A Few Days Before
The vehicle is going 80 kilometres the road, when the song comes on. She hasn't heard it in awhile. It was downloaded into her old phone, but she had broke that one last summer when she tried that horrible Training for a 5K Run experiment that she found in some health app that came installed on the phone. At least she walks a kilometre faster than 95% of others who used the app, it tells her, but she thinks maybe she should just wait a summer or two before trying the whole running thing again. She also suspects that the fun fact is a lie to make her feel good. Regardless, when the new phone was delivered, she thought "None of him. Not right now. Not today" and she downloaded the other stuff.
Today she is happy to hear the song. Happier to sing along with the man; his voice isn't so good either. Okay. Hers is worse. She probably shouldn't sing. Ever. But it is a nice song to sing. A perfect song to sing. It is exactly the song to sing.
She leans to turn it up, covering the sound of exhaust. She looks through the windshield over at the forest of trees to the left and lets herself start to daydream. She should not ever drive a car. But apparently John shouldn't either. She thinks she's known this for awhile.
It isn't the mess she expected, though the air smells dirty. She wonders if John burned the last of the tread tires some and the animal has defecated; the pungent smell of urine mixing with excessive engine exhaust. That car definitely needs some work, but John is the kind of guy who will let things go until they really fuck him over. Until he is stranded in the middle of nowhere and the whole mess will cost him a few grand. Whatever. It wasn't her life any more. Even if she was still stuck with him sometimes having to do stuff like this. The car is surprisingly fine, just a small dent and she isn't even sure the animal created it, though John definitely hit the animal. The large dark, wet patch in the gravel astounds her. It must have just recently had a drink from a nearby creek.
She can hear it breathing, hard, short snuffles, over the sound of John's car. It is in pain, but there isn't any blood and nothing on it looks broken, though it lies defeated on the ground. Its eyes are open and it is not pleading or begging or scared of her. But it is aware of her, so she moves cautiously closer and closer, holding her palm out. Its breathing starts to slow as she nears it and its nose starting to twitch to pick up her scent and it accepts her. She kneels down on the ground beside her head, she has determined it is a her, and rubs the length of her long nose, up and down, up and down. The animal makes no objection, even though John has rolled down the window and stuck his head out and is now yelling.
What the fuck are you doing?
How bad is my car damaged? Will you fucking tell me? (get out and look yourself, she thinks.)
What the fuck are you doing? What is the matter with you?
She sits down fully onto the gravel, crossing her legs and blocks him out. She lifts the animal's head up and into her lap, surprisingly light and smooth in effort, (is she helping?) and continues to rub her nose.
John keeps yelling at her, to get back in the fucking car now or he is going to leave.
She doesn't care. He always comes back.
So he leaves.
She figures he will drive down the road screaming Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! dozens of times, sometimes smashing his palms off of the steering wheel, with the music blasting. He will probably calls her names. She doesn't care about that either. She watches as the car reaches the next intersection, watches as it turns left and disappears behind a wall of trees and then she sighs with relief.
She feels nothing as she strokes the creature's nose, slips into that awareness of the way the winds blow at her back, the arch of mid-afternoon sun that keeps her warm, the smell of grass bogged down in mud from melt and greener than any day in May. Today is a day when the spring is reminding winter that its glorious forces are growing stronger, ready to take over. When she looks into the animal's eyes, they understand each other in an more immediate way. Maybe it is gratefulness or maybe something bigger, something more vast than that. When the animal closes her eyes finally, she doesn't struggle to go. Her head just suddenly feels impossibly heavy.
She just sits there for a few minutes, until she sees the silver car turning and moving down the road back her way.
She is about to get up, when a voice breaks out, decontained and echoing from across the road. "Is she an Indian then, Dad? Is she blessing the...what's it called again that we shot? Is she taking it up to the Big Sky? Roger? Is she?"
She lift's the animal's head, scoots out from underneath and places it carefully back down onto the gravel, and this is when she notices the clean shot at the back of the head, a slight trickle of blood on inflamed skin. John has stopped in the middle of the road and as she walks towards the car, she calls over, "This road picks up in about half an hour. School buses and stuff. You better hurry up."
"Thank you, ma'am," comes an adult male voice from the thicket of trees.
She shoots the voice the finger. "Fuck you, Roger," she says loudly and gets into the car.
"Let's go," she tells John.
"Why do you do embarrassing shit like that?" he asks.
"Fuck you, too," she says. Why mince words anymore? Bastards. They're almost everywhere.
He has turned down the radio, so she leans over and turns it up.
"Music in my head
Crazy music playing in the morning light
Oh, oh, oh
It's magic, you know
Never believe it's..."
Jesus fucking Christ.
Taken from the Green Notebook:
February 6th
What the fuck?! How is THAT even possible? THAT can't be possible, can it?! Whatever THIS really is anyway. Sometimes I feel like I am in some cheesy remake of You've Got Mail (except I don't actually have Mail) and the Matrix. All of this stuff is so...unexplainable. At least rationally. But at least it has an awesome soundtrack, right?
What the fuck do I DO with all of this?
She was telling Lisa, Thursday, on their lunch date, about the moments she spent with the dying moose.
"I feel like I'm going to barf," Lisa replies, putting her fork down and her napkin to mouth hiding the grimace that shows in her eyes. "How could you...fucking do that? Even touch it? After it shit all over itself? Aren't they huge? Have you went to the doctor? You know...imagine the diseases... John is right. Why do you do the things you do?"
She shrugs and sighs and looks out the window, no one is out walking around out there. It's too damn cold. "Did Cassie learn any new words this week?"
The vehicle is going 80 kilometres the road, when the song comes on. She hasn't heard it in awhile. It was downloaded into her old phone, but she had broke that one last summer when she tried that horrible Training for a 5K Run experiment that she found in some health app that came installed on the phone. At least she walks a kilometre faster than 95% of others who used the app, it tells her, but she thinks maybe she should just wait a summer or two before trying the whole running thing again. She also suspects that the fun fact is a lie to make her feel good. Regardless, when the new phone was delivered, she thought "None of him. Not right now. Not today" and she downloaded the other stuff.
Today she is happy to hear the song. Happier to sing along with the man; his voice isn't so good either. Okay. Hers is worse. She probably shouldn't sing. Ever. But it is a nice song to sing. A perfect song to sing. It is exactly the song to sing.
She leans to turn it up, covering the sound of exhaust. She looks through the windshield over at the forest of trees to the left and lets herself start to daydream. She should not ever drive a car. But apparently John shouldn't either. She thinks she's known this for awhile.
It isn't the mess she expected, though the air smells dirty. She wonders if John burned the last of the tread tires some and the animal has defecated; the pungent smell of urine mixing with excessive engine exhaust. That car definitely needs some work, but John is the kind of guy who will let things go until they really fuck him over. Until he is stranded in the middle of nowhere and the whole mess will cost him a few grand. Whatever. It wasn't her life any more. Even if she was still stuck with him sometimes having to do stuff like this. The car is surprisingly fine, just a small dent and she isn't even sure the animal created it, though John definitely hit the animal. The large dark, wet patch in the gravel astounds her. It must have just recently had a drink from a nearby creek.
She can hear it breathing, hard, short snuffles, over the sound of John's car. It is in pain, but there isn't any blood and nothing on it looks broken, though it lies defeated on the ground. Its eyes are open and it is not pleading or begging or scared of her. But it is aware of her, so she moves cautiously closer and closer, holding her palm out. Its breathing starts to slow as she nears it and its nose starting to twitch to pick up her scent and it accepts her. She kneels down on the ground beside her head, she has determined it is a her, and rubs the length of her long nose, up and down, up and down. The animal makes no objection, even though John has rolled down the window and stuck his head out and is now yelling.
What the fuck are you doing?
How bad is my car damaged? Will you fucking tell me? (get out and look yourself, she thinks.)
What the fuck are you doing? What is the matter with you?
She sits down fully onto the gravel, crossing her legs and blocks him out. She lifts the animal's head up and into her lap, surprisingly light and smooth in effort, (is she helping?) and continues to rub her nose.
John keeps yelling at her, to get back in the fucking car now or he is going to leave.
She doesn't care. He always comes back.
So he leaves.
She figures he will drive down the road screaming Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! dozens of times, sometimes smashing his palms off of the steering wheel, with the music blasting. He will probably calls her names. She doesn't care about that either. She watches as the car reaches the next intersection, watches as it turns left and disappears behind a wall of trees and then she sighs with relief.
She feels nothing as she strokes the creature's nose, slips into that awareness of the way the winds blow at her back, the arch of mid-afternoon sun that keeps her warm, the smell of grass bogged down in mud from melt and greener than any day in May. Today is a day when the spring is reminding winter that its glorious forces are growing stronger, ready to take over. When she looks into the animal's eyes, they understand each other in an more immediate way. Maybe it is gratefulness or maybe something bigger, something more vast than that. When the animal closes her eyes finally, she doesn't struggle to go. Her head just suddenly feels impossibly heavy.
She just sits there for a few minutes, until she sees the silver car turning and moving down the road back her way.
She is about to get up, when a voice breaks out, decontained and echoing from across the road. "Is she an Indian then, Dad? Is she blessing the...what's it called again that we shot? Is she taking it up to the Big Sky? Roger? Is she?"
She lift's the animal's head, scoots out from underneath and places it carefully back down onto the gravel, and this is when she notices the clean shot at the back of the head, a slight trickle of blood on inflamed skin. John has stopped in the middle of the road and as she walks towards the car, she calls over, "This road picks up in about half an hour. School buses and stuff. You better hurry up."
"Thank you, ma'am," comes an adult male voice from the thicket of trees.
She shoots the voice the finger. "Fuck you, Roger," she says loudly and gets into the car.
"Let's go," she tells John.
"Why do you do embarrassing shit like that?" he asks.
"Fuck you, too," she says. Why mince words anymore? Bastards. They're almost everywhere.
He has turned down the radio, so she leans over and turns it up.
"Music in my head
Crazy music playing in the morning light
Oh, oh, oh
It's magic, you know
Never believe it's..."
Jesus fucking Christ.
Taken from the Green Notebook:
February 6th
What the fuck?! How is THAT even possible? THAT can't be possible, can it?! Whatever THIS really is anyway. Sometimes I feel like I am in some cheesy remake of You've Got Mail (except I don't actually have Mail) and the Matrix. All of this stuff is so...unexplainable. At least rationally. But at least it has an awesome soundtrack, right?
What the fuck do I DO with all of this?
She was telling Lisa, Thursday, on their lunch date, about the moments she spent with the dying moose.
"I feel like I'm going to barf," Lisa replies, putting her fork down and her napkin to mouth hiding the grimace that shows in her eyes. "How could you...fucking do that? Even touch it? After it shit all over itself? Aren't they huge? Have you went to the doctor? You know...imagine the diseases... John is right. Why do you do the things you do?"
She shrugs and sighs and looks out the window, no one is out walking around out there. It's too damn cold. "Did Cassie learn any new words this week?"
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