Terry Wolverton

I could have anything I wanted from the maws of the vending machines that stood watch over the waiting room of my stepfather’s Shell station. Larry or Chubbs would fish out keys with grimy fingers, swing open the face of the machine, reveal its innards stacked columns of soda or candy bars. Outside the constant ding of the bell as cars pulled in for gas, directions, air in the tires, a clean windshield, drivers impatient for destination, and Chubbs or Larry would dash, leave me to choose: Planter’s Peanut Bar or Nestle’s Crunch, Coke or orange or chocolate pop. Grit covered that tiny room, layered on maps in their laddered racks, dusting the globe of the gumball machine, sifted over neat rows of motor oil in silver cans, smudging the white pages of homework I filled with painstaking script. I breathed the stink of petroleum, kicked at the legs of a yellow plastic chair with my black and white school oxfords, waiting for my stepfather who was supposed to watch me till my mother got off work. Nine was too young, she thought, to stay at home alone. But every day he’d disappear, banged-up Chevy gone from the lot, the men in oil-streaked uniforms shrugging excuses. “Anything she wants,” he’d instructed them, and I watched the clock as the sky darkened and the bright shell glowed against night. My new bra was too tight; I hugged my three-ring binder to hide my roll of belly from Larry, from Chubbs, and sucked the dregs of chocolate pop or lemon-lime.

for C. Like shoes she chose for comfort, not for style, that fit her contours without chafe or blistering Here is sanity. It took her years to arrive, like an explorer settling at last into uneasy retirement, a small cottage at the edge of the sea. How the breakers crash against the underpinnings; still, the walls hold firm. Hearth blazing steadily, she tries to warm to it tells herself she is mature now, this is good. The days of stalking, done, the rabid pulse, the blood-drenched kisses, all behind her now. Wearied, finally, of careless cruelties, she will stay here, grow old with you. And, sensible, lacking her gift for self-deception, you know she struggles with devotion, you listen as she moans inside her dreams, and watch, without remarking, as she tracks the tap of high heels just beyond the window, their rhythm growing fainter with each step.

Detroit – where the weak are killed and eaten. – T-shirt slogan, circa 1990 . . . the 33 year old woman . . . leapt to her death . . . from a crowded bridge that . . . connects Detroit . . . with its famous island park, Belle Isle. She was trying to escape the 300-pound man whose car she had accidentally bumped into. According to police, the man had smashed her car windows with a tire iron, dragged her from the vehicle – stripping off most of her clothes in the process – slammed her against the hood of her car and pounded her with his fists. Deletha Word . . . could not swim . . . She jumped into the water 40 feet below. – James Ricci , Los Angeles Times [August 31, 1995] The road to the afterlife – There was . . . a river that had only one bridge across it . . . This bridge was guarded by a dog that jumped at souls and made many of them fall into the river and drown. – Bruce G. Trigger , The Huron: Farmers of the North Not really a river at all, but a handshake between two Great Lakes, Huron stretching to embrace Erie in its green-gray grasp. You stitch the liquid boundary of a city dismantling itself, bricks unmortared, spires sagging, burnt out structures razed to open field. Prairies returning here, foxtails and chicory, Queen Anne’s lace sways; tumbleweeds amble down Woodward Avenue, blow past fire hydrants, storefronts and rusted Cadillacs. You are the mirror into which we plunge. Towers of a stillborn renaissance bend to admire their vacant beauty; automobiles built in Mexico catch the chrome reflection of your waves. They speed across the bridge to the island whose willows spill their tears against your breast. Darkness closes our eyes; the park empties, bridge bears a chain of headlights. Perfume of exhaust drifts over your blackened currents; cars jostle for their place in line. Not the fist of one man but the sucker punch of a city taking scrappy pride in its bruised countenance. One bumper kisses another like gunshot; the town explodes. You swallow the blood of a woman’s shattered cheekbone, pressed to metal hood, scorched by engine’s heat.Who wanna buy some of dis bitch – she got to pay fo’ my car.

We fought in Salem, as she nosed the rented car through streets that stubbornly refused to match the squiggled lines accordioning from my lap. She pressed me for direction as I spun the folding paper like a compass point, urged me for instruction as I traced the lines like Braille, my fingers blinded, tapping out the spell of history; I could not navigate this town. How could I explain the pall of Salem? There’s not an inch on Earth that isn't steeped in blood— corpses pushing up the cobblestones in every town, and the buildings that blunt the sky are girdered in bone. One could travel anywhere and feel that chill, the hovering of ghosts above the landscape, the past’s damp breath against the ear. This town, though, descended like a shroud upon my holiday; Salem, its rectilinearity compressed the ribbon of my spine and sealed my thighs like doorways to a crypt; Salem, its somber abnegation, grimmest reprobation sought to suck me to a hollow shell through which the vengeful cries of God then could be heard. My lover, steering wheel in hand, stared into narrow streets with the eyes of a dark bird. “Which way,” she cawed, “which way?” But mine glowed with the blankness of a woman swaying from a noose, clothing asunder, curses drowning in an airless throat, spirit driven from its home; it circled now above our heads. The useless atlas crumpled at my feet, it could not lead me to a place where threat did not bear down like heavy stones; we fought in Salem.

Each house smells of strangers: cabbage boiling on the stove, harsh soap at the rim of the sink, starched sheets that scrape against the skin in bed, hard pillows shaped by someone else’s head, rotting bananas, sweaty feet and dust. Each time we come to a new place I try to hide one shirt beneath the mattress just to keep the smell of home. Sometimes they find it, squeeze it through the wringer; hid long enough, the cloth absorbs the air around it, loses its memories. My brother smells like sour milk, unwashed armpits and the school paste he eats. He cries when they hit us; I never do. Each night I hear his sniffles soak the pillow. Come morning, I grab the damp case, hold it to my nose and breathe.