New World for an Old Man

The world powers on and people are left in its wake.

The man sat in his cold American car drinking coffee outside an abandoned and boarded up cafe. The hot coffee's steam and his warm breath fogged the windshield. He looked through the condensation at the collection of buildings sitting across the road like a grounded fleet of warring ships and he shook his head.

That place, that place, is where I gave twenty seven years of my life, he thought. The place I hated. The place I loved. The place where we fought and a few times even senselessly battled for nothing but pride, but that place, where we made things, cars, real things, not services, but things.

 

The man started the car and drove away into the evening sun. He flipped down the sun visor and images of his now grown children looked down on him from their shinning grade school faces attached to small sweater draped bodies back dropped with American flags and split rail fences. He wondered about them and how they did after he left, after she, that good and mean damned woman, kicked him out.

 

The old and worn out man pulled down the river road and parked in a stand of black willows and cottonwoods. He reached behind the seat into his pile of priceless possessions and pulled out a ragged blanket and a half empty fifth. The glow of the AM radio lighted his stubbly, swollen red face and yelling men from a shattered dash speaker serenaded him to sleep with visions of people to blame and whole peoples to hate.

 

He ground his teeth and fought his demons on the cold vinyl seat of his American car with the safety belts sticking in his back. Herb Johnson was a free man, in a free country.