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This thing like God.
See, where I come from, three things sneak on into a boy’s head round about the time he turns eleven or twelve. First off, he realizes what a fucking shithole place he’s from and what a loser he must be just for being born here. Second, the more he watches his daddy and his brothers grow up and die, the more it occurs to him that things ain’t ever gonna get no better for him or for his kids or for his kid’s kids, no matter what. And round about the time he learns those two hard, painful truths, that suck the life right on out of you and leave you all dried up like the morning after you’ve been drunk for days, well right about then, someone, usually one of his so-called friends but occasionally his own flesh and blood, walks right on up and slaps him with the truth about La La Land.
“La La Land, ain’t what you think it is boy,” they’ll say, all bossy just like that. With a little smile poking out of all their seriousness.
“It ain’t no place for just fun and games, at least that ain’t the all of it. That ain’t nearly the all of it,” they’ll warn. And they’ll laugh and he’ll know that they’re about to tell him something real fucked up, cause where I’m from that’s what people do when they’re about to say something real bad, they laugh. Its like the time, this kid Roger told me he could show me the grossest thing I was ever going to live to see. He led me way the fuck out into the woods, past the river and way down by the gorge and right up to this big, dirty checkered blanket like those ones they use to work on cars. And I’ll be damned if he didn’t pull that blanket back and there was a man, all dead for days with a big hole, carved right through his forehead. I sat there for like five minutes, completely sick to myself before Roger started in on how that guy had got there.
See Roger said that the day before he had been out, shooting birds and shit when he stumbled on this guy wandering around, drunk and just falling all over his self. He said that for over half the day he just followed him around, all silent like and practicing his tracking until he sneaked up real close and drew a perfect bead on the guy with his daddy’s Winchester. Right then, when he had guy in his crosshairs, the guy turned around and freaked out when he saw Roger and the gun and bam, just like that the gun grew all hot in his hands and when he looked up, the guy was gone. For a second he thought the guy had run off but when he looked down, he seen the guy all sprawled out with his head blown back and his arms and legs shaking like the tops of the trees.
Anyway, I’m not saying nothing, I mean maybe Roger shot that guy or maybe he just stumbled up on him or maybe someone led him down to that dead body and showed him just like he showed me, it doesn’t really matter, the point is from the moment when he told me about it to the time he pulled that blanket back, he had that same fucked up smile, smeared all up over his face. And for the next year and a half anytime I closed my eyes, I seen that dead guy with his brains all spilling out.
See, La La Land ain’t really like no place else you ever been. I mean, I know I can’t tell you nothing but I can guarantee that your town ain’t got no place like it. It’s the only one of its kind in the whole world. I promise you that. See, it’s kind of like a fair or a carnival that never gets torn down. But don’t get the wrong the idea, it ain’t like one of them big fun land places where they have those giant concrete mountains and those people that dress up like they was in the cartoons. It ain’t clean and the rides that it does have ain’t fancy at all and they don’t run underground and they’re not stacked up on top of one another in big boxy buildings. No, La La Land ain’t any of that. La La Land is just like one of those carnivals that pass through town with those big, sad rides that kind of wheeze and shake and get dragged around by trucks. And it’s got all these metal tents sitting on sawdust with games in ‘em and those small stuffed animals that split at the seams the first time you hug on ‘em. The whole place smells like a dirty bar and after the first five minutes of being there, your nose gets all dried out and your eyes are all watery cause all that dust just kicking around.
And nobody really ever goes there. I mean, sure people end up there. Guys after work to drink and walk around and throw bottles and shit and some girls go there looking for the type of guys that drink and walk around and break shit. And kids go and wander around with money they swiped from their folks’ wallets and once and a while, maybe a couple or two, out on their first date that want to pretend for a night that they don’t live where they know damn well that they do, they’ll go but nobody really goes there to be at La La Land. It just ain’t that kind of place.
And a lot of people wonder how it even stays open if no one is ever going there. They ask, how come it just don’t shut down and go away like the Tastee Bun that used to sit underneath those big wooden beams that crisscrossed together in a giant “A” and now is all boarded up and kids just sit in there and smoke and sometimes bums sneak in to shit or to sleep on the floor? With everything closing up all the time they’ll ask, “how can that crazy place still be around?” And see, I’m sure that makes sense and all but that’s what you got to understand about La La Land. It just don’t make any kind of sense.
One story has that way back when our town was built for the workers of the, “North and Sons Aluminum Plant,” back then everyone in the town worked for the plant but over the years its just kind of fallen down on top of itself and now it just crawls around, putting out enough aluminum to keep it running but mostly just keeping everyone in town awake all night, with its low groans and smoky orange glow that light up the sky even in the dead of night.
In World War 1, two of old man North’s sons went off to fight the Germans and when they never made it back home, well, he just about went crazy and he locked his self and his family up in his big, old house and let everything else just go to shit. Eventually, he died and left the plant to his youngest, William North the third. And old Willy 3, he was a crazy son of a bitch who inherited a company that was running itself down faster than a skipped stone and they say that he had a mean streak as deep as the Putnam Gorge.
Just to show you what kind of a man he was, one year he bought the town Dog Pound and the story is that some nights he would bring home stray dogs and put on some kind of armor he had fabricated out of some spare aluminum and take ‘em out into this pen in the back of his house and beat those dogs dead into the ground, just for sport, with these big old chains that had links the size of your fist. And they say that once he even brought over this Arab boy from Bombay or somewhere and made that sap live on his hands and knees like a hog just to win a bet. And the day before the State was going to come and check up on that boy, someone called old Willy 3 and warned him ahead of time and that poor mope just disappeared for good. When the State got there, Willy 3, says to them “that boy must have just up and ran away.” But one of Willy’s hired men, he used to tell this story and he swore that old man North just threw a chain around that poor boys neck, rowed him out into the middle of the lake that was out behind his house and drowned him in all that water. They say that when he rowed that boy out into the lake, he didn’t even gag that kid, he just cranked up the turbines of the plant that night so it would cover up his screams. And my own Pop, on the night he came home all drunk and told me the truth about La La Land, well he said he could still remember the night when he was a boy and the plant ran extra loud and that underneath the noise of those big engines, he swore to god that he heard something else screaming. “Something human,” he said. And it kept him awake all night.
Anyway, some time later, North sent away for a mail order bride from one of them crazy countries that drink all that beer and have those big strong women. And some people think that when she arrived at his mansion door, he fell crazy, drop dead in love with her and from that day till the day he really did drop dead, he did every thing that he could to make her happy. And that’s how some people think La La Land came about. They think, he built what he thought would be a fairy tale world for that big old girl. Some people ‘round here say that he dreamed it up as a place where people could go any day of the year and be happy just like it was the Fourth of July. And they tell stories about how North told everyone that he wanted it to be a dream world and that’s why he called it La La Land. But those fools forget what happened next. They forget that one day that poor girl just climbed to the top of that clock tower in the center of the square and just stepped right off of it as the clock rang noon. She was dead when she hit the ground and by the next day, North had rewrote his will so that all of the money he had and all the money he was ever going to have would go to keeping that place open for pretty much ever and ever. And when all that was settled, well he climbed right up to the top of that tower and just shot himself in the head. So even if no one goes to La La Land from now until forever, for better or worse that place will always be open and there’ll be someone there to sell the popcorn and turn on the Tilt-A-Whirl.
But there ain’t nothing true about that story of North and her. Old North never loved anyone and he certainly never loved that girl that he bought just like she was a sack of corn. No way. On the day he died, my pop told me the real truth about that place and he told me why that girl did what she did and why North did it next.
And the real story is as big as any of those ones you can read in the bible. And not just any bible, neither. I’m talking about the huge one that sits on that special table at the front of the Church and stays open all the time and the real story is as special as a peach growing on an apple tree. My pop told me that old North didn’t really make La La Land for that golden haired girl at all and unlike everyone else, my pop heard from someone who knew what he was talking about. He heard it, hisself from North’s lawyer one night when they was all fucked up and out ice fishing on the river.
See, the real story is that around the same time that the girl showed up, well God came down to North, too. And God told North that he had been watching him and he had seen all that evil stuff that he had done to them dogs and to that poor Arab boy and God told North that he had better turn his life around. And North being North, told God to go fuck himself and right then God pulled him up into heaven and showed him everything that he was going to miss out on and then he pushed that rich fool right through the earth itself and all the way down to hell and there, God showed North everything he had to look forward to. And North saw the devil a’whipping on everyone and he felt the flames that burn the skin forever and when North woke up the next morning and found himself in bed, he fell down onto his knees and put his face on the floor and begged God to forgive him for all the bad stuff that he’d done and all those stray dogs that he killed.
And on that very day, just to show God how sorry he was he decided to build a monument to God that would rival heaven itself and declare all the wonders of his truth.
And that’s the real story about La La Land. That’s why North built that silly place. It had nothing to do with love and everything to do with good old fashioned terror.
And if you want to really understand just how God works, you got to understand that over the years, God has gone all over the world and showed other bad men that very same thing that he showed Willy. And when those people seen the wonders of God, they done the same thing that Willy done. And me, I’ve seen some of those places and I’ve seen some of the things that people will make when God comes down and tells them what’s what. I seen these big rocks, the size of Airstream trailers that some men dropped deep into the ground, in a big old circle just like they was pebbles that fell from the sky and I seen the pyramids out in the desert that from afar look like they’re held up by the sun’s very own rays. And I seen gigantic churches built all out of stones with bits of colored glass for windows and when the light comes through all that glass and shines off all those stones, it makes you want to just cry and cry and cry and rip out your very own eyes cause you know you ain’t ever gonna see something that beautiful again. And all these people who built these things, they was just like that evil old Willy and they was just doing it to make their peace with an angry God.
And fuck me twice on Sunday, if God wasn’t disappointed as all hell when that old fool built La La Land because I’ll be damned if that’s what God had in mind. But oh man, that sure as hell is what he got. And you really can’t blame old North because if God is gonna be fool enough to speak to someone from here, well then God should’ve expected all that La La Land actually is. God should’ve seen it coming a mile on down the road. He should’a known that old North was going to build a dirty, stinking heap of aluminum and shit because to someone from where I come from heavens a fucking carnival that never leaves town.
And here’s the best part. Here’s the part that’s really gonna crawl down your throat and just stick to your gut like your momma’s grits. My daddy told me that the Swedish girl didn’t just jump off that tower because she was homesick and North didn’t shoot hisself just cause he was all lovelorn. Absolutely not.
See, after North built that place for God, well God changed his mind about that silly bastard. Somehow, a tiny crack opened up in God’s heart and he decided that maybe there was a place for North in heaven after all. But by then North had gone and got that Swedish girl pregnant and well, even though God has a soft side, he wasn’t about to let the North clan continue. No sir. So he made North and that girl a deal. God told North that anyone who kills they’s self inside that park and if they do it in a way that nobody else has ever done, well then they get to go straight to the real La La Land. I’m talking about the one that God built hisself. And maybe you’re hearing me but maybe you’re not because listen, what I’m saying is that they get to go straight to heaven. And they get to stay there forever. Cause in the end, that’s what God likes to see from his people. He wants to see us just falling all over ourselves to get to him. And that’s why those two did what they did. That girl knew that her life wasn’t going to get any better here on earth and North for once his life could see beyond his shadow, so him and that girl took God up on his offer and did the right thing.
At least, that’s what my daddy said. And it’s true, that man had his faults. Sure, more than once did he take the telephone cord to my mom and me and I’m pretty sure he fooled around with the neighbor girl when no one was around and I know, I’m not talking out of school when I say that it was him and his brother that set fire to the old Chopin place but know this, my daddy was no liar. And I’ll have more than words with anyone who says different.
And I know that what I’m saying about La La Land and about killing yourself there and about going to heaven, I know it sounds as crazy as anything anyone ever said. And I know that some people just blow that story back into the air like they was puffing smoke. Just like the preacher at that little Church on the corner does but listen, that’s just cause he ain’t never heard about any other type of Church other than his own. But I have. I heard preachers tell about God ordering a man to slice open his son on a mountaintop and I seen a church that dances around with snakes and drinks poison. I seen men cut into the privates of little girls in the name of God and I’ve been to places where God tells men to marry as many women as he wants. I’ve seen boys tie vines onto their feet and jump out of trees to prove how much they loved God and if your dumb enough to think that La La Land is crazier than any or all of that, then you’re a damned fool.
But none of that really even matters anymore. Not now. Cause some years ago, when I was as high as a red tailed hawk and just completely falling around on enough homespun crank to kill a bull, this thing like God came to me too. And it came just like it come to all those other people. Just like the postman walks right up to your door and drops one letter out all the one’s in his bucket and that one that he drops is somehow meant just for you only. And when God came to me, just like that girl and old man North, I decided that my life on earth wasn’t ever going to get any better. And I decided that I was ready to turn my own life around and go on and get up out of here. And since I was born here, I knew that leaving wasn’t no answer cause my problem was deep, deep inside of me and if I didn’t cure it soon, well, I may never make it out at all and so together, this thing like God and me decided that the best idea would be for me to just find a way to do myself in right there at La La Land and start this whole thing over again, somewhere else and in some other time.
Now right off the bat, I gotta tell you that this ain’t no easy sort of chore. This ain’t like finding out who your great, great grandparents was or where in town you can get a perfectly fine blowjob for twenty bucks at four in the morning. See no one ‘round here talks about the deaths out at La La Land and even the police and the town hall, they don’t keep no records of ‘em, cause they don’t want no one poking around and asking questions and just make more work for everyone. So if you didn’t know no better, you might think that it don’t ever even happen. But at this bar that I used to go to, there was this green sheriff that used to always get drunk and talk about all the shit he’d seen out at La La Land and believe me, none of it was pretty. Those things he used to say that he’d seen out there, well that was some of the worst things that I’d ever even heard. But not him, man, he’d tell those stories with a smile as big as a rain gutter. And even though just thinking about doing it made me all sick and sad, I knew that if I really was really going to do this right, I was going to have to see all those fucked up things too.
So one day, I walked right down there and into that little trailer that sits just outside where you buy your tickets and I asked the man behind the desk for a job.
“What do you want to work here for,” he asked. And I had kind of thought this thing through beforehand and had even asked another guy what kind of questions they might ask so I said exactly what I had planned.
“Well, I don’t really want to work at all. Its just I got a wife and baby at home and I figure I got to do something and this looks as good as anything else.”
Now, I knew that this old boy, he ain’t ever heard nobody give no answer like that cause he looked up at me and said, “listen kid, anyone stupid enough to answer a question like that is too dumb to operate any of the rides and too much of a smartass to work with the people”. And to be honest with you, I was kind of relieved and having second thoughts. So I turned to leave but had to stop when he said, “But you might be honest enough to work security.” And right then I knew two things, one, that I had the job and two, that God must really want me to do this thing.
Anyway, the man spent the next hour telling me what security was. How I would have to stay on my feet for eight hours a day and how I would have to holler at kids and retards and maybe knock some people around a little if they kept doing something you told ‘em not to do. And seriously that sounded about as much as I could ask for in a job and then he told me what it pays and sent me over to another trailer to sign some papers.
As I left he shouted out, “just do me one favor. Make sure you don’t kill anyone in there.” I just stared at him and he added, “don’t laugh, its happened before.
Now, I’m not ashamed to say that for the first couple of weeks I was a regular secret agent man. Just like one of them you see on television. I was a man on a mission. For my whole shift, I’d just walk around and make little notes to myself and try to learn all the ins and outs of the rides so as I could determine which ones made for the best spots for doing, you know, what I had come to do. I’d strike up stupid little conversations with the handlers (that’s what they call the people that work the rides) and I’d try to find out what shit had already happened where and try to figure out which rides was the most dangerous and stuff. But pretty quickly, the different bosses, they seen that I wasn’t really doing my job and so after something like the second or third week they called me into the main office and the guy that hired me gave me the what for. He told me I wasn’t doing my job right and how I was supposed to catch people stealing or hopping over the fence and yelled at me some more for not having caught anyone since I started. Then he went at me for asking too many freaky questions to the handlers and said, “what are you, some kind of sicko?” For a moment it looked like he was going to cry. In the end, he made me promise that I wouldn’t talk to the women or girls no more cause they all was afraid of me and he sent me back to work.
I walked down those tiny little metal stairs again and sat down. Even though I wasn’t really trying to keep the job, I mean, even though I didn’t give a flying fuck about how I did or what they thought of me, I knew that staying there was the most important part of the plan so I figured I’d better actually start working if I was ever going to do get the chance to do the other thing. So the next day, I actually walked around and, tried to catch people doing shit. It turned out to be pretty easy and kind of fun. I walked my beat, that’s what they call the route you gotta walk over and over around the park and I was on top of everything. I caught the kids getting drunk in the bathroom and the guys that’d climb off the haunted house ride when the cart was back in the trailer and punch the skeletons that’d pop up. And I caught the couples sneaking off into the bushes in the garden and all the crazies digging through the trash for the bottles and even if I’d caught ‘em a couple times, I was sure not to rough anyone up because I’d already decided that I was on my way to heaven and it was high time for me, just like it was for old man North all those years back to change. And anyway, after a couple of weeks of all that, I got to know some of the people at the park and I decided that all in all, it wasn’t so bad working there and at least it wasn’t that god damned aluminum plant. Sometimes after work, some of us would even go out for a drink or two and we’d sit around and laugh at all the people that’d come around that day and at all the stupid questions that they’d ask. And everyone would want to hear my stories about the people I caught. And sometimes this guy that sold the corn dogs would want me to tell him about the couples in the bushes and all that they was doing and about what the girls looked like. I didn’t like that guy too much.
And even though, all in all, I liked pretty much every part of my job. My favorite part by far was at the beginning of the day, when it was so cold that you felt like your pants was made of metal and we’d all walk around with our cups of coffee and our hands dug deep into our pockets and our collars up around our neck and all just kind of bitch about working. “Another fucking day,” we’d tell each other in between sips or we’d say some little joke, like “growing up, gotta work,” and its true, I didn’t really mind my job but I’d say that stuff too and something about saying it with everyone and something about how we did it every day, actually made me feel kind of good inside. And it made me feel like I imagine how a person feels when they is walking out of Church on Sunday and shaking the pastors hand at the door.
And a couple of weeks later, by the time I noticed her, well, by then I’d even almost stopped thinking about why I started working there in the first place. I mean after a full day of work and after going out for a couple of drinks at night by the time that I’d lay down to go to sleep, I was so tired and my head was so full like I just ate a thanksgiving meal that I could barely hear the wheeze of that old aluminum plant or see the orange dim of all those lights. Sometimes my room actually felt like it was dark and quiet and I would lie awake and tell myself that I was the last man on earth. And looking back during that little stretch of time all the gears and pulleys that make up the mechanics of life were really running pretty smooth for me. And then she came around and just shoved a steel bar right into the machine and stopped the whole thing dead.
I remember just how it went. She was standing by the Hammerhead and watching it rise and fall to the earth like a fat kid on a Teeter Totter. The Hammerhead is this ride at the back of the park. Its got this huge steel beam, maybe a hundred and fifty feet long and at least ten feet thick and at each end of it there’s this cabin where the people sit and get strapped in. The beam spins around this axle in the middle of it and when one of the cabins is high in the sky, the other cabin is down below and while the beam spins the cabins flip-flop over themselves. And when you was in the cabin at the top of the beam and falling, you’d swear you were going to hit the ground and then bam, just like that, you and the cabin would turn and go shooting straight into the sky. And I remember it all, I mean everything because that was my favorite ride to watch too and way back when I was still going to do my thing, well, I’d decided that the hammerhead was where I was going to do it and I’d even decided how.
See the Hammerhead spun over this big, concrete ditch and at the bottom of the ditch there was these metal grates and when they was letting people on the ride they would walk on those grates to get into the cabin and when the ride started and the cabin was headed into the sky, those grates would clang open and the cabin would swing through that little area faster than anything you ever did see. And at night, when the ride was turned off, the handlers would stand it straight up like a rocket ship so that one of those cabins was at the bottom of the ditch and over those grates and the other one was way at the other end of the beam, high in the sky.
Anyway, , one night after my shift, I snuck onto the ride and broke into the cabin at the bottom of the ditch and opened up a little hatch on the floor and pulled the grate up and saw that there was a little room under there and that one person, maybe two could lay down in that little coffin area and spend the night with the Hammerhead cabin sitting up on top of you. And see in the morning, when they turned the ride on, they was supposed to come down and lower the grates but they never did. Those retards that worked on that ride they just turned it on and got a kick out of watching the cabin knock over the grates as it swung around. And if a person was in that little ditch when that cabin swung around well, I imagine it would just knock the living shit out of him. And that’s how I was going to do it. I mean I figured that when that cabin swung around and hit me in the it would send me at least a hundred feet in the air, high enough so I could look down on that crazy park and far enough away so that I wouldn’t be found for days and days and people would talk about it for years. They’d talk about that time that crazy boy flew himself right out of La La Land and into a far, far better place.
And, the first time I saw her that’s where she was. Leaning on the railing, craning her neck up and using one of her hands to shield the sun while she watched that ride like it was one of those television serials that she’d followed for years. With the other hand she was smoking a cigarette and flipping the ash off to the side and into the bushes and even though that was against the rules, man, I wasn’t going to say anything. She was wearing this long black skirt that kind of hid her hips, that were probably a little wider than they should have been but still looked pretty damn good and she had on this huge baggy sweatshirt that pretty much covered up what I could tell had to be an amazing pair of tits. She had a star tattooed right on her neck and dark hair that fell just below her ears. She was pretty in a funny kind of way. I mean in a way that might have really flown someplace else like in one of those big cities but here, just made her look weird. It didn’t matter though cause I pretty much fell in love with her the moment I saw her.
So I see her standing there and walk right on by her and she takes her hand down from in front of her face, looks me up and down and then just stares at my badge and says, “yeah, I feel safer already.” Just like that. Swear to God. So I smiled and just kept on going. I mean at the time I didn’t really understand what she said but I knew it wasn’t no invitation out, so I figured I best just keep walking and not say anything.
So for the next couple of weeks every time I walked by the Hammerhead, I looked up to see if she was there and sure enough, every couple of days, there’d she be and always in that same position and always just as serious about watching that damn ride. And finally, probably after like the fourth or fifth time I’d seen her, she walked right over to me and said, “well, if you gonna stare at me like that every time we pass, you might as well know my name. I’m Kate.”
Now up till then, I wasn’t really one to talk to women. I mean, sure, I’ve done it and I’ve even slept with ‘em a time or two but we never said much before or after and I can’t imagine I was that good at it anyways. When she introduced herself, I looked at her for a moment and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what she said. It was like the whole world went silent. I saw her lips moving alright and maybe even heard some of the words but for some reason it was like they was in a foreign language and right then, I figured that I had just better keep on walking and not make a fool out of myself. And the funny thing is, that was just what she wanted. Can you believe it? So, anyway, she followed me and repeated, “I said my name is Kate.” But I was too far ahead of her so that she had to yell it and since I figured I was going to look like an asshole anyhow for walking away the first time, I thought it might be best to just keep on walking. So even though she said it again and then again and again, I just kept on walking my beat and not even turning around and nodding or anything. Well, that must of surprised the hell out of her ‘cause for the next couple hours, she just walked around with me not saying anything and with me pretty much trying to pretend I didn’t notice her at all, which was kind of difficult because we was nearly walking side by side. And she walked around with me like that all the way till I walked into the security office to clock out and change and by the time I came out, she was gone.
I didn’t see her for a couple of weeks after that but eventually she turned up again. It was right about the time that I was starting to get kind of weary with my work. I mean, it still didn’t really bother me, I could go in every day and work my whole shift, only now I didn’t get such a kick out of talking to everybody in the morning and I was starting to feel like I was going to have to knock one of those crazies out, cause I mean everyday it was the same thing with those goddamned bottles and just making a huge old mess of all the trashcans everywhere they went. And sometimes now instead of throwing out those couples I’d catch sneaking off into the bushes or getting a little too friendly in the castle adventure, well sometimes, I’d just sit back and watch ‘em and to be honest, it was starting to make me feel kind of bad about myself again.
When I first saw her, I’ll be damned if she didn’t just straight walk over to me, light me a cigarette off of hers, hand it to me and just walk my beat with me for the rest of my shift all the way till it was time for me to clock out. By now, I figured since I hadn’t ever said anything to her, it would just be too strange to all of a sudden strike up a conversation and since back then I wasn’t much of a talker anyway, I just didn’t say anything and neither did she and by the time I was done clocking out and changing again, she was gone.
For the next month or so, two to three times a week, she’d show up on my shift and we’d just walk my beat and smoke cigarettes and not say anything to each other. I was pretty much done with my job and ready to just about kill someone, so I was kind of relieved when one day she came up to me and right off the bat said, “well, its been really nice getting to know you but I’ll be leaving town tonight,” and just turned around and walked away. She didn’t say nothing else and she didn’t even turn back around to wave or anything and by the time I had taken another sip of my coffee and looked up, she was gone.
Well, that was that, I figured. And I though today’s the day and it occurred to me that in about four months, I had worked an entire career and fell in love and had a relationship and I was thankful that somehow God saw fit to still give me all of that but now I was ready to be done with the whole thing so I went over to the bosses shack and told him that I was quitting. He tried to give me shit and told me he was gonna dock my pay for the last week but I told him that I didn’t even want my last check and so that pretty much shut him up and I left.
That night when it was almost completely dark, I snuck over to the hammerhead. I peeled the steel grate back and sat down on the wet earth at the bottom of that little rain basin. It had been months since I had been there last and I was surprised to see how tight of a fit it was and by the time I had squeezed in there, it felt like I was just engulfed by warmth. I swear, I sat there for about ten minutes, not moving and feeling this tiny, little swell every second or so like I was floating in the river. Eventually, I closed my eyes and was just about to drift off when the swell stopped and out of the darkness the mound that was next to me whispered, “Is you an angel?” Now, I just about had a heart attack and after a minute Kate managed to pull out a little Bic lighter it and looked me square in the eye.
“Is that why you never talk, cause you’re an angel,” she asked.
I didn’t quite know what to do. First off, I mean, I was still blown back by finding her in there and also, ‘cause no one had ever confused me with anything good before. And I guess I could have done or said about a million different things to her but right then only one of ‘em made any sense at all.
I looked her in the eye but before I could speak, she freed another hand and pulled my face close to hers and kissed me hard and pretty soon we were all tangled up and to this day, I don’t know how but we managed to do it right there and then. Inside that little room that was in the concrete ditch just below the Hammerhead in the middle of La La Land and on the outskirts of the shittiest little town in the world. We stayed wrapped up inside of each other for what felt like forever. Through the grates, our breath was warming the bottom of the cabin and the warm air created a little mirror on the metal and our eyes had adjusted to the dark so that we could look at each other’s reflections and see one another’s smiles.
We lay like that for a while until the sky burned orange from the lights of the Plant and the hum of the turbines kicked into full gear. Kate told me how much she loved me and how she didn’t want to do this anymore. She said more stuff about how we could be happy and maybe even leave the town and live somewhere else and someday we might even start a family. She was crying by now, not much but enough and my head was pounding and spinning like an engine belt and what she was saying was starting to actually sound kind of good until she pushed on the grate that would have let us out and learned what I already knew. That that old gate locked from the outside when it was shut and like it or not we were here now and that the time for these two stowaways to jump ship had long since sailed away. I’ll never forget what happened next, she looked back at me and for a moment it looked like she was just gonna’ completely lose it and right then, I don’t know why and to this day I don’t know how it came to me but right then, I told the only lie that I’m proud of to this very day.
“Kate, listen to me”, I told her, “I am an angel, your angel, your very own but I have to go back now,” and I told her how I’d watched her for her whole life, how I was there on her first day of school and her first kiss and the time she did that thing that she thought no one else knew about and that I had come down here just to meet her and how I’d fallen in love with her right off. She stopped crying and her eyes got all big and she started shaking just a little and she was about to say something else and I couldn’t really lie anymore so I said, “but listen you’ve gotta help me now. “You and me gotta show God that you really do want to live.” And for the next hour, I told her about how the Hammerhead worked and about how the retards that worked these rides, they always wore headphones before the park opened and how they’d never hear us even if we screamed and about how they wouldn’t check the grates when they turned it on so it was going to be up to us to make it out. I told her how in a heartbeat, I would fly away back up to heaven and so I was fine but that she’d have help me get her out of the basin and away from the cabin that would be swinging down on us faster than anything she’d ever seen. And even though I knew it was a million to one and even though she probably did too, for some reason she just kept nodding her head and after I was done explaining it all, she put her head on my chest and together, we fell fast asleep. When I woke up, I lay there, next to her and wondered if I would actually make it to La La Land in the morning. I thought about all the work I’d been through and how somehow, now, in the very end, I actually had found something to lose. Occasionally, my mind would drift a little and I’d think about how if this plan didn’t work, one of us might end up in La La Land but the other one, was just simply, completely fucked and I guess as long as it was me, I was gonna be OK with that. So I decided to hedge my bets a little and make sure that if we were going to get hit by that fucking sky cabin, I was going to make damn sure that the reward was hers.
Before I knew it morning came and just like I knew I would, in no time at all, I heard the groan of the Hammerhead’s engine and I timed it just perfect so that right as the grate in front of us was barreling open with a loud thud, I was pulling Kate up. And as she leapt, I tossed her to the side with my arms raised high over my head and I just screamed at the top of my lungs. Kate’s eyes opened with a flash and like one of them big cats on those nature show, she leapt and rolled out of the way and fell into the empty space beside the ditch and the Cabin swung down and missed her by maybe an inch. And I don’t know exactly how I saw this or where I was when I saw it but the last thing I remember is looking down at her as she huddled deep in the rain basin with her hand covering her belly and tears streaming down her face and just like that, just like fucking that, everything went out.
When the ride came to a stop, they pulled Kate out of the concrete pool and she was mumbling something about this thing like God and they took her to the hospital and ran the tests that some weeks later told her that she was pregnant with a son.
Almost immediately the stories started. A couple of people said they saw a flash and a few of the townspeople said they thought they saw a falling star or something flying low over the town early that morning and right about the time they heard the Hammerheads clang. It was about a month before they found my body lodged up in one of the giant oaks that covers the concrete slab with the sign that introduces our town. I can only guess that they were confused as anyone ever has been as they pulled my mangled remains out of the tree but by then, I wasn’t there anymore, at least it wasn’t really me.
Kate had left the town a few days before they found me. She figured she had the son of an angel inside of her and that now she could do anything and I guess in some ways she was right. For the rest of her life she told her son about the night an angel came to visit her and for the rest of his life, he believed it.
Anyway, maybe I made it to La La Land or maybe I was in La La Land inside that little ditch or maybe this whole town is La La Land and outside there’s nothing else, I don’t know and I don’t ask those kinds of questions anymore. Cause now, anytime I want, I can just run around on the tops of all those giant trees that line the main road and catch the little birds that fall out of their nests and zip through the forest and over to the gorge and dive down deep into its waters until I can’t see my hand in front of my face and in the mornings, I can walk through windows and watch the pretty people fuck and I see them lie and leave and hold and push away and I never feel bad no more, not at all and now, at night, when I fall asleep, I dream of her and him and where they are and what they’ll become and I lay in total silence with the air around me, damp and charged, with these little lightning bolts that tingle my skin like tiny pins and I close my eyes and wait and watch and smile and suddenly, everything just goes black.