Marsden Lyonwahl - HCR Award Winner

Boethian Days

 

The first time Kurt Salish met Chico was in a Fresno diner on a Monday morning. Chico had already eaten, Kurt hadn't. They'd been coordinated for a job by a faceless man with a fake name from the internet to drive a package from one side of the continent to the other. Since neither man knew the other besides his name, they watched each other over cups of coffee. Chico yapped about everything and nothing. Kurt half-listened in silence.

Their transportation was named the Lydia Mede. Kurt expected a whaling ship or a pretty steed with a name like that. Instead it was a '96 Saturn SL who's every ignition sounded like it begged to be shot. The wheels were worn, the silver paint had long flecked off, and the a/c felt like someone breathing down Kurt's neck.

“I only use it in the morning and evening,” Chico said, turning it off. “Midday it's useless.”

“Midday is when we'll need it though,” Kurt replied.

“Asi es.”

Chico rolled down the windows as the car soared along I-99.

Kurt stared at his own face in the rearview mirror. He'd expected some grand revelation on getting away from home. Instead he was as he'd always been; sinewy, pale, Seattleite with an angular face and a mop of wavy hair.

Chico by contrast was a small mutt of an Angeleno, with no clear heritage, descent, or direction. He made up for his missing inches with almost comically large combat boots that bordered on platforms. He looked like he needed a booster chair behind the wheel, but he drove the Lydia Mede with confidence, even if his own movements were erratic.

Glancing at the back seat was the cardboard envelope that had started this trip. It was addressed to a nameless collector in the Boston Metropolitan Area and contained a painting, but neither of the couriers knew of what exactly. That was to be expected, they were glorified paper boys, not critics. Since the fracturing of the U.S it was easier to deliver packages by car on piecemeal highways than fly over various contested airspaces. So under-the-table inheritances were stuffed into decades old cars driven by strays and told to head east where a man wealthier than either of them would ever be could collect the work of a long dead artist.

It was a waste of time, but for Kurt nothing was more of a waste than standing still.

Hanging from the rearview mirror was a small pendent of Saint Boethius and his wheel. In bad times it was the breaking wheel, in good times it was the wheel of fortune, and all the days in between he was the spokes.

“Are you religious?” Kurt asked, tapping the pendant and watching it swing.

“Nah,” Chico replied. “I don’t deny the big man upstairs – lots of love. But day to day? It's all me.”

“All you,” Kurt mumbled.

When he woke up at four a.m. and pondered death, it was then the idea of simply not existing terrified him. He figured he'd be happier as a believer, but he just couldn't bring himself to believe in much of anything. It wasn't nihilism, but apathy. He had enough on his mind anyways. He didn't have room up there for a commandment, much less ten.

“Where’d you get it?” Kurt asked.

“First time I drove this route mi amigo gave it to me. Said it centered him.”

“The wheel?”

“Si, when you’re always in motion the world moves past you. When you stay still too much it moves around you. Everything’s a blur if you can’t gauge the distance. Not to say I don’t appreciate someone looking out for me, y’know? When my time’s up and whoever comes to get me, I at least want them to hold my hand on the way up.”

“There’s a lot of empty land out here,” Kurt noted, glancing out the window. “What if no one comes and it really is all you?”

“Then I drive this route again, and again, and again until someone finds me.”

#

“I was a highwayman!” Chico sang along with the radio.

Outside, the land that had once been Utah sped past on the transition between I-15 and I-70 in a bumpy blur of browns, greens, and reds. It was now the Moab Equestrian Company Acreage. Miles upon miles of land dedicated to the care of horses under a company board. Kurt had heard about these places, but seen little. There were a few corporate pockets scattered through what remained of Washington State, but they became ubiquitous the deeper into the middle America one went.

“Along the coach roads I did ride.”

The right side mirror was a deep blue of the vast open sky marred only by the trail of a test-rocket launched by one of myriad aeronautical companies that had sprouted up in the fracture of the country. If a rich man in Boston couldn't own the world he could at least own the stars. The rocket had stayed straight, pale white exhaust spewing out the further it went. Only now it began to wobble and turn, the trail twisting in time.

“Sword and pistol by my side.”

Kurt liked to think of himself as a worldly man, but that wasn't true. He wanted to believe himself a practical man, but that wasn't true either. He hoped he was a man of the present. That was the clearest lie of all. Instead he spent his time rereading letters he'd read a hundred times before or letters he'd meant to send but never had the courage to. All of them were to or from Emery.

“Many a young maid lost her bauble to my trade.”

Outside they passed a barbed wire fence keeping horses away from the road. Kurt didn't know a thing about horses. He wished he did. He loved watching late night westerns with his dad when it was just the two of them. Instead he worked in a kitchen – or used to work in a kitchen. One day he'd think himself a chef, the next he'd fuck up and take himself out with the trash.

Boethius' wheel turned.

Emery worked in a bookstore owned by family friends. She'd studied literature, theatre, and fine art and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the subjects she was only too happy to share with anyone who cared to listen. Picasso, Matisse, Tamayo…

“Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade.”

Dearest Emery,

It's with a heavy heart that I'll be leaving Seattle soon. The kitchen doesn't pay enough, and I've been offered a job down south. Technically it'll be south and east and back west again. All over really. Very American. A real odyssey…

He hadn't sent that one. Too trite. She'd convinced him to try writing – something new. Their letters back and forth had started as exercise and become an inside joke. She was an enthusiastic supporter. Kurt was his own worst critic. She had a kindness that drew him close and an intellect that scared him.

Kurt had always felt like the Sea-Tac Metroplex was large enough for one to fall through the cracks and never be heard from again. He imagined himself clinging to the edge of some sidewalk, Puget Sound crashing below, waiting – hoping for Emery to pull him up. High above, the rocket began to spiral.

“The bastards hung me in the spring of '25.”

My dear Emery,

Good news – of a sort. I've found a new job, a traveling one. Unfortunately I'll be out of town for a while. While I'll be sure to come back with lots of stories, I'd like to write to you on the road. I could give you the mile by mile report. Kind of romantic…

He hadn't sent that one either. Needed editing. He should've sent something. Hell, he should've said something. He'd left without saying goodbye. He was used to silence, to observing, to being the odd man out. But silence hadn't gotten him where he wanted to be. He hadn't the strength to cling to the sidewalk, Emery hadn't pulled him to safety, it was only on the way down did he realize he had to find his own happiness.

He didn't know where that was.

“But I am still alive-”

The test-rocket exploded in a puff of smoke – first white, then orange, and finally a dirty brown smudge on the clear blue sky.

“Fuckin' A!” Chico laughed, head hanging out the window to, the Lydia Mede swerving oncoming traffic. Kurt's asshole clenched. Chico didn't seem to notice as he righted the old girl.

“I was a sailor,” he continued.

Instead of falling into Puget Sound, Kurt had fallen somewhere around Utah, into a car that barely ran, and next to a man he didn't fully trust. He didn't have his answers. He didn't know where they lay. If he knew that then he knew he wouldn't be here.

“I was born upon the tide.”

He preferred to reread his letters, especially those Emery sent to him.

Kurt,

Thanks for stopping by and letting me talk your ear off about some old books. The store's having an anniversary party. There'll be discounts! And a clown! You should come by if you're not sick and tired of me and my books…

#

The sun set westward and the beer ran down Kurt's throat in the nameless trailer town outside the Free City of Denver. They'd stopped for the night for cheap dinner, cheap beds, and cheap gas. Cheap, cheap, cheap. That was the point of in-between places like this. And if there was one thing Kurt noticed about these towns between corporate farmland and frail Democracy, it was that people loved to play at being cowboys.

Christmas lights were still strung down the street to provide levity in the middle of summer. Restaurants competed with bars who competed with bikers who competed with food trucks on who could blast their music the loudest. The I-70 between all this was a cacophony of country, metal, hiphop, and cumbia. The lower the sun set, the chillier it became despite the day’s blistering temperature. It seemed, in this in-between town, there were no in-betweens for anything else. Everything was one thing or another. Yin or yang.

Kurt took another sip while he sat on a low brick wall. He knew himself a lightweight, he was on his second beer after all, but if he had time to waste and a six-pack or two he could make more than a few stupid decisions. The Lydia Mede was parked next to him. In-between was Chico with a cigarette and beer in each hand, walking in circles, hopping from foot to foot, and periodically squatting as though he'd shit himself right there.

Kurt considered himself a proper stray from the Sea-Tac Metroplex, but watching Chico he couldn't imagine what LA County was like. Even its map was vast. His driver looked as though he'd rolled across that map and all the ink stuck to him as tattoos, scars, and bruises.

“So why'd you take this job?” Kurt asked him.

“Why not?” Chico replied, trying to shimmy to every rhythm floating through town. “I gotta move, bro. It's a beautiful world. I gotta' see it.”

“It's too easy for me to stand still.”

“Is that why you're here?”

“I guess – had to get out of town for a while.”

“Bored? Or did you make problems?” Chico had dropped the shimmy and now conducted the loudest song – a twangy ballad – with the end of his cigarette. Embers flew and danced. “I make problems, but I don't mean to. It's just that everyone else has problems with me, y'know?”

“LA ain't big enough for what? The three of you?”

“It should be, but it's all just a bunch of hoods that mad-dog each other. Everyone thinks they're the real LA. Even Lancaster! So you leave your problems in one hood and go to another where the lovely folks there will find new problems for you. Asi es, y'know?”

“So what're your problems?”

“I don't have any problems. I told you, I'm a stand up guy. It's everyone else. And my abuelita. She needed me out so my cousin could move back in.”

“Yeah, I've lived with my dad my whole life.”

“Ey, maybe they could get married, we could be brothers, and I could come crash with you in Sea-Tac every other weekend. One big happy family.”

“That sounds awful,” Kurt replied, finishing off his beer.

His fist smashed into the stranger's face. The man's eyes were wide, teeth white, hair swirling, barking at him like a dog. Kurt didn't know his name. He didn't know how many beers he'd drank. He didn't remember why they were fighting. He only knew someone had cut in line at the taco truck, a burrito had been dropped, and now the two of them were rolling around in the dirt. From the corner of his vision he could see other patrons standing there laughing.

Another punch. There was blood now. Kurt didn't think himself a strong guy. He never got into fights. But goddamn there was an anger in him. Some deep seated cancer that he hated and nursed and fought and protected and drowned and led and ignored. It sat there in his chest and barked at him to fuck and fight and flee. In Seattle he had a role written out for him. He'd pigeonholed himself into being a quiet, contemplative person. On the road he could be anyone he wanted and he still typecast his ass into a schmuck.

Another punch, one straight from back home. It was the only reason he wasn't laid out by now. Manual labor had given him strong hands. When Kurt was in the kitchen, on those lonely, late nights when everyone else had left and he could hear the world laughing outside, feeling like things spiraled on without him, he would kick and scream and beat at the dumpsters where no one could see him, but all the neighborhood dogs would bark along.

He beat that man like trash and howled like a dog.

“Where'd you go, bro?” Chico asked.

Kurt held up his burrito, still picking dirt off it. He'd taken a few dirty bites already. He deserved it. He cracked open another beer.

“Check it out,” Chico rolled up his sleeve to reveal a recently tattooed hula girl. “I got her before we left Fresno. She needs a name though, what do you think?”

“I dunno,” Kurt replied between bruised mouthfuls of chicken, but a name came to mind.

“I dunno either, but I'm trying to teach her how to dance.”

Chico rotated his forearm to make the girl sway, but it was too jerky to be impressive. The plastic covering caught the various Christmas lights and reflected their colors with every movement. It was more disco than hula on his arm.

“Oh, Kurt,” Chico crooned, his voice high-pitched and feminine. “Won't you come dance with me? Won't you show me a good time?”

“Nah,” he replied.

Chico laughed, rolling down his sleeve.

“Let me guess, a guy like you, you got someone back home, si?”

“Sorta',” Kurt replied, glancing towards the stack of letters sitting on the passenger seat in the Lydia Mede. “Dunno.”

“Do you love her?”

He was obsessed with her. Emery had become something transcendental in his mind, something no longer human, but an apotheosis of everything Kurt craved. Not an apotheosis of what Emery could be. Rather she was the apotheosis of what Kurt imagined her as. Not a person, but an ideal.

He couldn't say that. That was insane. He couldn't profess his love after beating the brakes off a stranger ten minutes before. Had he actually done that? He glanced at his beer – maybe. Keep to Emery. What about her did he actually like? What attracted him in the first place?

He glanced at the stack of letters again. He couldn't make out the words at this distance, but he'd memorized them nonetheless. Her writing. Her influence on him to write – to create.

“I love her... in an editorial sense,” Kurt sighed.

Chico stared, scratching his shaved head, his eyes never once settling in place.

“So she fixes you?” he asked.

Fuck, that sounded bad.

A boot crashed down on his head, leaving Kurt's mouth full of dirt and his ears ringing.

“Fucker!” one of the cowboys shouted. “You thought you could fuck with our boy and just walk away!?”

Kurt had gone to toss his burrito wrapper in the trash when the whole trashcan was tossed at him. He covered his head, hands around his ears, laying fetal, but the blows kept coming. Kurt never considered himself a strong man, nor a fighter. He'd only won that last brawl because he was on top the whole time. Now he was being pummeled into the dirt. He could only lie as flat as possible. He wanted to snarl something back. In his imagination he caught one man's boot between his teeth and bit his toes off. Instead he could only groan. That cancerous anger wasn't here to help. It left him hollow when consequences came home to roost. He was either winning or losing, no in-between.

Another ten blows. Too many blows to hit him – they got tangled up with each other and stomped on each other's feet. Maybe Kurt wouldn't make it out of here. Maybe he wouldn't make it home. That had always been in the back of his mind – some small, cruel fantasy that had followed him from Seattle.

They were suddenly flooded with light and the growl of a limping engine. The cowboys backed off, boots thudding against dirt, squealing tires halted beside Kurt.

“Andale!” Chico shouted.

Kurt staggered to his feet, hands on the side of the Lydia Mede. He was too confused to find the handle. He wriggled through the passenger window, the world turning topsy-turvy and speeding past, sending him crashing into the seat – his legs still danging free.

They hauled ass east; the engine growling, letters streaming from the window, and Chico laughing all the way.

#

“Who was that?” Kurt asked.

“Our employer,” Chico replied as he exited the roadside phone booth in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas. “I always call him here to keep him updated.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He never does. But give me a sec, I gotta take a whizz.”

Chico wandered past the phonebooth into the endless golden fields of swaying grass. The landscape dwarfed him the further he went. Kurt stared at the phonebooth – the only tangible tether to everyone back home. He thought about the remaining letters on his seat. Why re-read them when he could call her?

Right now.

He crossed the highway as though sneaking across some imaginary line. Glancing back and forth sheepishly, but they were the only people out here.

Kurt found just enough change to feed the machine, listening to each coin thunk and rattle through the slot. He punched in the number. The dial tone went on forever. What would he say? What could he say? Hello? I miss you? I’m sorry? Kurt tried not to worry too much, distracting himself with the graffiti decorating the interior of the booth like prehistoric paintings.

Albuquerque or bust!

What sort of life did he expect when this was over? He’d ran, just as he always dreamed of. How could he just step back into Seattle as though nothing happened? Did he even want to? Life to him was always where he stood and somewhere on the horizon. The present and future. The in-between was what he always had trouble with. How could he plan the route from reality to an imagined future and not trip along the way?

The phone continued to ring.

A long, rambling love poem was graded with, Trite, overdone, doggerel – kill yourself.

Part of that imaginary journey between here and there for Kurt always included a vanishing act. No suicidal ideation. Instead he simply stepped away from his home, his friends, his life, leaving them to make do in his absence. Would they be better for it? Probably. Would they miss him? He hoped so. Would they go looking for him? That would shatter the daydream.

The phone continued to ring.

Once more around the wheel. This had been repeatedly written over itself, the letters blotchy and skewed – the latest layer of ink still fresh. Kurt could only guess who wrote it every time they stopped here for a call.

Chico stood at the horizon between the golden fields and blue sky, shaking his hips and watering the grass. That man was the opposite of Kurt, all change with no clear starting point and no defined finish line – flux personified. How could he enjoy the moment when he was always moving? Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he was always passing by. No one said hello. No one welcomed him home. No one missed him. At a certain point, Kurt figured he’d gotten so used to that life that he couldn’t hold on to anything anymore.

The phone continued to ring.

Chico offered an exaggerated wave from the horizon. Kurt waved back.

“Hey, boy!”

Kurt whirled around. A sheriff’s car sat in the road between him and the Lydia Mede. Two emotionless men sat inside, shades on, tin badges glinting.

“What’re you doing?” a cop asked.

“Making a call,” he replied.

“And your friend, is he relieving himself?”

“No,” Kurt said, hoping Chico had zipped up by now. “I think he’s… frolicking.”

“Pack your shit and move on. You hear me? There’s no frolicking in Kansas.”

The cop car squealed away in a cloud of exhaust before Kurt could reply. The noise and confusion had so surprised him that he’d accidentally slammed the receiver down, never hearing the ringing stop and the soft voice on the other end ask,

“Hello?”

#

They found the world's loneliest gas station in a forgotten strip of land between three vanished states. Nobody had any interest in it. No one remembered it. Even the highway signs had vanished. Only the road remained.

They'd expected little when they pulled in, but the gas flowed, the lights were on, and the speakers played a tinny waltz that echoed out into the fields. The pumps accepted Chico's quarters, but they were unbearably slow to fill the Lydia Mede. The fuel gauge inched from '0' to '1' as the midday shadows grew a little longer.

Kurt stepped out of the shade, onto the side of the road, and stared at the pale blue sky. Thin wispy clouds stretched across the horizon. A pair of hawks circled above him. Removed from the earth, but not of the stars, they coasted on their own thermals in an endless dance. The gas station's music played them on as they twirled across a vast blue ballroom.

He'd never seen so many hawks as on the road. They were the only constants alongside the sky and the highway. Maybe these two had followed him from Fresno, maybe even Seattle. He'd wondered what it would be like as a bird; to flap his arms and leave his home, his problems, his life behind. Did they love as deeply as a man bound to earth? Kurt both envied their detachment and hoped they were as sentimental as he. How many times had he thought the best answer to his life was to pull up stakes and leave? How many times had he dreamt of disappearing over the horizon and everyone back home would say, whatever happened to good old Kurt Salish?

He found his eyes locked on the hawks. Staring upwards, he followed their movements, turning in a circle. The prairies, the highway, and the gas station all became a swirling blur while the birds remained in place, swaying in rhythm.

How long had he felt the world spin around him, beyond his grasp and without his control? Stuck in Seattle all his life, he'd been so deeply entrenched in the small community he had. The few special people he owed everything to. That's all he knew. Emery was still there. Was she thinking of him? She was happy – she was always happy. But what about Kurt? Was the desire to run away in search of freedom or destruction? When he left, how would he get back home? Was his only reason to wander to make Emery jealous?

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Chico had joined him in the road and twirled in time. The tinny waltz continued – one, two, three. The pump gauge rose from '2' to '3'. One, two, three. The prairies blurred – the horizon was a blue flicker of film reel. One, two, three. Someone laughed. Someone howled. The music rose and fell. One, two, three. He felt dizzy. All the while the hawks remained in place.

Boethius was right. Life was a wheel, one that rose and fell. At the center Kurt was safe and secure, but saw nothing. Nothing changed but the vague sense that he'd turned upside down. He wanted to shimmy out along the spokes, feeling the wind in his hair. He wanted to reach the rim, to peer past it and see the world beyond rather than the road ahead. Then what? Would he crawl back? Could he crawl back? Would he stay there too long and be crushed on the side of the highway? Or would he jump? Leaping to an uncertain future, finding his thermals somewhere in-between, and never again falling back to earth.

In that moment, in that rotation, in that middle of nowhere, Kurt was a bird high above it all.

#

The worst traffic they encountered on the drive was on the interchanges outside the Columbus Technocracy. Miles and miles of crawling cars. Kurt and Chico passed the time betting on what the cause was.

“Maybe a fire,” Chico offered.

“I don't see any smoke,” Kurt replied. It was hazy, but that was exhaust and cigarettes.

“Maybe they flipped and slid across all four lanes.”

“Like a bowling ball?”

“Stee-rike!” Chico laughed, honking the horn.

“Sure looks like a couple of turkeys,” Kurt said, peering out the window.

They inched past two SUVs, blue and red, parked on the shoulder. The families of both stood by while the fathers met in the middle; shirts off, guts wobbling, and throwing haymakers. Their wives shared in mortification. The rest of the highway loved it, honking and cheering for their respective champions.

“Throw ‘em a tip,” Chico grinned.

Kurt tossed a dime. It stuck to a sweaty man's back, flashing under the sun.

“So,” Kurt said, leaning back in his seat. “What is your real name?”

“Chico,” the driver replied.

“What's your full name, though?”

“Does it matter, ese?”

“Doesn't it?”

“I wouldn't know. I don't have a birth certificate, the license is fake – it's good but it's fake – and I've never done taxes. I'm all under the table, dawg.”

“You've got nothing?” Kurt asked, incredulous.

“Not nothing, I'm right here aren't I? If I was nothing, who'd be driving the car?”

“I don't mean like that. But where's Chico from?”

Chico tapped his chest.

“Right there,” he said. “Between my heart and my wallet. Besides, who says I need proof? I'm me aren't I?”

“Are you?”

“Are you?”

“Don't ask me that,” Kurt sighed, knowing he could spiral if he thought too long about it.

“Look, I'm Chico,” the driver continued. “Most days I'm just Chico, and that Chico is whatever I make of it. Maybe I'm Chico Hernandez from Avenue 32. Or Chee Kho, some bantam motherfucker. Or I could be Chico Hovnanian, and I've secretly been Armenian this entire time.”

He took his hands from the wheel and wiggled his fingers for dramatic effect. Traffic was so slow that there was no danger.

“All that matters is for me to decide,” he continued.

Kurt wanted to agree, but as his own worst critic, who was Kurt Salish? Was he a different person here in the east than in Seattle? He hoped so. He worried he wasn’t. Most mornings he didn't recognize his own face in the mirror. That was a reflection of yesterday's man. He thought about the fight outside Denver. He didn't know himself then, he didn't agree with that anger. Yet he drank and the cancerous anger fought and howled. It did plenty of things he didn't agree with the next morning. Was that still Kurt Salish?

“How many times have you started over?” he asked.

“I don't start over. I try again.”

“How many times?”

“A hundred-thousand times,” Chico replied. “And a hundred-thousand more.”

“And you haven't found what you're looking for yet?”

“Do I have to? I keep looking, I keep changing, but it doesn't mean I'm always right, y'know?”

Kurt nodded, glancing at Saint Boethius.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“Shit, Lydia Mede has had every part of her replaced a hundred times, but I've been driving her for so long I don't know what I would do without her.”

“The ship of Theseus,” Kurt replied.

“I don’t know him,” Chico noted. “The parts in her change, so do the passengers, but she keeps on rolling. Some things can't be fixed – not permanently, but you make do and you keep going'. Ramble on, that's what a wiser man would say, y'know?”

“You're wise enough.”

“Nah, bro, I just talk. Everybody just hears what they want.”

“I don't even know what I want.”

“Gotta' vocalize that shit, man.”

Some things couldn't be fixed permanently. Life was a wheel. How many times would Kurt have to hear it before he understood? But that was his problem, he didn't believe in much of anything, least of all himself. That was pathetic. But that's where he'd grown comfortable – somewhere between joy and despair – a real mediocre human being.

Kurt Salish – the real Kurt? One of the Kurts? He wandered through life trying to make sense of it while his anger hounded his footsteps. He'd never be rid of it, but sometimes he would be on top and other days it would – like beating a man in a parking lot. Or worse.

“What about you, bro?” Chico asked. “Who are you today?”

“A fool,” Kurt replied.

“Join the club. But why are you really out here? You wanna move?”

“I thought so. I used to visit PDX thinking it could be a home. But I realized it was just a place to run to where they didn't know about my mistakes. That only works for so long. I thought this drive would be the same.”

“And?”

“I needed space.”

Silence passed between them, broken only by the whine of the Lydia Mede.

“A new latitude,” Chico said. “I knew you had problems. With your lady?”

“She isn't mine.”

“Was 'editorial' a code for her dumping you?”

“It's complicated,” Kurt replied. “I wasn't... kind.”

He'd called her a cunt.

He couldn't remember why. He'd been drinking – of course. But that moment from their last night together was seared into his brain. If he had any tattoos, cunt would be inked across his forehead. He'd woken up from the middle of his stupor, remembered that moment – he couldn't even remember her reaction – and realized how fucked he was. There'd been a flurry of apologies. Then he ran. The next morning he'd found this job and left Seattle, leaving the Pacific Northwest in the care of better people.

Chico nodded, but was drowned out by the engine and Kurt’s thunderous memories. His lecture became a pantomime. It didn't matter anyways. Kurt wasn't there anymore.

Kurt had come out here to find a better self, but it wouldn't be waiting for him out east like he'd hoped. He'd have to make it better – make himself better – and that required dealing with the consequences. But he couldn't do that until he stopped running, and that was the entire point of the Lydia Mede.

The road cleared up soon after. They never did find the cause of traffic.

#

“That's it?” Chico asked.

Kurt peered up at the imposing colonial manor. Chico leaned next to him, cigarette dangling from his lips. They leaned against the car, peering up the long staircase to the white front door and the golden mail slot.

“That's it,” Kurt replied, double checking the address.

He'd thought the Lydia Mede was muggy without a/c, but summer in the Boston Metropolitan Area made him feel like he was swimming in his clothes. He didn't need the weather to make him feel out of place. They were a couple strays blown in from the west, clearly not from around here. He couldn't see anyone, but he knew they were being watched.

“We just walk it up?” Kurt wondered.

“We just walk it up,” Chico replied.

Kurt checked the address on the package again. It was correct. It was the end of the road. He looked around for a revelation. Nothing. Instead, he noticed part of the cardboard packaging had come loose. He poked a finger in and felt the glue give way at the touch. He'd never really wondered what was inside before, but now there was no excuse not to know – besides professionalism.

He turned towards Chico. The Angeleno glanced from him to the package; a wry smile implied his agreement. If they wanted professionalism, they wouldn't have hired two strangers off the internet to drive fine art cross country in the back of a '96 Saturn SL. Kurt took a breath and peeled back the cardboard.

A coyote, crooked and mismatched, with loose brush strokes, howling at a yellow moon on a deep blue background. Kurt stared. He recognized the image. It was a piece Emery had once shown him from her books. He was too busy staring at her to appreciate the art then. He still didn't entirely appreciate it. He was more so surprised to see it resurface this far east.

He could feel Chico looking over his shoulder.

“What the hell is that?” the driver asked.

“It's a Tamayo,” he noted, somehow remembering the artist's name. Emery's interests had become his own. He could almost hear her adore it. The painting seemed to bark back at him.

“It reminds me of you,” Chico grinned.

“It looks more like you,” Kurt replied.

“I wish I looked like that.”

“Maybe in your next life.”

“Next time around the wheel, dawg.”

“Next time,” Kurt nodded.

He sealed the package back up, pressing the cheap glue against itself, and making sure nothing was loose. The Coyote returned to the dark.

They walked up the winding steps, Chico a pace behind Kurt. There was still time for a revelation. A moment of self discovery. But what else could he learn? He paused at the last step, looking up and down the treelined street. Nothing out of the ordinary. Some of it was new – the hum of unseen lawnmowers and the mugginess that flooded his pits. Other things had become ubiquitous – cigarette smoke and the idling of the Lydia Mede.

The golden mail slot was just large enough for the package as Kurt slid it in. Tamayo's Coyote disappeared with a satisfying thunk and was gone. Kurt stood there a moment, expecting something – anything.

“That's it?” Kurt asked.

“That's it,” Chico replied. His expression was an indiscernible in-between. Almost amused. Almost weary.

“No 'thank you'?”

“Nah,” Chico started back down the steps. “You want 'em to fade us to black? We're done here.”

All done. But not free of anything. Some things would never be fixed completely. Yet the wheel turned and Kurt would have the opportunity to try again. He could only hope he'd do better the next time around. That's all Saint Boethius offered.

“Grub?” Chico asked. “I'm starving.”

“Fine,” Kurt replied. “Toss me the keys, I'll drive.”

Marsden Lyonwahl lives in his head. A graduate from the University of Washington, he's previously been published in 7th-Circle Pyrite, Piker Press, and The Gorko Gazette among others. This is not the last you've heard from him.