Glass — A Short Story

The smell of burning rubber and engine smoke entered my nose. I was unable to see the state I was in, or where I ended up after I swerved. The sounds of screeching tires and crashing plastic were still ringing in my ears, echoing off the empty air around me. I crossed the state line awhile ago and had no idea where I was. The last sign I passed that offered me any clue was the exit for the rest stop tucked off to the side. I was sitting, submerged in engine smoke. All I could hear was my heartbeat, which eventually settled and faded into the background, drowned out by the coughs of the struggling engine. The smoke around me was billowing like curtains until an angry, orange glow of the flames gave birth to the view of the damp, muddy walls I was encased in.

Muscle memory took over as I reached for the key to turn the car off — as if it would help. The doors behind me were crushed in and invading the backseat; the impact pulsated forward. Lights from an oncoming car filtered in through the veins of the cracked, but not yet shattered, glass of my driver side window, but I was too far down off the side of the highway to be seen, and the lights eventually dulled and disappeared into the distance.

I pushed all my weight onto the driver-side door, producing the piercing sound of metal meeting metal. I spilled from the car, catching myself before my head met the ground. I could feel the equilibrium in my body wain as I tried to stand. The only thing I could discern was a flickering, florescent orb hovering not too far away.

I clawed my way up the freshly scorched patches of mud, filling the hoods of my fingernails as I scrounged for leverage, tugging my body onto the lonely strip of road. It was bare, except for the jagged, mosaically scattered pieces of my car. Just then, my body tuned in to screaming sting-like pain radiating from my hand. The dancing light of the still-burning hood exposed damp, brown slabs seeping into hap-hazard cuts. The pain seemed to produce a mental convulsion as I realized that my bag was still sitting precariously on the passenger side, potentially scorched in the scrap metal campfire that is my Ford. The car was a posthumous hand-me-down that elicited embarrassment whenever I pulled into the parking lot at work, so my feeling of dread drifted, surreptitiously, to the thought of an unintended insurance prize.

With an awkward balance, I ran down the embanked soon-to-be car graveyard; the inertia being too much to handle, my body was halted by crashing into the dented trunk. With the window of the right side being on the cusp of tattered pieces, I sped up the process by smashing my elbow right along the edge that showed the most prominent cracks. Enough space was made for me to lean into the window — possessing a mouth of sharp, glistening teeth — and feed my arm through the strap of my dark brown leather bag, like the threading of a needle. I pulled the bag out, and it dangled on my forearm. I gently shook it, creating enough vibration where any excess glass fell to my feet producing twinkles of sound akin to scattered fairy dust.

Whichever road I was on didn’t seem to be a frequently traveled one. The only car I’ve seen for quite a while was the brief phantom of the unobservant vehicle that passed shortly after I reached consciousness in the ditch. Since I wasn’t aware of the rarity of passing locals, I didn’t think speedily enough to call out for help. My phone was lost, probably forever, in the wreckage, and rummaging near an engulfed car didn’t seem worth it.

I began to walk down the dimly-light road, hugging the shoulder as tightly as I could while still being able to walk naturally. If someone were to speed by, I wouldn’t want to add to my troubles by becoming a hood ornament for a testosterone-soaked teenager, rushing home to make curfew.

I couldn’t tell the time, but the air was still, and the world hush enough to make me think it was early in the morning — maybe 3 or 4 am. The crisp air, the kind that hits the back of your throat, even in the hotter months of the year, was ubiquitous; a symptom of a settled night. And as I continued down the road, with nothing but the occasional street light to guide me, I could feel the repercussions of my driving through the night. Walking for what felt like over an hour, my legs began to throb with each crashing step I took. When the pain got to be too much, I would stop, idle, unable to message my twitching caves due to the fresh slices inhabiting the center of my palms.

The air got heavier with the approach of dawn, and with the added humidity came sweat that tickled my nose as it caught the droplets that slide down my forehead. The black sky was being invaded by a thin orange shimmer of the morning sun. With that subtle hint of light came an outline of a house that was growing in size the closer I came to the end of the tree line that signaled the halt of the road.

Houses out this far from the main highway were orphans. I could never understand why men would build houses out here for themselves and their families. You have to sacrifice a kind of security that comes from being a neighbor. Growing up on the outskirts of Jacksonville, the river that ran through my backyard was the only line you could follow that would lead you anywhere with ease. If you wanted to take the dirt roads you had to know them, they would come to forks that could lead you to the nearest town or circle you back the way you came, wasting whole days. Because of this, we were always the ones who visited our cousins up in New York. We had nothing to offer them down here. But New York, to us, glowed, and while they were nowhere near the city, my sisters and I were enchanted by the mere proximity to the place we had seen so many times on TV. But our set was old, and in black and white — on account of the fact that mom got it as a gift from our grandmother who had no use for it — we always dreamed of one-day driving into the city, just to see it in color.

My uncle came down to visit one time to help us move after my father was too sick — and on the way out — to be of much help. He always told us we should be closer to them, closer to family. The only family we had. “Nothing good ever happens this far away from the ones you love,” he would always say to us. My uncle managed to find his way to our house, quite easily too. When I was young and small I remember him visiting only once with my aunt, finally reaching our house late into the night, angry, and practically hollering because he let my Aunt Helen be in charge of the directions that delayed them half a day.

The sun was bouncing off the front yard of the house as I approached it. The morning dew twinkled on the grass danced like Christmas lights as I walked through the lawn. The cartoonish sounds of shoes stomping and sliding on wet grass gave me the idea to graze my diced up hands through it, fingers spread, like hair, to wash off some of the caked-on mud that covered my wounds like Band-Aids. It stung, but it was the kind that enlisted a natural tonic of refresh. Having grown up in a town, not unlike this, I know that it was less-than-kind to have walked on their catered grass. Flattened footstep imprints are nothing short of blemishes to a well-kept pasture, but I was too tired and in pain to worry about perceived offenses.

I knocked on the door. The silence that signifies a lack of life that had been my company for most of my journey seemed unwilling to go. I knocked again to no answer. I could only knock one more time before my hands would reach a point where I would have to sacrifice them using any found object. I then took the hard tip of my boot and kicked the door as a last-ditch effort, unaware that the impatience has made it way down my leg and created a loud crash and not the passive knock that I intended. But I couldn’t argue with the results. Just then, I could hear the violent creaks of weight on wood. I glanced in the window right next to the door that was nonchalantly covered by flower-patterned curtains and saw a round silhouette hastily approach the front door.

“What the hell?” the pear-shaped man said with a hostile irritation before the door was even done with its journey.

“I’m sorry to wake you, sir. I know it’s early. But, I find myself in a bit of trouble” I said. The screen door that was separating him and me, coupled with the blocked sunlight due to the large oak tree on the lawn, made the man’s face pixilated and uneasy to discern. But, with his first words, my gut told me he wasn’t in a helping mood.

“We don’t want part of no trouble. Take it elsewhere” he brushed.

“I can’t walk any further, and if I do, I promise, you’ll find me on the side of the road during your next drive into town.” I chuckled, more as a means of diffusion than to come across as anything less than sincere.

“Then get walkin’ as far as you can,” he dismissed, “there are others along this road here. And if you walk far enough you’ll see the sheriff’s.”

I shouldn’t have chuckled. Just then, quirky wood crunches cascaded down the steps and revealed itself to be a woman, slender and tall like a greyhound on its back legs.

“I don’t like this,” she said, tucking her stringy strands of hair under her floral nightcap. “Short of death or dyin’ there ain’t no reason for some stranger we don’t know to come a’knockn’ on our damn door before the sun’s spilt all on the lawn.”

“This man says he can’t walk,” the large man said.

“Well, it looks like he standin’ just fine.”

“No ma’am,” I interrupted, “I can walk, I’m just struggling. My car’s been wrecked a few miles back and yours was the nearest salvation I could find.”

“This ain’t no kingdom of God that I can see. Like I said, you keep walkin’ you’ll hit somethin’,” the man said. His fat hand grabbed for the door handle on the outside portion of the door, enveloping the whole thing in his flabby grip. I swiftly pulled open the screen door, too distracted by the urgency to keep me in his sights to remember the raw cuts on my hands, quiet but still angry. The brown bag across my shoulder lost its place and fell to the rotting wooden porch with a hearty thud.

“Wait,” I said, stopping the closure with my elbow, “please, wait.” The large man’s sunken, suspicious eyes followed the bag to the floor. “Could I just trouble you to use your phone, and maybe a glass of water? That’s all I’ll need. A quick call to that sheriff’s station you were talking about, and I even chug the water while I’m calling.”

“Our phone won’t reach all the way to the porch here,” he said neutrally.

“Well, I wouldn’t be in your home for more than a couple minutes,” I responded. Just as I said that, the papery woman’s face grew tight and all-knowing as if the answer to a crossword puzzle that has been stumping her just made itself known.

“No,” she cut in ferociously, “we see what you’re tryin’ to pull, and we ain’t havein’ it. We wasn’t born yesterday.”

“You doubt I’m telling the truth?” I asked.

“More than doubt,” she responds.

“Look at my hands,” I said, softly brushing away the excesses of earth so they could see the ruby gashes.

“That don’t mean much,” the large man said, not even allowing his gaze to leave my face as if evidence of me telling the truth will result in their demise.

“That don’t mean nothing,” the lady admonished, sliding up next to the pear-like a vigilant snake. “A man would do more to then’selves to get us to move past this door,” she added.

Their minds were made up, that much was obvious. Even with someone so clearly crippled as myself was not enough to persuade them that I was not an amalgamation of greed and misfortunate hell-bent on taking what little they had to add to my collection of nothing. You could practically see the sun move with the silence that followed; a silence in which I could offer nothing. With it, however, gave birth to pity from the large man as he saw the concocted look of anger and moral sadness on my face.

“There’s a spigot on the side there,” he said in a hushed manner, almost as if he was trying not to wake a beast, “if your wounds truly is what you say they is, you can rinse them off there.” His eyes then said that he has given all that he has to give and he can go no further. I gently accepted this small kindness and slowly turned to make my way to the spot where his sight told me where the water was. “But if you try somethin,” his ominous voice said, “I got my fire right next to me here.”

The mouth of the spigot was rusted and emitted a hellish red that spread, plague-like, all the way to the brick-sided wall of the house. The mouth spat lukewarm water that cooled a bit in the sharp morning air but that startled the mean gashes on my hand. They screamed like a colic child until they settled after continuous rinses. After the wet dirt melted off my hands to a tolerable degree I splashed my face and cupped my hands for a drink. The taste of stale water sat in my mouth until it transmuted to a sour taste of iron — it was clear this water was for things of secondary importance.

As the water droplets that glossed my eyes subsided, I could see the pear-shaped man and his malnourished wife standing, watching, and waiting. It was as if I was a prisoner with two dutiful guards taking note of my every breath. Before the water even stopped dripping from the edge of my lips I was off down the road again, settled on the idea of the next stop being the sheriff’s station. Before the house was out of my sight I could still see the outline of its inhabitants in the humble-sized window growing smaller, and smaller, until it formed a congealed blob of black shadow to blurry to discern as humans.

The sun was firmly alive and the fresh heat of the morning was gaining weight. The dampness of my collared shirt from the spigot water converted to sweat without ever a tranquil moment of desiccation. I had been walking what felt like several more miles, the bag, now in my hand to give my shoulder a moment’s peace, was beginning to feel full of hard stones. My mind was trying to push the tax of the walk, and the heat, to the attic in my mind. It would have probably been more advantageous to have waited by the wreckage. Surely someone would have seen the smoke and explored for its source, or, the very least, driven by at some point to head into town or to visit a friend or mother. As the ache of my body fed the regret in my mind, a modest house — presumably the one the man spoke about before the sheriff’s — was visible. Like seeing an oncoming boat from the eyes of a shipwrecked captain, a spike of energy coursed through my body, fueling long strides of my legs, skirting the ground as if I was being taken by the wind, my back as a sail.

As the house grew, I could see the front door ajar, practically a divine sign of welcome. Surely an open door is representative of an open heart. The grass was untamed. It was long, heavy, and weighed down like unkempt hair or dry pasta. A scraggly centered pathway, splitting the lawn in two, was the only obvious route to the front porch. I stopped at the door frame, as though the door was shut. I first paced around the porch to see if the owner was visible — lost in the grass, perhaps. The door rocked in the warm summer wind and I could see no sign of life, so I brought myself to the frame again, with my head lusted slightly forward into the home, to ensure my voice would reverberate when I called out. My voice was horse and dry but was booming in its urgency. After a couple more shrieks, each one less impactful than the last, I stepped in, sure that my approach was too meek.

I could see the start of a sink peeking out of the archway that signified the entrance of the kitchen. I briefly made a cost-benefit analysis in my mind and felt that, at this point, the risk of getting legally executed for trespassing was worth a cup of water. I inched further in the home, making cautious glances to my surroundings before each step, like a stealthy mouse. But once the sink came into full view I plummeted for it, saying a speedily, silent prayer before doing so. If I fall into a trap it would have been God’s doing, I thought.

I drank until I was confident that I could float should I be submerged in water, and when I reached that point I hung my head in the sink for a moment, letting my body resuscitate. When I turned from the sink, a solid outline of a woman forced my back into the countertop behind me as if magnetized. The indirect sunlight made splotches of shadow that enveloped the woman, slicing her in half, and erasing her face from the world.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a hush, like a disobedient child. She did not answer. “Were you aware your door is open?” I asked. A slumber silence hung in the air, warping the time around us. “I’ll leave but I’ve been in an accident and you’re the closest house — the sheriff’s is too far away and I’ve been walking a long time. I haven’t had any water, and my hands…,” she’s silent. “Can I use your phone?” I implored. My bag became too heavy and I let it go from my hand where it met the wood floor with a deep hum.

“You can have more water if you need it,” she said, seemingly lifted out of her trance.

Even though I heard what she said, it crawled to my ears and had to settle before I could think of what to say in response.

“Are you alright? I asked, fixed on her still statuesque posture.

“What kind of accident?” she asked, her voice cracking.

I took her up on her offer of getting myself a glass from the collection of dishes sitting next to the sink, filling it up to its brim. “Car accident. My car is a few miles back in a ditch off the side of the highway. You probably could have seen the smoke from the engine fire a good distance away.”

“I saw it,” she said, her palms, which were flat down on the table, slowly made their way to the pack of cigarettes and accompanying lighter on the table.

“There’s a fire not-to-far down the road and you all around here don’t think to call anyone?” I asked, after taking an aggressive gulp of water.

“The skies are always full of smoke around here for one reason or another. Someone’s working on their truck or camping out to hunt. Can’t make every flame your responsibility.” She spoke lazily and soft, but glassy, as if everything was a secret, but it was vital you heard it clearly the first time so she didn’t have to repeat it. “How deep are those cuts?” she inquired.

I couldn’t even tell her; I had grown so accustomed to the discomfort at this point even I could believe I’m both in agony and mystically healed with equal measure. However, interpreting my silence as an embarrassed fragility she placed the cigarette in her mouth, dangling, and pushed herself up robotically from the table and made her way closer to me, taking the glass from my grip and examining my hands, outlining the deep cuts with the merciful tip of her finger.

Without the shadows to fill her out, she looked emaciated. The lack of weight was evident in her face; the skin was so taught the sharp, protruding edges of her bones looked as if they were trying to escape. Her hair was thin and uncombed, but tied up in a haphazard bun with a clear out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach.

“Alcohol would help,” she murmured, “there’s some in the bathroom cabinet.” She rose her arm and pointed in the direction of the bathroom down the dimly-lit, narrow hallway, her lanky arm sliding out of the thick, red sweater sleeve as she gestured.

Without responding I made my way down the scarcely decorated hallway, ordained with small, empty framing hooks. The bathroom was bare as well, with a lone, small white florescent bulb, uncovered by any decorative fixture, hugging the outline of the mirror that also acted as storage. Nestled under a half-used tube of whitening toothpaste was a stocked row of first aid –ointments, Band-Aids, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, scarce, but if thinly applied could be enough for my cuts.

The morning dew had baked into a heavy humidity and was trapped with her in solitude. It lingered, even resting on the tile backsplash of the sink to the point where my finger easily skated across it. My sweating still hadn’t stopped, and how she is wearing a thick winter sweater comfortably was uncanny, not a single drop of sweat or clamminess was evident when she examined my hands. I took the bottle from the cabinet and made my way to the kitchen where the thin woman had placed herself back in the same position as I found her. “Thank you,” I said suspiciously, “you’re kinder than some of your neighbors.”

She sat silent and corpse-like. I was beginning to think maybe I wasn’t speaking loudly enough. I repeated myself with more gusto to no avail. I poured the remainder of the alcohol onto my hands and rubbed them together as if I was washing them. I apologized for using the rest of it, but again she didn’t respond.

“I would be eternally grateful if I could use your phone,” without waiting for, or even anticipating, a response, I made my way to the black rotary that was hanging unyieldingly on the kitchen wall. “If you know of any mechanic or….” Just then, she came to life as if she was in a deep sleep and was just jarred awake.

“We don’t have a mechanic. Call the sheriff’s. Leave a message. They’re some lazy, shiftless bastards, but they’ll call back,” she excreted in a single breath. “The number’s next to the phone, there.”

I dialed silently, unable to think of an adequate response to a quip about lazy law enforcement.

“Even if they saw you laying on the side of the road, an inch away from death, they’d turn the other way just to avoid the paperwork,” she added.

She was right, after multiple rings, I simply left a message. What kind of station would not only fail to pick up but encourage you to leave a message? What good are they if all they have is a voicemail of a panicked victim of a crime? Shiftless bastards.

“Would you mind terribly if I stayed and waited for their call?” I asked, fully aware that I had no choice in the matter and would potentially be sat awkwardly with a catatonic. Unenthusiastically, she tells me I can wait. The sun was at its height, and her home was a dark crevasse in a meadow of white light.

I sat down across from her at the kitchen table she has seemingly not left in days, surrounded by crumpled papers, untamed tissues, and barely-used dishes that created a pungent smell of stale. I dropped my bag on the table which was followed by a thunderous, weighty thud. The woman took notice of its weight and appeared, for the first time, suspicious of the stranger whom she let into her home. I began to rummage through my bag, taking stock, and pulling things out and placing them on the table as part of inventory.

“Have you just moved in?” I asked.

“No,” she responded.

“Oh, are you in the process of moving out, then?”

“No,” she said, clearly perplexed at the line of questioning, “We’ve been here for 9 years.”

“We?” I followed up. “You have a family?” As I asked this I continued organizing my things — a notebook and a half-empty bag of pretzels were already on the table. “I was on my way to see my family before I got in the accident.”

“Shouldn’t you call them?” she inquired.

“Embarrassingly, I don’t know anyone’s number. I lost my cellphone somewhere in the wreck, and I didn’t have time to look for it, it was too dangerous, and…”

“You got kids?” she asked

“I do,” I said. She seemed inclined to hear about my family, but little else. Her speech was natural and flowing as if she wanted to ask these questions from the minute she met me.

“You should never leave your kids,” she added, “it’s not a natural thing.”

“They came down with my wife a few days ago, before me,” I said, “my mother passed away, and we’re down here for…”

“Separated at a time of loss is never a good thing. It’s unnatural. It’s times like these you’re never supposed to be apart,” she said aggressively.

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Where is your family?” I asked. This question she didn’t seem interested in answering. “Are they in town?” I continued to rummage through my bag.

“No,” she responds.

“Well,” I said, “will they be back soon…”

“Do you have pictures of your family?” she sprung.

“Oh, yea,” I said, “I have a good one in my wallet.” My head twitched like a hummingbird, looking for my wallet. After a few seconds, I looked within my bag and saw it tucked underneath the revolver I take with me on long car rides. This car may be a hand-me-down, but I’ll be damned if some deadbeat will pilfer it from me. I took the revolver out and placed it on the table to free up space for me to eye my wallet. It hit the table, with its dark wood handle and metal frame the color of a dusty night, and immediately caught the lady’s eye — a brew of fear and salvation.

“What’s that for?” she inquired.

Still focused on the hunt for my wallet, I looked up to see she was referring to the revolver. “I keep it close when I’m traveling by myself,” I said. “You never know.” I pulled my wallet and showed her the photo of us on vacation in Florida last year. A bright burst emphasizing our smiles.

“My boy was 6 when he left,” she said, low and somber like she was trying to hide it from the world. Her eyes lingered on the photo while her hand delicately patted her chest as if she was flattening a crease. The silence stretched, even outside, the wildlife seemingly froze in amber.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

“It’s unnatural to be separated, even by God,” she said. “You won’t be wearing that to burry your mother, will you? She deserves her son to be clean and nice lookin’, surely?”

“I’m sure I can find…” before given the chance to finish, the woman, as if a ghost materialized, got up and glided out of the kitchen only to return moments later holding a collared shirt, a pure blue with the collar and cuffs as firm and sharp as the ends of a glass table.

“You can wear this,” she said, offering the shirt with the jest of a department store clerk.

“I couldn’t. It’s not mine to take,” I said adamantly, uncomfortable with a transaction for which I have nothing to offer in return.

“Your mother deserves a clean shirt,” she responded.

“That’s generous, your husband might not be too happy that you gave it to a complete stranger, though,” I said.

“It’s here with me, not him. So it’s mine to give.”

Given her assertiveness, I felt I had no choice. I was made to feel that a refusal to take the offering would be seen as ungrateful for the help she’s given.

“But first you must try it on,” she said conditionally, “it looks fittin’ but you never know.” She placed the shirt, still on its hanger, in my hands, and gestured me to the bathroom again.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror aware of the round, wet spots on my shirt, producing a feeling of guilt at the idea that her husband’s seemingly new shirt will most likely meet the same fate. I removed my shirt, wallowing in the slight relief of air touching my chest and shoulders, and then put the sky-blue shirt on, securing the buttons gently as if the shirt was fragile and near ruin. She was right, it was fitting.

I stood, practically in a haze, staring so intently at my reflection I was looking past myself into nothing. It was then I heard a loud shot that hit my ear and shrunk me, almost like my knees gave out. In an adrenaline-induced rush, I opened the door and hastily moved down the hall. Violent, red scratches showed themselves on the walls in the kitchen, pulsating out from the table where she was laying with her head collapsed. Her hand, having fallen inches from her head, cradling the handle of the gun, forgivingly. The sunlight had now invaded the center window above the sink and fallen onto the screaming scarlet that settled on the outskirts of the table. The scene seeped into my mind slowly, as if pouring molasses that hugged the outer lining of my head and met wholly in the middle until it was cracked open by the measured chimes of the telephone.