it was breakfast.
The old F-150 roared over the rise; a few miles ahead, he could see a town. Obviously the powers in the universe were trying to help out.
At a truck stop with four semis in the parking lot, Jason backed the old pickup in against the building, putting the expired plate toward a blank wall where it was unlikely anyone would look, right in the shadow of a big Fruehauf trailer. He got out, stretched, yawned. Ugly little dump of a gravel parking lot and concrete-block building, a human zit on the face of the mountains— not a poem idea, he decided.
Inside: country music, Fox on the television, dead animals on the wall. But the eggs, fried potatoes, and French toast were as great as Jason had expected, and as in anyplace that does a busy morning trade, the coffee was this-minute fresh.
The truckers were all at a table together, and Jason figured out, listening to them casually, that two of them had regular routes through here, and the other two passed through now and then and preferred to convoy with friends who knew where the treacherous downgrades, blind curves, and intolerant deputies were.
It was weird, Jason thought. Out here, people worked outside in all weather, and you’d think that would put them in touch with the Earth. Yet they all lived at the end of a long line of trucks and roads, everything dependent on petroleum and metal from thousands of miles away, and their loyalty went to the trucks and the roads. The Big System had a hook into everything.
The Fox yakkers on the television made the point, over and over, that the World Series was the most exciting in a decade and the election was the dullest since ’96. Last time
And now that it turns out it didn’t work, I guess someone else will have to make the lying, treacherous fuckers pay for that. Wish I could be there to see that.
Wish I could help.
They had kicked him for looking too closely at his handcuffs, and for looking around the room, and for wiping his face with his sleeve, and for sitting up. Since those were the rules, he’d purposely made a couple of fiddling, fumbling gropes at his cuffs and at the brackets they were attached to, taken the kicks, and let himself subside on his bunk, against the wall, face resting on the window, and pretended to cry uncontrollably—it hadn’t taken much pretending.
With his face on the window, he tried to look like he was finally without hope, overwhelmed by the shock.
“Hang on to your advantage,” he’d been told, over and over, way back when he took the classes in negotiation. “Whatever they don’t know about you, that’s an advantage.” Right now his one advantage, and it wasn’t much of one, was that they didn’t know he was still looking for something he could do.
The water below was featureless. Time hunched, lurched, and hobbled, mocking him with its slowness; if any sort of chance came along, he didn’t want to have to jump into it with stiff and unmoving muscles. He did what he could to ease the muscles without visibly moving. He whimpered and blubbered whenever he had to move a larger muscle, hoping that would make him look broken.
He was hungry and thirsty and really needed to take a crap, but he was afraid that if he asked for anything, they’d decide he was conscious enough to worry about, and they would move him away from this little airliner window, the only real source of hope in his life. Actually, there’s not much life left; weird that I still want hope.
Christ, as long as I’m asking for the impossible, I’d like one more time to hold Kim. Thirty-one years together, and I won’t be able to say good-bye.
HALF AN HOUR LATER. CRESTON, WYOMING. ABOUT 10:00 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
Thinking the word eggs all morning made Jason remember that if there was one thing they did well here in the high country, it was breakfast.
The old F-150 roared over the rise; a few miles ahead, he could see a town. Obviously the powers in the universe were trying to help out.
At a truck stop with four semis in the parking lot, Jason backed the old pickup in against the building, putting the expired plate toward a blank wall where it was unlikely anyone would look, right in the shadow of a big Fruehauf trailer. He got out, stretched, yawned. Ugly little dump of a gravel parking lot and concrete-block building, a human zit on the face of the mountains— not a poem idea, he decided.
Inside: country music, Fox on the television, dead animals on the wall. But the eggs, fried potatoes, and French toast were as great as Jason had expected, and as in anyplace that does a busy morning trade, the coffee was this-minute fresh.
The truckers were all at a table together, and Jason figured out, listening to them casually, that two of them had regular routes through here, and the other two passed through now and then and preferred to convoy with friends who knew where the treacherous downgrades, blind curves, and intolerant deputies were.
It was weird, Jason thought. Out here, people worked outside in all weather, and you’d think that would put them in touch with the Earth. Yet they all lived at the end of a long line of trucks and roads, everything dependent on petroleum and metal from thousands of miles away, and their loyalty went to the trucks and the roads. The Big System had a hook into everything.
The Fox yakkers on the television made the point, over and over, that the World Series was the most exciting in a decade and the election was the dullest since ’96. Last time
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