1/26/20 – hubris 2: wreckage

[Link to hubris 1]

The boy with the feathered hair climbed into the silver truck with the maroon stripe. “Don’t fucking ask,” he said to his father.

His father said nothing.

They drove in silence out of the parking lot. Geese gathered on the pond beside the school, everything muted behind a veil of fog.

The boy reached across his father’s chest and with a clenched fist pounded the horn five staccato blasts, timed in unison with his words:

“I!

Hate!

All!

Those!

Fuckers!”

Startled, the geese ascended en masse from the pond, and beat black-tipped wings across the road.

“Put your seatbelt on,” his father said.

The boy did. He settled into his seat and watched the landscape, lined by clouds and mist, glide past the window.

At the 4-way stop, they should have turned right, but they turned left. No one spoke.

A white farmhouse, chewed by time and neglect, leaned left. It appeared to hobble and kneel on one knee, its shoulders heavy with story. The front door hung open and on one hinge. No glass panes remained whole in any window. Raccoons and coyotes left their mark.

This is where the boy with his feathered hair and his father turned in.

They came at least once each month and picked through the wreckage, looking for something to salvage.

“The ground will take it soon enough,” the boy’s father said, “but there’s always something left behind.”