“You ok, darlin?” the woman asked.

Darcy wiped her face, stepped on her cigarette, and tried to smile.

“Yeah, I’m ok.”

The woman pulled her purse higher on her shoulder and took Darcy’s hand. Darcy held her hand in return.

“My husband just left with the 7^th,” the woman said. “I’ve had to say goodbye both times he went to Okinawa. I wish this one was that easy, but it’s not.”

Darcy met the woman’s tired and knowing look. Tears started to well again.

“They’ll be fine, darlin,” the woman said. “Yours, too.”

The woman squeezed her hand and turned back toward the bank. “You take care.”

Darcy was scared. Scared of losing the one boy who made her feel safe. Scared of her decision to let him go, and if they’d make it back to each other sometime, someplace down the road. Scared of whether she’d be able to keep her problems behind her. Scared of doing it alone. She sighed heavily and lit another cigarette.

Billy walked out of the recruiting office with his hands deep in his pockets.

“Are you in trouble? Did they yell at you?” Darcy said.

“No. He told me I’m fucking late, but I’m still good,” Billy said. “And I go to San Diego for boot camp, not Parris Island.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s all the same shit, though.”

“Well, at least San Diego’s closer. Did he say when you’ll go?”

“This afternoon.”

“What?! Billy! This afternoon?!”

“He said it was mandatory. The bus leaves at fourteen hundred. What is that…two o’clock.”

Darcy found the clock in front of the bank. Ten-thirty. Her lip quivered as she took a deep drag from her cigarette and held it for a second, then looked at Billy and exhaled sideways.

“God, this sucks,” Darcy said.

Billy looked at his shoes and felt like everything inside him had spilled out. He didn’t want Darcy to feel abandoned again. He didn’t want her to hurt. But Billy was numb. He wanted a heartful of sadness. He wanted disappointment or regret, even fear churning inside him. Instead, no emotions came. It was as if his entire life was only what came from that moment forward. He wondered if this would make him a good Marine.

“Are you hungry?” Billy said.

“Pfff. No.”

Darcy walked to the car. Billy followed.

“Let’s just drive till you have to go,” Darcy said.

***

Billy and Darcy sat in the car in the parking lot of the shopping center where the recruiting station was located. An olive drab green bus was parked at the curb, and not quite two dozen young men, mostly Hispanic, milled around with wives, girlfriends, and parents. A handful of kids held their mother’s, big sister’s, or grandmother’s hands or were held in their arms. A few men stood away from the others, finishing cigarettes.

“I’d write, but I don’t know where you’ll be,” Billy said.

“You won’t write, Billy,” Darcy said. “It’s ok though. You’ll have a lot of other things to worry about.”

Billy knew she was right. He had not felt even a small pang of sadness in the three hours they drove around. They rode in silence, knowing that everything was small talk. Trying, but not fully able to convince herself, Darcy put their future in fate’s hands. Pinned her hopes on Billy’s return from the Marines and his path pointing back to her. Billy coolly embraced that his future was no longer his own. He had no way of knowing the specific mental and physical sacrifice that would actually entail, but somehow understood that as long as there was a blood to be spilled in the name of God and country, a Marine’s death was an expected part of a Marine’s life.

They heard a holler and saw the wives, girlfriends, parents, and children suddenly cling to their recruits, and the young men said their final goodbyes and started toward the bus with their bags.

“I’ve gotta go,” Billy said.

Darcy turned and hugged Billy. He put his arms around her.

“Please be careful,” Darcy said, then sat back and looked Billy in the eyes. “Find me.”

“I’ll try,” Billy said and climbed out of the car.

Read more

Read more

Raf Machado was restocking Sterno in one of the three aisles of his general store in Granite, Idaho. He placed one last can on the shelf, turned around, and faced a man in a gray t-shirt, faded jeans, and five-day beard who looked to be cut from the town’s namesake. American Made was printed on…

Read more

Darcy sat in the passenger seat with her bare feet on the dashboard while Billy leaned against the car, pumping gas.

“Have you ever done anything like that before?” Billy said through the open window.

“What, stabbed someone?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“How’d you…I mean, why this time?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even remember doing it, really. I remember…

Read more

Shea Dyer didn’t even try to conceal her annoyance with the bearded man in the old duck Carhart, frayed ball cap, his question, or the three other easy-readers who she knew would order PBRs. She swung her bar rag over her shoulder and leaned one hand on the drink rail while Waylon and Willie were drowning in a whiskey …

Read more

As a young and hungry broker, Martin caught a buyer from Connecticut who was interested in an almost inaccessible rustic lak…

Read more

Part of that decision was Joyce, the owner of the diner. Joyce was in her early 50s, but the way she commanded the entire restaurant floor as she moved from table to table with plates, pots of coffee, handwritten checks, and relaxed conversation made her seem far younger.

Billy had grabbed a table while Darcy went to the bathroom. Joyce stopped and put a water and a straw in front of Billy and another in front of where Darcy would sit, followed by laminated menus. Her nametag said Joyce with a small smiley face for the “o.”

“So, I’ve become sort of a professional at reading people. You have to in this line of work,” Joyce gestured vaguely to the space around her and smiled, “And you look like you’re hungry.”

“Yes, ma’am, we are.”

“We. Why, a gentleman in my diner. Considerate of your girl even when she hasn’t even made it to the table.”

“I mean…”

“It’s ok, sweetheart. It’s a good thing. I’m just kidding with you.”

Darcy sat down at the other water and started pulling the straw from the paper. She smiled at Joyce.

“Hi.”

“Well, there she is. I understand you two are more than ready to eat.”

Billy nodded at Darcy. She nodded back.

“Can I get a cheeseburger and fries, please? Medium.”

“All the fixins?”

“Please.”

“How about you, sweetheart?”

“I’ll do the same, please.”

“Drinks?”

“Water’s fine for me,” Darcy said.

“I’m good, too. Thanks,” said Billy.

“You all are too easy. I’ll get these in.”

Neither had much to say. They were tired and happy to sit quietly listening to the sounds from the kitchen and customers’ silverware against their plates. Darcy crossed her legs and swung her toe softly against Billy’s knee like she was keeping time.

Joyce returned with their burgers, ketchup, and mustard and left them with an “Enjoy, you two.”

Billy had cleaned his plate, and Darcy was mopping up ketchup with the last of her fries when Joyce stopped back, refilled their waters, and took a seat next to Billy.

“So, what’s your story? Spill it.”

Joyce reminded Darcy of her favorite aunt. Her dad’s sister, Tara. Tara would pull Darcy aside during obligatory holiday gatherings and talk to her like a big sister, asking her about boys and letting her take shallow drags from her cigarettes. Tara was different from the rest of Darcy’s family. Confident. Independent. Irreverent. “Do what you want with your life, Darce. It’s yours, not theirs.” Tara had died young from breast cancer, and Darcy missed her badly.

“Just seeing what’s out here,” Darcy said.

“Well, you’re not going to find much in Burnsville. Except the lake and lumber.”

Burnsville was founded after the Civil War by Captain John Burns, who opened the first sawmill in the timber-rich region. Aside from a modest seasonal influx of vacationers who rented places around the lake and occasionally ventured into town to buy some groceries and eat at Joyce’s diner, Burnsville’s small population reflected the timber industry, a rough-hewn patchwork of calloused hands and hearty souls expanding and contracting with the value of lumber, happy to mind its own business and tell outsiders to do the same.

Joyce always hated the closed-mindedness of the town but had figured out a balance that welcomed tourists and kept her in the good graces of locals.

“Where you headed?” Joyce said.

“Haven’t really decided,” Darcy said. “Maybe south or west. Or both.”

“You have people south or west? Family?” Joyce said.

They both shook their heads.

“There’s oceans in either direction if we drive far enough,” Darcy said. “And deserts out west where you can see the stars as purely as if you were in space with them.”

Joyce leaned to look out the front window.

“I haven’t looked at the stars in who knows how long. It’s like I forgot they were up there, if that’s even possible. I’d have probably gone years more if you didn’t just mention them. I’ve always wanted to see the ocean, though. Doesn’t matter which one.” Joyce looked over her shoulder, “Maybe I will if I ever sell the place.”

“Why don’t you?” Darcy said.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Sell the place and go see the ocean?”

“I wish it were that easy, hun.”

“Why’s it hard?” Billy said.

“I started waiting tables here when I was in high school. Fran Miller owned the place back then. Bought the building with a small loan and started serving breakfast to the mill workers and timber guys. She gave as much shit as the guys gave her, and they respected her for it. And she took care of me. I always dreamed of running the place. Being like her. She left it to me when she died. She didn’t have any family. Just me.”

Joyce smiled.

“This is all I’ve known. I chose my dream. I don’t think I have it in me to chase another one.”

No one had anything more to say. Then Joyce’s face lit up.

“If you’re not in a hurry to get south or west, I could use an extra couple hands here for a few days. I’ve got a waitress in the hospital about to have her baby, and the baby’s father runs the fryer, so he’s with her. Smart kid, her dad’s the Sheriff.”

Darcy and Billy looked at each other, trying to read the other’s face. They were on the road to be free. To move when and where they wanted, whenever they wanted.

“I should be able to get another girl and kitchen help pretty quick. The help isn’t always good, but it’s plentiful around here. But it’d be a huge help to have some coverage. Customers are great. The mill workers and lumber guys mainly stick to the bar the other end of Main Street.”

Joyce could see she needed to sweeten the pot.

“I’ll pay you time-and-a-half,” she said and then looked at Darcy, “and you’ll make some decent tips, hun.”

Darcy shrugged, which Billy read loud and clear.

“Well, that is just the cat’s ass!” Joyce said. “Oh! And I’ve known Tommy over at the motel since high school. We never dated, but he’s always held out hope. I’ll call him and get you a room.”

She winked, grabbed the dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen.

***

Darcy sat by herself at a four-top toward the back of the diner, counting her tips. She had taken down her ponytail and hung her apron over the chair next to her. Billy walked out of the kitchen and slid a burger and fries next to her cash and glass of water with ice, then pulled rolled silverware from his back pocket. Joyce watched from the cash register with a soft smile.

“I’m off as soon as I finish the dishes and sweep.”

“You gonna eat, too?”

“I’ll probably have something. You don’t need to wait to eat.”

It had been a steady Friday evening shift for Darcy. The customers liked her. Even the stodgy regulars. It was only her second shift, but Joyce was hard-pressed to believe she hadn’t been at it a while already. Darcy organized the bills, folded them in half, and tucked the $62 into her skirt pocket. She unrolled the fork and steak knife and put them next to her plate.

The front door opened, and its bell rang sharply. One big man and one about a foot shorter walked in. They wore boots, jeans, some sort of work shirts, and ball caps, all of which were sweat-stained and flecked with sawdust.

“I’m hungry enough to eat the ass-end out a horse,” said the big one loud enough that the few customers left in the place all gave Joyce the high sign for their checks. “Dammit all,” Joyce hissed under her breath.

The smaller man cackled and slapped the bigger man on the back as they started toward a table near the front window. The big one looked around, stared at the customers leaving their tables, and spat a string of chewing tobacco on the floor.

Men from the mill and those out in the woods with their entire lives being chewed away under the bar of a chainsaw were a big part of the rough fabric of the town. But these men weren’t cut from the same cloth. They existed on the fringe of the group, and, for some reason, had never been forced to move on.

The big one spotted Darcy.

“What do we have here?”

The men started her direction, and Darcy knew exactly how the whole thing was going to go, just like it went with other men so many times before — bosses, older boyfriends, the school resource officer, a youth pastor, her grandfather, her dad. Her skin prickled.

Darcy knew Billie was in the back, probably outside running garbage, and wouldn’t be out to help her. Even if he did come out and stand up for her, the whole thing would still end badly.

Joyce knew exactly how things were going to go as well, but had been punched in the face and thrown over the counter the first time she tried to intervene as the same two attacked another waitress. That was three years and several more waitresses ago. She tried to stay small behind the register.

“Leave her be, Lloyd. She’s just a kid.”

“Shut the fuck up, Joyce,” he growled over his shoulder, then grinned, “Younger’s better, anyhow.”

The smaller man cackled again and made his way around the table to the seat next to Darcy, sliding up close. Lloyd leaned on the table with his fists, towering over her. Darcy knew her role but suddenly decided not to follow the script and looked him in the face with eyes devoid of emotion, a dangerous sign that Lloyd missed completely.

“How come you’re sitting here all by your lonesome, darlin’?”

She stared at him.

“I’m talking to you, girl. Don’t you know it’s rude to ignore people?”

“I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

Lloyd looked at the single plate and water in front of her.

“You are, are ya? You ain’t waiting on him to eat, huh?”

Lloyd leaned closer. “Hey Jimmy,” he said without looking away from her, “you think she’s waiting on a boyfriend?”

“I don’t believe there is any boyfriend.” Jimmy cackled again and slid closer.

“That’s a shame. Girl as fine as you shouldn’t be without a boyfriend. Tell you what. I’ll be your boyfriend.”

Lloyd reached over and hooked a finger inside the top button of her blouse and pulled it out to look.

In one quick grab and powerful upward swing, Darcy buried her fork in Lloyd’s eye, lodging it in the cartilage at the back of the socket. Lloyd’s scream was far too high-pitched for a man his size, which stunned Jimmy long enough for Darcy to grab the steak knife and swing a backhand arc into Jimmy’s groin.

Lloyd stumbled backward, continued to scream, holding his face with the handle of the fork, and a lot of blood coming from between his fingers.

Darcy ran to Joyce, who grabbed her in a hug.

Jimmy had scooted backwards on the floor to the wall beneath the front window and sat in a rapidly growing puddle of his own blood, squeezing his upper thigh.

“I’m dying, Lloyd! Jesus Christ, Lloyd, I’m gonna die!”

Lloyd tripped over a chair and fell. His scream turned into a guttural moan as he writhed on the floor.

Joyce opened the cash register, grabbed two hundred-dollar bills, and crushed them into Darcy’s hand. Both of their lifetimes had scorched themselves clean in the span of seconds, entire galaxies spat and sizzling like an arc weld across the diner floor.

“Go,” Joyce said. “Out the back. Grab Billy and get out of here. Go!”

Joyce pushed Darcy forward, then reached for the wooden baseball bat tucked behind the garbage can by the register. Darcy pushed through the saloon doors to the kitchen and looked over her shoulder at Joyce.

“Alright you motherfucker.”

***

In the motel room, Billy and Darcy stuffed what little they had in their packs and ran back to the idling car. Billy’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Darcy stared out the windshield.

“You stabbed him in the eye?! Who…why…how did I not hear anything?!”

“He started down my shirt and I just…” Darcy swung her arm upward furiously, as if stabbing Lloyd again. “It happened so fast.”

“He put his hands on you?!”

She nodded. Billy jammed the car in reverse, threw it around to face the exit, hit neutral by accident instead of drive, and the engine roared. He shifted into drive, and the car lunged onto Main Street.

“I’ll fucking kill him.”

Darcy pulled her jacket tight around her and leaned, knees up, against the door.

“I think Joyce already has. Billy, we’ve gotta go. Just get us out of here.”

“Darce…”

“Don’t. Just drive, Billy.”

They rode in a silence neither had the energy to break and stopped for gas somewhere just over the state line in Virginia. Darcy fell asleep with Billy’s hand in hers, and when she woke, the sun was pouring through the rear window.

“Where are we?”

“Memphis.” Billy stretched his arms forward on the steering wheel. “We’re about to cross the Mississippi.”

Darcy looked out her window as they crossed the bridge. The river was wide and flat and caught the light of the sunrise on its western shore.

“We’re headed west,” Darcy said.

“Mm-hm.”

“The desert,” Darcy said.

“Mm-hm.” Billy smiled. “To your stars.”

Read more

Read more

Billy and his best friend, Mark, had scored Dead tickets from Jeff for weed and a 12-pack of beer. Jeff had graduated four years before them and just stayed in his parents’ place after his dad died of a heart attack at the graduation ceremony. His mom had left when he was little, so she had no say in the place.

Weed and beer were a good trade for Billy and Mark because Jeff got the tickets for free and didn’t like the Dead, and they had weed and beer in the car. Jeff got the tickets for free because he hated the world outside of his house any other time than while walking in the small hours just after midnight, when, as he says, things get good-weird. He said he was once mobbed by a group of four girls who flashed their boobs and made him have sex with them. Everyone knew Jeff was prone to making stuff up, but he told great stories.

The tickets came into his possession on one of his long, good-weird night-walks when he walked up to the back door of a house full of kids partying and went in. Almost no one knew what planet they were even on, so he walked into the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge and saw the tickets held up by a magnet on the front of the fridge, and he just put them in his pocket, grabbed a beer, and walked out. Jeff had a hard time not taking stuff he thought he could make a buck on. One time, he had eight bicycles lying in his back shed for ten bucks apiece. “Kids don’t take care of their stuff,” he said. “Just leave it out to rust.” Said the same thing about a few homeowners and their lawnmowers, too.

His house smelled like a wet ashtray, and when Billy and Mark walked in, he was sitting at the kitchen table, taking a last long drag on a cigarette. Empty pizza boxes and pocket change littered the counter and floor as far as Billy could see into the living room.

“Hey,” Billy said.

“Hey,” he said, exhaling a big cloud.

He stubbed the butt on his table. A ring of what must’ve been hundreds of butts was piled around the outside edge, almost all the way around the round table. It looked like a miniature mountain range. Like it should have a model train track running along inside the ring.

“What do you do when the edge is full?” Billy asked.

“Start another ring inside it,” he said. “Till the table’s full.”

“How many times have you done that?”

“What?”

“Filled the table?”

“Dunno. I don’t keep count.”

Jeff grabbed a beer from the 12-pack and opened the fridge to put away the rest. Mark had to move so Jeff could open the door.

“What the hell?!” Mark took a step back.

Three full deer legs, two attached to their shoulders and one to a hindquarter, were packed in the fridge. There were no shelves, only the pull-out vegetable drawers. The legs still had their fur and hooves on them. Jeff put the case on top of the meat, closed the door, pulled another cigarette from the pack, and lit it.

“That’s like serial killer shit,” Mark said.

“Venison is the leanest meat you can get,” Jeff said, exhaling smoke again.

“Where’d you get it?” Mark asked.

“Somebody hit it a few nights ago over on Buffalo Street and drove off. I was right there when it happened. Bam. Thing was deader’n a doornail.”

“Don’t you need a hunting knife for all that?” Billy asked.

“I carry my pop’s old Buck knife,” Jeff said, patting his pants pocket. “You never know, you know?”

Billy tried imagining what Jeff must’ve looked like, hunched in somebody’s front yard in the middle of the night, cutting up a dead deer with a pocketknife. It would’ve been a murder scene.

Time was wasting, and Billy and Mark had an hour and a half drive ahead of them. “How about those tickets?”

Billy got down the Thruway to Rich Stadium in record time, but they would’ve had to show up three days before to get a spot in any of the main lots, and every homeowner on all the streets around the place wanted twenty bucks to park in their yard, and Billy didn’t want to blow money on parking. He saw an opening.

“That’s not a spot,” Mark said.

“Wanna bet?”

Billy wedged the car in a gap that was only big enough if he pushed the front bumper into the bushes.

“Let’s boogie,” Billy said, leaving the keys under the visor.

Billy was leaving for the Marines the next week and decided to experience things he knew he’d probably not experience again for a long time, maybe not ever. He had walked into the recruiting office two weeks earlier, not smart enough for the local junior college but smart enough for Burger King or the military.

“You’ve got great timing if you’re looking to fight,” the recruiting sergeant said. “You’ve heard of Saddam, yeah? Well, shit’s heating up over there and Marines will be the first in to straighten that motherfucker out.” Billy figured becoming a badass that could straighten out bad guys would come with the training, something Burger King couldn’t deliver. He signed the dotted line.

Shakedown Street was packed with every type of human possible buying and selling tie-dye shirts and tapestries and bandannas, and handmade jewelry and art and pottery and palm readings, and grilled cheese and PB&J and cookies and brownies and weed and beer and water and acid and cigarettes.

Music played from speakers and people strummed guitars and mandolins and sitars and sang, and drum circles pounded primal rhythms, and women were whirling dervishes and kids jumped around laughing, and a woman hula-hooped, and men looked to the sky while swaying wide-armed like willows in the wind, and everyone’s feet were dirty, and everyone’s souls were swirling like a murmuration in the sky above them.

Billy’s mind crackled like a bonfire. He felt alive.

Billy’s parents followed the Dead when they were in their 20s, before his dad lost control of reality and his mom left, bringing a newborn Billy along for the ride. Billy thought that if this was the scene at every stop along the tour, he could see why people gave up day jobs and normal responsibilities to follow them from city to city, year after year. He could see how easy it would be for his dad lose control of reality.

Billy had listened to the Dead for a long time but had never seen them live. He had bummed a ride once with some older kids to see them in Saratoga, but the car broke down and when they tried hitching on the Thruway shoulder with a makeshift sign that said “Dead or bust,” a state trooper had pulled over, confiscated their beer and weed, and made them wait for a tow truck before they could abandon the car. Instead, Billy never missed partying when the Doobie Brothers, Moody Blues, Steve Miller Band, Joe Walsh, and Stevie Ray Vaughan made their summer stops at an amphitheater in town. Despite strict parents, who trusted Billy more than they should have, Mark was always with him, never getting too drunk or high that they couldn’t get home in one piece.

They made their way down on the field into the sea of general admission while Crosby, Stills, and Nash played “Woodstock,” and settled on a spot where people were playing hacky sack and just hanging out. They sat on the grass, fished beers from the backpack Mark was carrying, and nodded at each other with satisfied smiles.

“This is wild,” Mark said and took a swig of beer.

“You know, you’re gonna have to carry on after I’m gone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Shows. I’ll be in the desert, so you’ll have to keep the tradition alive.”

“Yeah. I probably won’t.”

Billy knew that was the truth. Mark wouldn’t get out and do anything out of line without him. Mark’s parents did too good a job raising him to be responsible. He’d go to college, get a decent job, probably meet a girl and get married, buy a house, have kids, find some sort of hobby like woodworking, and get old.

“Good thing we’re here then.”

Billy bought a half tab of acid from a guy who looked like he knew everything about acid.

“You’ll be watching Jerry from a rocket in the clouds, man,” he said, folding the tab in foil, and then handed him a bottle of water. “Here, you’ll want to stay hydrated.”

Billy wasn’t ready for the rocket ride yet, so he put it in his pocket and drank beer and passed joints and played hacky sack, and eventually Jerry and the band came out, and the crowd roared, and he danced and sang and kissed two girls who asked if he was a good kisser. “He looks like a good kisser,” one said. “Are you a good kisser?” asked the other.

They sang Mama Tried with eighty thousand fans, shaking their bodies without a care in the world as the smoldering July sun started to dip below the highest stadium seats.

Billy decided to eat the tab. No sooner than he washed it down with a swig of beer, a woman in a billowing sundress who seemed to glow grabbed his hand, turned it palm down, and placed two dropper drops between his thumb and pointer finger, and said, “Let that soak in,” and then floated away into the crowd. It would’ve taken forever for the drops to soak in, so he licked them off his hand and started singing and dancing again.

Billy had no warning before everything just disappeared.

He wasn’t unconscious. He was completely awake and could hear the music, conversations, and laughter. Could smell the weed. Could hear Mark say, “Dude.” But Billy was in a total white void. Not like a snowstorm whiteout blocking his view. He was in a space with dimension but no shadows and could sense vast distance, like walking into a big room with eyes closed and the body’s microsensors discerning the subtle change in pressure, the freedom of breath, the single sinewave of the heartbeat’s pulse returning from a distance beyond arm’s reach, the surrender of immediate reaction. A pure void.

He had no way of knowing how long he existed in that space or if there was even such a thing as time to demarcate his existence, when, again, with no warning, Billy witnessed creation.

The endless cosmos flooded the void with planets and flaring suns swirling and winking like moonlight on an incoming tide, and from its ink-dark depths the orange-blue sky erupted, blinding as curtains pulled wide from a dream. In ever direction, positive and negatively charged ions and nuclei and mitochondria and DNA double helixes imbued the bellies of cells and calcium and phosphates and collagen and proteins conglomerated into bones and skeletons that danced and twirled and tendons and ligaments stretched muscle and wove flesh on the bones and electrical pulses filled synapses between axons and dendrites and blood and oxygen filled capillaries and organs and skin of every hue wrapped them all in breathtaking forms as naked and pure as they would ever be and each and every particle of each and every brick and beam and bolt and board gathered to raise the stadium from the ground to the highest flagpole and as the genesis finally returned Billy to the ground where he stood he was struck so full of bliss at knowing the very origin of every single human there as intimately as any god, millennia in the blip of a millisecond, he stood with his arms out, turned slowly around, and shouted, “I love you all!” and dozens of people who gathered like disciples in a circle to watch him return from almighty distances came in for a group hug.

Billy stood with his bliss, his heart impossibly full and still filling, and absorbed everything around him in wonder.

“Shit, dude. You were gone,” Mark shook his head. “Whatever you took, you were gone.”

“I was lost, but now I’m found,” Billy said.

“Whatever. Do you even know where you are?” Mark laughed. “Here, drink some water. I’m gonna find something to eat.”

Mark hadn’t been gone long before the happy feelings flattened out, and Billy started to feel like he was supposed to be someplace else, like he was late, but couldn’t remember where or for what.

A long-haired, barefoot man in jeans, a hemp vest, and no shirt stopped with the woman in the sundress who had put the drops on his hand. She wasn’t glowing anymore, but she was holding a shock of daisies and handing single flowers to people as they walked by. The man put his hands on Billy’s shoulders and pulled him close enough that Billy could feel the man’s breath on his face.

“You’ll never see some once you’ve seen it all,” he said.

“Huh?” Billy said. His ears were ringing.

“Light and dark. Dark and light.” The man held out his hands as though he were balancing scales. “There’s no such salvation in one or the other.”

The woman handed Billy a daisy. His face felt hot, and his skin prickled.

“Uh, thank you.”

“You bet, friend,” the man said and hugged him.

The couple folded into the mass of people dancing and singing and waving their arms and thrusting their hips and making wild noises with eyes closed and eyes open wide to the sky and half naked on the trampled grass, some unconscious, some on their knees puking, some with hands and mouths and bodies full of each other among dirty blankets and lawn chairs and empty bottles and cans and food wrappers and discarded clothes and thick, hovering clouds of smoke and flashing colors and exploding cymbals and concussive drums and more wild sounds and Billy’s blissful intimacy with the crowd slunk into an inescapable vision of animal reality and he thought, “This is insane. Are they insane? Am I insane?” and all sense of time capsized.

The deep orange sunset was now the pending sunrise and a panicked thought that he was supposed to be getting on a bus to Parris Island that morning to become a Marine fired every nerve in Billy’s body and he started sneaking like a thief from the field, from one group to the next, one garbage can to the next, to the concourse where Mark found him kneeling by a railing behind a concrete pillar looking out at a chaotic parking lot bursting with cars and RVs and tour busses and the flashing red and blue lights of patrol cars and ambulances at various places around the lot and helicopters chopping overhead and the Dead played on behind it all.

“What are you doing, dude?” Mark was eating a hot dog.

“They’re here to pick us up.”

“What are you talking about?”

Near as Billy could figure, they’d been there all night, eighty thousand people locked in for their own safety and the safety of the local community, and now, in the burning sunrise, everyone’s parents had come from cities and towns across the country to grab their drug addled kids before they were arrested by all the Sheriffs and Troopers and city cops and FBI for drugs or sent to psych hospitals. Billy was terrified the Marines would find out, and they’d lock him up, and he’d never get trained to straighten any motherfuckers out, and he would be destined to a life of flipping burgers at Burger King once they let him back into society.

“We’ve gotta go,” Billy said. “We’ve gotta get out before they grab us.”

“Jesus.” Mark shook his head and then shrugged. “Alright, whatever. Let’s go.”

Sprinting in a crouch from car to car would’ve been easy, except Billy had to stop and go through the motions of puking at every dark spot on the blacktop since he believed he had been there only seconds before and had actually puked. There were a lot of dark spots. Mark was about five steps ahead.

“Fuck, dude. Come on.”

When they got to where they parked, the car wasn’t there.

“See?! They knew it was my car,” Billy said.

“Told you it wasn’t a spot,” Mark said.

Billy hid in the bushes, trying to be as invisible as possible while Mark went to a house to use the phone and find where the car had been towed.

They hitched a ride with an old hippie who said he had to go by the lot to get home. Billy sat in the back seat against the door. The car smelled like weed and pine scented air freshener. He felt like he was supposed to puke again and rolled the window down.

“Looks like he didn’t have a good show,” the hippie said to Mark in the front seat.

“Nope.”

“Too bad.”

Certain the hippie was undercover, Billy white-knuckled the door handle, ready to jump free and run if given the chance. The puke feeling passed, and it wasn’t too long before the hippie pulled up in front of the impound lot. He said, “safe travels,” then turned to Billy and said, “Easy does it, my friend,” and drove off.

“What does that mean?” he asked Mark.

“Dunno, but I’m driving.”

It wasn’t until they pulled into a Thruway rest stop as the sun disappeared behind them that Billy realized it wasn’t morning, and he wasn’t wanted and wasn’t leaving for Parris Island for another four days. Walking into the building, he felt a huge weight leave his shoulders, and he was ravenously hungry. Mark went to the restroom, and Billy went to get pizza.

A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl with a flour-dusted black t-shirt and red apron tied at her hips walked up to the counter. She wore black lipstick, a nametag with “Darcy” written in red, and her ponytail spilled out the back of a baseball hat that said, “A slice is nice!” Darcy looked extremely bored.

“Two slices of pepperoni, please,” Billy said.

“Drink?”

“Uh, yeah. Coke.”

She wrapped the last two slices from under the heat lamp in foil and put the Coke on the counter next to them. Billy dug into his pocket for cash.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I’m about to close. I’d have thrown them away anyhow… and I really don’t give a shit. It’s no big deal.”

Billy was thrown by her directness and could not look away from her, looking him in the eyes. Words formed in his throat and left his mouth as if his consciousness had bowed to instinct.

“What are you doing after you close?”

“Why?”

“I feel like I need to know you.”

“I get that.”

Darcy untied her apron and hung it over her shoulder. “Let me clock out. Meet me at the back door.”

Mark pulled the car around back, reclined the driver’s seat, and fell asleep. Billy and Darcy lay next to each other against the windshield of Darcy’s car, sharing a cigarette and looking at the night sky while the muffled drone of cars heading east and west on the Thruway came in short waves between long stretches of humid silence and cicadas.

“I hate all the parking lot lights,” Darcy said. “They make the stars harder to see.”

“I went to a party way out in the woods behind this guy’s house,” Billy said. “He had a bonfire, but if you walked away from it, the stars were so bright I could almost see where I was going without a flashlight.”

“You know every one of those stars is already dead?”

“Dead?”

“Yeah. They’ve already burned out, but they’re so far away, the light that’s left is still ahead of the darkness. What we see is the last of its life reaching us, but billions of miles behind that light, the star is already gone.”

Darcy took a long drag from the cigarette.

“I leave for the Marines in four days.”

“You scared?”

“No.”

“I would be.”

“I don’t have a lot of good options.”

“And the Marines is the best option out of all of them?”

“I’ll be stuck here if I don’t do it.”

“So much for needing to know me.”

They lay there a while in silence. Billy spoke again before his mind had caught up with the words.

“We could both go.”

“In the Marines?!”

Billy shook his head, realizing he’d just changed the entire trajectory of his life. “No. No Marines. Like, we could just leave. Together.”

Darcy rolled toward Billy up onto her elbow, leaned her cheek on her palm, and looked at him with a small grin.

“You know they’ll come looking for you.”

Billy shrugged, put his head back on the windshield, and looked into the cosmos. “You got another smoke?”

Read more

Her grandson returned from the kitchen and handed the glasses to her. “Here you be,” he said, turning to take a seat in a h…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more