He always had a hard time facing his complicity with the world when things went bad and failed. It wasn’t his fault, being mostly just caught up and swept along. He got out of bed and opened the blinds. The sun was up and he saw the window was dirty and spattered, giving him a sadly marred view of the old clothesline and broken concrete patio, the budding plum tree. Any other day, he would have denied his part in all this. Not his fault that God insisted on driving the rain at an angle to the glass, nor that the man who used to come and wash the windows died last year on a cot in the YMCA. But just at that moment of dawning denial, he remembered the day.

It was Saturday, and it was his birthday. And it was his custom, on this one day every year, to admit that he was, after all, the one guy who was always around when things started going bad. Other people were around for some it, and some were there for most of it, but when the rubber met the road, he was the greatest common denominator. So he blinked through the grime and thought of the Windex under the sink, and the paper towels hanging there.

What he really wanted was to sit on the edge of the bed for two hours or three, watching CNN Headline News, to see if he could spot variations in the news from one half hour to the next. He always hoped that it would change, that he hadn’t already missed everything that was going to happen. But since it was a special day, he needed to get moving. He was burning daylight.

He ate oatmeal with honey and raisins, listening to a country station. Heard a song about a long haul trucker whose wife died home alone, while he pulled a long load of pipe through a cold Georgia rain. All the trucker had was a photo in his wallet and the dog they got together at the pound, who dozed in the sleeper while he drove and drove, trying to outrun his grief. Despite the comfort of oatmeal and coffee, he thought he could relate.

With his face shaved, belly full and shoes tied tight, he felt damn near heroic. Fit to go forth and stand fast to the winds of personal responsibility. On the hall table, he found the video he had to return. He went out, and behind him there was commitment in the sound of the lock.


by Kyle Kimberlin
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