by David Kummer
As I approached in my truck, I noticed the reporters crouched next to their vehicles, some even wandering into the cemetery. Like an army waiting to invade. I felt a pang of guilt for Bruce, a desire to help in some way, but that was impossible. Nor was it my job. Me, a pizza delivery guy, had nothing to do with this. I just had to drop it off and try not to freak out too bad.
From the driveway of his home, I could see the water tower in the distance, those letters bold against the dirty-white surface. LITTLE RUSH. It was one of the few structures that you could see from pretty much anywhere. Even the power-plant’s massive towers down by the river became invisible when you traveled this far away. That water tower, though, stood against the reddening sky. A reminder that I could never get far enough away, that I would live my whole life in its shadow.
Once I was in the driveway, I had to take a deep breath. They were all watching me, now. I hated the stupid work hat I reluctantly wore, but maybe it was a blessing. I didn't need all those people with cameras seeing my untamed mess of thin and wild hair.
Stepping out of the truck brought an uncomfortable rise in temperature, even at seven o’clock. With the pizza in hand, the exterior of the box hot and greasy, I started to sweat. I didn’t look at the reporters or the cameras. I couldn’t tell if they were taking pictures, but I hoped not. Only a few paces led to the doorstep but it felt like an eternity. The house exterior was white-painted brick and grimy. I knocked a few times on the door.
I shifted on the balls of my feet. There were footsteps inside, shuffling. The handle turned, and the door swung inward. There he stood. Broad, godlike. He wore sunglasses, only adding to the intimidation. His hairline was receding, making his forehead huge, but he didn’t even try to hide it. Why should he? He actually embraced it. His hair was slicked back, eyebrows furrowed. The lower half of his face was a polar opposite to that smooth skin. His chin and cheeks were covered with a beard, thick enough without being excessive. A gray color, just like his hair. His shoulders were slouched a bit, arms crossed, standing wide. Wearing a bathrobe, I thought, or something similar. I couldn't look away. It felt like I was a mortal and I’d approached Zeus on that mountain where he lives, whatever it’s called. And he struck me with lightning.
“Pizza…” I stammered, my fingers digging into the sides now, pressing so hard I almost poked through, “... sir.”
“Thanks.” His voice was gruff, incredibly so. Like he was doing it on purpose almost. It was so weird to see him now. Otherworldly. He wasn’t in character. He wasn’t aiming for anything. He was just a guy who ordered pizza, and it was so humanizing. Bruce Michaels. As real as can be.
I forced myself to let go of the box as he took it. Bruce turned for a moment, set it somewhere I couldn’t see. As his body shifted, I noticed the coffee table behind him. Completely barren, except for a dark bottle and the back of a framed photograph.
As he dug in the pockets of his bathrobe and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, his body blocked the scene once again. He extended the note, wrinkled and in a ball, but I gingerly accepted.
“Here’s this.” There was a tiny smirk on his face as he closed the door. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you!” I bit my lip to stop from shouting it.
No more words were exchanged. None were needed.
When I faced my truck again, I didn't even see the reporters. There was nothing important to me but Bruce. The trees were beautiful with night approaching, the way the road stretched out endlessly. I admired the barren land where they’d been meticulously cut back to make way for power lines, like some kind of natural tunnel through the wilderness. I was completely content, as free as those treetop canopies, swaying in the evening breeze.
My eyes touched on the water tower, that godforsaken beacon, like a lighthouse drawing me to shore. I remembered where I belonged. Those dirty roads of Little Rush. Bruce would scorch the earth with his fame if he ever set foot there. Would set fire to the water tower. The whole town. If he wanted to, he could. I marveled at that power. That ability. To leave, to come, to destroy, anyone anytime. What a man. What a man.
* * *
I followed the road back toward town, winding next to fields and over a tiny creek. That water tower remained always in the corner of my eye, those words even brighter now with the sun’s aid. The road disappeared before me. I’d driven this so many times before. Once you drive like that enough, every country road is the same. It’s all just dirt and asphalt. Eventually it merged into the four-lane spinal cord called Rush Road.
This section of Little Rush, the hilltop, was a typical Anywhere, USA. This was the true source of my despair. Besides the movie theater and bowling alley, each with their own rundown charm, there was nothing. A common late-night activity was hanging out with friends in the movie theater parking lot or a McDonald’s booth. We had a pretty big hospital, though. That was something. That hospital was probably the biggest building I’d ever been in, since my family never traveled. Checkups, shots, everything took place in that hospital, all through my adolescence.
I guess if you wanted to have a kid, it was nice you didn’t need to leave town, because nobody truly left. Your kid could be born here, live here, and die here. A comfortable, average life, all within a few square miles. What a godawful idea.
Bruce Michaels, he probably never felt this type of entrapment. He spent his whole life in sprawling Los Angeles or in the skyscrapers of New York. It still didn’t feel right, having him so close. At any given moment, less than a dozen miles from me, from my house. It was both invasive and invigorating.
Maybe I’d only ever see him through delivering pizzas or chance encounters around town. Nonetheless, simply his presence affected me. It was torturous to think about the freedom he possessed, the ability to change his life and his setting on a whim. And at the same time, weren’t we similar in the end? We were both stuck here, at least for now. I could bask in that connection, though it was thin and probably temporary.
Rush Road flooded my vision at that point, and I had to concentrate on the few stoplights and braking cars ahead of me. All the important buildings were along this four-lane road, and the various backroads branched out from there. Those took you to fields, rectangle-shaped and bordered by thick trees. I imagined that a long time ago, there had been a huge forest, untouched, and then some giant took a heavy square-shaped tool. A tamper or something. And that’s how they got the fields. Just smashed down the trees into perfect plots of geometric land.
There were houses dotting the countryside out there, the occasional Dollar General or weird gas station with a name I’d never heard of. A local grocery store not far from my house, but milk was twice as expensive as the DG. Like I said, it was all good for nothing, nothing but driving at night, nothing but sunsets. That’s all we had out there. At least Mason lived in a nice neighborhood on the edge of town, and Willow bounced between her downtown dad and her hilltop mom. Me, I was just a “country boy” who hated every bit of the stereotype.
The only things I felt in control of were my job and my music. I loved weird indie music, as opposed to my father’s country, because it made me different from him. I loved my pizza deliveries because I got to drive all over the place.
Bruce Michaels. That old man could go anywhere, be anybody, and he would never feel boxed in to a stereotype. He had invented a new kind of person, in my opinion. Formed a permanent change in American culture, at least to some small degree. Few people could claim that. Not many lived in such close proximity to that kind of person, either.
There was something about Little Rush that made me want to drive forever in a straight line, taking any road I could, just chasing that fleeing orb of light. Little Rush filled me with this sense of despair, but also energy. There were days when I just wanted to go somewhere, that way or that way or I didn’t even care. And other times, I wanted this town to be the thing that killed me, because it already did slowly.
Having him this near only inflamed all of my des
ires. I’d wanted to run before, and now I wanted it more than ever. I’d longed for freedom, but now that longing consumed me in every way.
I hoped that things would change with Bruce around. I hoped that something would be different, anything really. Maybe Little Rush would grow on me, turn out bearable, with the great Bruce Michaels as part of it. But all I’d seen so far were reporters, and I hated reporters. That wasn’t a change. Just another reason to leave.
9
Bruce
Sometimes I do believe there’s a heaven or something. It’s hard not to in a place like Little Rush. In California, in Hollywood, there’s so much to see and do that nobody takes the time to glance upward. Out here, though, there’s only the sky. Only the clouds and colors and their formations. When the sky looks a certain way, the cloud layers are almost like a staircase to whatever hides up there.
There are times when I can almost… believe it. But it doesn’t matter in the end, I guess. Heaven or not, I sure as hell won’t ever get there.
Every time I ponder questions like that, my mind travels back to the church revival and what I felt that day.
I hadn’t even wanted to go, but my grandpa had been a religious man and I never dared to argue with him. He clung to that old church long after I would’ve, long after my grandma died of breast cancer. That’s the whole reason I came out here to Little Rush. That entire summer wouldn’t have happened if not for her untimely death. I would never have moved out here to live with him, in this very house I now owned.
Some people would say a house like this was haunted, but I knew the truth. My grandpa had lived here for decades, thrived here even, but I only saw the decline. After my grandma’s death, he was never the same man, and I witnessed all of it. He’d already been a ghost. When he died, he had no haunting left.
“You go on up there,” he had said to me, gesturing at the front of the church. The pews around us were full of men and women and children, all of them breathless with anticipation. The pulpit absent for now, the church quiet, but soon it would be roaring.
I took my place with the other young boys, all of us immature and unsure. Few of us were there of our own accord. Almost all of us had followed parents or grandparents, pulled along by the leash of childhood. And now we waited for the moment that would define our days, maybe even our weeks.
After the hymns swelled and died, after the low prayers and the raised voice of the traveling pastor, he spread his arms and welcomed us to the front. As teenagers, we knew this was coming. We’d all heard stories of these revivalists, of their impassioned and fiery tongues. I had told myself earlier that day, as I walked into the sanctuary, that I wouldn’t rise from my seat, that I wouldn’t listen to his call. But he’d done his job well and I couldn’t control what I felt.
Others around me rose and went to the front. They knelt in prayer and sobbed, joined by their families. I remained, looking on in envy, wanting to follow them into that great unknown. I almost walked down that aisle, truly. But I didn’t, and that’s all that counts.
I don’t believe in a god, and I don’t believe one ever helped my grandpa. He fell apart that summer. I cherish the memories. I cherish what’s left of him in my mind. But I don’t agree with what he told me, whenever the topic arose.
And yet… when I remember that church scene, there’s a feeling of guilt that gnaws at me. An idea in my mind that maybe it was the beginning. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. It seemed like ever since, in every way, I’d been a plague on this earth, a curse on those who knew me.
The more I drank, the more I realized. This house was haunted, indeed. I was now the old man who lived in the house. And just like him, my time grew short, the moments were fleeting. He chose religion as a temporary raft. But I had none.
* * *
Their beady eyes and those flashing bulbs never seemed to leave. I could remember the lightning bugs here in Little Rush from that summer years ago, but so far I hadn’t seen any. They’d been scared away by those brighter pops, the cameras with their photographers, the notepads with their scribblers, always stalking the edge of my property.
I’d been sitting in front of the television for probably an hour, and the pizza box lay on the table in front of me, half-eaten. My stomach was just starting to hurt. I knew I’d eaten too much, but I didn't really care. I’d throw it up later with the whiskey anyway.
Next to the pizza box and empty whiskey bottle, I tried to focus on the framed photograph, but my eyes wouldn’t adjust. Everything had gone too blurry now, so I returned my attention to the stupid TV.
I couldn’t even focus on the screen because through the window I could see their flashing cameras. What the hell were they even taking pictures of? When would they leave? It’d be pitch black in an hour and I wanted to sleep. Wake up, yet again, and wish that I could just sleep forever, in every sense of the phrase.
Dirty bastards. Should call the cops on them.
When it became too much to bear, I ripped the curtains completely shut and paced around my sitting room, seething. The couch smelled awful when I first arrived but I was getting used to it. I even slept on it a few times, whenever I was too drunk to crawl into the other room. Sometimes the bedroom was just too dark and cold. I preferred this sleeping arrangement, with the television flickering throughout the night, the hours swirling by as I slid in and out of intoxicated dreams. Felt like some kind of trance.
It was a sensation I could only compare to a wave pool. My head ducked under, I emerged and caught a breath of air, then under again. All the world bubbled around me and splashed in my mouth. The waves never ceasing. Not until morning brought sweet, temporary relief.
The cameras popped again. I could see them, even through the curtains, just barely.
I wished I had a gun. I’d love nothing better than to take aim at a few of those reporters. Man or woman. I didn't care. I probably wouldn’t even hit them. Never been a good shot. Never had much practice. But just the act of shooting at them, that might cheer me up. God knows I needed it.
For a moment, I leaned against the wall and stared through a crack in the curtains. Their bodies shuffled outside like ants consuming crumbs from a dinner plate. Sometimes chatting with each other. The latest news, maybe, or a story idea. The constant buzz of information that seeped into my brain and under my door. The droning static of social media and voices I didn’t care about. I leaned there for a while longer and started to think, let my thoughts drift out from the walls.
To grow old in a coffin. That would’ve been ideal. Somewhere with darkness and quiet. Somewhere to think and to forget everything I’d lost, everything I’d done. Somewhere they would never find me. Where the truth would never come out. That was the goal, after all. This tiny house, this lost town. This was meant to be my dark coffin. Yet they had reached inside with their slimy hands and wrung my neck.
Looking for respite, I turned to my television, but it acted as a mirror. There was nothing as awful as a mirror that came out of nowhere. My own image flitting across the nightly news, some headline about my future plans. Little Rush had grown obsessed, like a needy lover. I grabbed the remote, and with a tiny pop, the television program extinguished.
Then I opened my phone, checked Twitter, the only social media I maintained. I didn’t even have an account, not one that I ran anyway. There was one with my name that some agent controlled. I didn’t follow it, never even looked. I used a faceless account, a username with many numbers. Yet I saw my real name trending on the list of topics. “Bruce Michaels” near the top and then “Michaels Moves To Nowhere?” a little under that. A few hashtags that I didn’t really understand. When I refreshed my feed, the first post I saw was of my own face. Another surprise mirror. I chucked my phone across the room where it bounced off the couch and onto the floor.
A sudden anger swelled inside of me, and I turned to the door. I grabbed the doorknob, closed my eyes, shuddered at the images that leapt into my brain. To grow old with the nighttime instead of in t
his early dawn...
I swung the door open, stepped outside, and threw my arms in the air. Exposing my whole body as if to beg, Shoot me. Shoot me now.
“Fuck you!” I screamed as loud as I could. My voice was hoarse, choking. A reminder of the years I’d lost. Their cameras flashed like a volley of bullets. I flipped them off with both fingers. “Fuck you all!” I yelled again before storming back inside and slamming the door behind me. I wished it would’ve splintered, just a little.
10
Jedidiah
Cynicism was the constant throughout my daily life. Little Rush was my home in a different way than everybody else. Some people had roots there, some really deep. Family ties. Memories. All that. Some people had ancestors who were a part of the Underground Railroad when it bubbled in downtown Little Rush all those generations ago. Others had grandparents who came back from the wars and settled there. So many roots.
But, in a sense, none of them were as deep as mine. And I don’t mean that in a boastful way. It was a curse as much as a blessing. My business. All the restaurants I operated, the countless properties I owned. Each one a thick rope binding me to that town, for better or for worse. So much of my money tied up, my fortune contingent on the Little Rush housing market. Maybe that’s why Mason seemed to hate me. A potential reason, at least.
I did love Little Rush. It was a beautiful city. Peaceful, quiet, with just the right amount of big brands and local-owned. The right mixture of people. Democratic, Republican, rich, poor. To me, there was no city quite like that. Nothing as perfect. Nothing so simple but complex.
That’s why the predicament with Bruce Michaels fascinated me. What would happen when you took somebody like that, with no roots and a completely different background, and threw him into this stew? There were so many different angles to the situation, nuances impossible to decipher. The only way to find out was to wait and see. Would the mixture be like oil and water? Would Bruce turn to steam like pouring rain on a scorching hot sidewalk? Would he blend seamlessly?