Drt (7 page)

“It's cuz you watched it, right?”
 

“Yeah, yeah.”
 

“Maybe you should get some water. You look like you could use some air too.”
 

She walked back to the studio. I got up and walked to the sink, filled a glass with water, and drank. The cold water felt good and soothed my suddenly dry mouth. I repeated this with the water a few more times. The images of the man from this morning were bright as a beacon through the murky darkness.
 

It was not the images of the truck, turned over and gutted like some great beast. It was not the shocked faces of the emergency workers at the scene of the crash.
 

It was the man, the man who up until now had no name. Jerry. Jerry Morris was the name of the man whom I had neglected to tell about the car. Jerry was also the man this morning that had demanded to know why I had failed him. I fell into a chair at the round table.

The news showed pictures of Jerry and his family. There was Jerry in a suit with a blue background. He was there with his extremely pretty wife, joined by his son and daughter. The children were in the middle of the frame at the bottom, the parents above them. The daughter looked small and innocent with blue eyes and a mop of curly blond hair carefully gathered into neat pigtails. Normal kids, normal family, orphaned and widowed because I was too busy looking at Craig’s List.

Be Well. Be Well. All you have to do is get through tonight and then you can Be Well. Just make it through tonight and then everything will be okay.

9

The clock crept toward 2AM and I moved without much thought. I found it best to go through the motions. Read a list of road construction on the air, get up and update the other computers, read another list on the air, rinse and repeat. Thinking was poisonous. Keeping my mind off Jerry Morris and his family was the best way to go. The image would poke through occasionally, like a blanket thrown over something large.
 

I kept the words: Be Well.
 
The words themselves seemed to help in some way. I imagined going to the group would be almost a panacea, but that night, I just worked. I kept my mind’s thumb on those two words. They served as a phylactery to ward off the thoughts of falling into the abyss.
 

The little hand oiled past the two on the clock on the wall and I waited to go on the air. I was listening to the anchor for my cue. “It's 2:06,” she said and the commercial started. I heard about the rug cleaning service, I heard about the Nissan dealer, as I had so many times before.
 

“It’s 2:08.” They played the prompt.
 

“Well everything is all quiet on the Beltway. You are enjoying light volume all around the nation's capital. There is some road construction, if you traveling through the College Park area the Outer Loop has the right lane taken away. In the District, there is some construction on South Capital St in the right lane just before you get to the ramp for the 3rd St tunnel. Elsewhere the roads are quiet. I am Greg Harris for Washington's News leader.”
 

I pushed the microphone off and sat. There was something about the overnight shift that made it almost impossible to keep my thoughts tuned to Be Well. Between 11PM when Amy left and the end of my shift at 5AM it was absolute solitude. Combine this with fighting against the body’s natural biorhythms and you have a hellish cocktail guaranteed to produce panting madness by 3AM.
 

I closed my eyes. Be Well, Be Well…but the thoughts of last night crept in anyway. It was like trying to fight an addiction and making the irrational decision to test yourself. I thought of the truck, coming out of the darkness and the sparks that rained down on the road. I saw the beast of metal and glass, swerving to avoid the car, turning and twisting into the trees.
 

I opened my eyes. The traffic center was gone, all of it. The lights from above, the microphones, the wall of monitors, the desk, everything, gone. I realized that I wasn't even in a building anymore. I was sitting in a chair outside, the familiar office surroundings replaced by a thick wooded area. The trees towered close together and there was no light except the stars that glowed above.
 

I rubbed my eyes hard enough to see spots float in front of me.

I was still outside, sitting in the chair. I covered my eyes with my hands and then took them away. Nothing changed. I slapped myself, hard. Nothing changed. I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to calm my breathing. This isn't real, I thought, I am just confused. It’s all in my head, I’m dreaming. I leaned down out of the chair and ran my hand along the ground. I found dirt and wet grass. The dirt stuck under my fingernails. The grime under my nails felt like it was moving, like thousands of microscopic mealworms turning little pinwheels in the tight spot under my nails.
 

This is just a really bad one, I thought. The moon was shining in the cloudless sky, casting a dull light all over the trees, rocks and earth. There was no sound. No sound of a wooded area sleeping. No crickets or sounds of traffic passing on distant roads. The woods stood in unnerving silence that I pushed my fingers into my ears to avoid.
 

I looked around for a road or interstate. I stayed seated in the chair and craned my neck to see if there were any cars nearby or a slab of concrete for them to drive on. Nothing greeted my gaze but the darkness beyond the trees, as if this place had dropped off the edge of the world. Slowly I stood out of my chair and stretched to see if there were any clues to where I was. There was no ground, no buildings, nothing, just darkness beyond the tree line.
 

I tried to sit back down but the chair was gone. Now there was just me in this thatch of woods and no indication as to where I was or how I could leave.
 

I am not where or when, I thought, I am just confused and I need to convince myself of my reality. I am in the traffic center in Silver Spring. All of this is fake, I am just confused.

I was petrified. Everything felt so real. I couldn’t snap out of it and I wanted nothing more than to do that right now.
 

I whirled around, now something else was out there in the treeline. In the distance, I saw the white tractor trailer lying on its side. The contents were spilled out, like a buffalo had been gutted and left its carnage strewn on the ground. It hadn’t been there before. I looked at it for an undetermined length, time and space not passing in any conceivable way. I took a few careful steps toward the great truck. I needed something that would bring me out of this trance, some evidence that would get me back.
 

A loud sound came from behind. It was a horn, an air horn, and it was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.
 

Beyond the trees, in the empty darkness, a pair of bright headlights turned on, like an animal waking up, but gigantic. The lights themselves had to be ten feet tall.
 

In the distance, I heard the sound of air brakes. The headlights started getting closer.

When they got into the treeline they illuminated the truck itself. It was the size of a twenty story building, with exhaust stacks that towered even higher. It broke the trees in either direction, snapping them like twigs beneath its tires.

It was coming toward me. I turned and ran. Almost immediately I tripped, collapsing and slapping my nose against a rock. My nose began to bleed. I pushed my palms into the earth and scrambled back to my feet. Behind me the truck gained momentum, the engine sounded like a roar. I heard another terrible blast from the air horn.
 

At the foot of the truck the contents of the forest were flying in all directions, everything being crushed by the giant machine that was now picking up speed. It was growing bigger somehow as it barreled closer and closer.
 

I kept trying to run, only to bump into obstacles thrown up in my path. The truck towered in the air, bathing the woods in yellow light, and continued to clear any living thing in its path. The truck hit another gear and now was coming impossibly fast. I ran even though there was no use, it was pure instinct. Like an ant doomed to be stepped on by a cruel child. The truck was now almost on top of me.
 

A tree snapped in half and it came collapsing to the ground. It smacked me as I ran and my leg was pinned. I screamed as the pressure from the truck forced the branch of the tree though my thigh. My femur snapped in half. I pressed my eyes shut and screamed again as the giant black rubber tire rolled onto my body.
 

My eyes blinked open and I was back in the traffic studio, the reappearance of sound waking my brain to this fact. I started sobbing as I ran my hand along the desk and found my headphones through eyes blurry with tears. I felt so helpless, so alone. I desperately needed to stay alive long enough so that I could Be Well but it hardly seemed worth it.
 

“It's 2:18”

The chime.
 
“Everything is all quiet…on…the Beltway. Um...uh...
 
there is some road construction, if you traveling through the College Park area. In the District, some construction on South Capital St… elsewhere the roads are quiet…I am Greg Harris.”

“Uh,” said the anchor sounding confused, “thanks, Greg.”

I pulled my headphones off and cried, best to let it all out. I cried because I was not able to control myself. I hated the fact that I was weak to these emotions. I hated that I could not just keep it together. I hated that I wasn't good at anything, this problem that had led to all the others.
 

I pulled my head off the desk, wiped my eyes and pushed my chair away from the desk. I got up, turned around, and found myself nose to nose with Jerry Morris.
 

The crash victim was covered in blood which was collecting in pools around his feet. The blood ran in all directions, as if there was no gravity pulling it to the ground. The pools had a dull quality to them, like flat black paint. The ghost’s eyes were gone, replaced by light that beamed out of them.

I collapsed back into the chair, my mouth frozen in a silent scream. The scent of exhaust permeated every corner of the studio.

The lights dimmed. The only thing that I could see was the floor that Jerry stood on and the soft green glow of the TV monitors. My heart thundered and throbbed in my chest.

 
Jerry's sight settled on me. The light that blazed out of Jerry's eyes was the same as the klieg lights from the crash scene. Jerry's face was silhouetted, only shadows peeked out from behind.

Jerry got closer, slowly. I could see Jerry's skin was crawling with bugs feeding on the blood that covered him. The lights burned my eyes but I couldn’t look away.
 

Jerry’s mouth opened and the horrible snaky voice that was both a low roar and a high pitched scream at the same time came out.
 

“GREG!!! YOU DIDN’T TELL ME!!”
 

10

I listened to the rush of water from the giant series of fountains that made up the Navy War Memorial, alone on a bench. The noise from the fountain was deafening as water was shot from several surrounding jets. The memorial was the size of a full city block and honored its subject by featuring huge pools of water, blue, gigantic, and mesmerizing.
 

The sound of the cascading water calmed me; this was always one of my favorite parts of the city. I sat in soupy air that clung like a wall, the sun blazed down onto my scalp. Across the street was the National Archives, the columns looked like individual skyscrapers holding up the flat gray stone. I came to sit on this bench in my favorite part of the city hours before Be Well started. Being there calmed my nerves and they needed to be calmed.

As I have described to you, things didn’t go very well before the meeting. Chief among them the shift from Friday night into Saturday morning that I just finished telling you about. The young man who came into relieve me had found me in my chair, paralyzed with fear. I had managed to keep the screaming internal so that when I was found there wasn't any outwardly obvious terror. I fast walked out of the office, leaving him to wonder.
 

Saturday passed with a modicum of peace, sitting on my bed with the television on and maniacally massaging my temples. When the moment finally came on Sunday I went down to the Vienna station and took the train in. I had come early to Penn Quarter to sit at the Navy Memorial. The light blue water in the fountain did the trick today.
 

I walked through the memorial and crossed the street. Teaism was a hip chain that had two locations in the city, here and Dupont Circle. The Dupont location was often awash in hipsters and artisans, desperate to have their calm, collected aloofness noticed. The Penn Quarter location was a lot more businesslike and included a basement perfect for meetings. The eventual end of many Craigslist classifieds concluded in the basement of Teaism.
 

I stared at the sidewalk as I opened the glass door and walked in. Patrons sat at skinny tables for two and lunched on Bento boxes.

I crossed to the counter, ordered peppermint Chamomile, and walked carefully down the stairs after receiving my cup of steaming liquid. The basement was a riot of tables and chairs. Everywhere there was signs of collaboration with wooden tables and chairs scootched and clattered together.
 

At a long table in the corner sat a collection of men and women. Among them on the table sat a black sign with removable white letters that said, “Be Well.” Calmness melted over me, like being lowered into a warm bathtub. I had never seen these people before but I felt like I was home.

The ages of the group seemed to range from thirty to fifty. Most of them had plates in front of them; the rest had steaming bowls of brown liquid. They all used chopsticks, with a varying degree of success. The woman closest to me reached into her bowl and pulled out a spiderweb of rice noodles. The man on the far end of the table kept pinching bite sized pieces off his blue plate, dropping them almost immediately. Everywhere around me was the sound of the sticks pinging off the plates mixed with the sounds of people cursing their ability to eat with chopsticks.