The Last Night of October

If you ever drove those back roads in Jersey, through the Pine Barrens, you know what I'm talking about. God almighty, they wind and curve -- dark as hell when the sun goes down. That's how it was last night. No moon, heavy clouds, blackness broken only by the dull beam from my headlights out on Route 542. Swampy smell to the air. Scrub trees and overgrowth all along the two lane road. Mosquitoes too, although not as bad as in summer. A big-ass deer jumped out of nowhere and crashed into my windshield. It's a wonder I wasn't killed.

I want to tell you, I was shaking. Damn thing bounced into the scrub, its blood black on the windshield and my front end smashed like I hit a Mack truck. The damned Oldsmobile is totaled for sure. I maneuvered the car over to the side, so at least I wasn't in the middle of the road.

Anyways, like I said, my hands shook and my heart beat like the bass

drum my son played in the marching band. I'd been out deep sea

fishing off Tuckerton with Bill Bianchi, my boss at SEPTA, on his boat. It was breezy and sunny, warm for the end of October. We got sunburned to hell, drank a case of Bud, and caught 16 bass, 5 porgies and 5 blue fish. I hope Bill enjoys his half cause mine are stewing in the back of that Olds.

So anyways, I'm shook up, right? I can't see for nothing in the dark.

And I smelled gasoline, coppery deer blood and piss, dead trees, and Pine Sol, no joke. I'm sitting in the seat for a couple minutes, trying to get my bearings and I feel dripping down my eyebrow. It hit the side of my mouth, and I ran my tongue over it. Salty, thick. My blood or the deer's, I didn't know, but I felt queasy. The steering wheel was all crooked and messed up. I had to lean my weight against the door to get out.

It was that clammy cool it gets at night, must have been after ten. I stepped into thick as soup fog that dropped all of a sudden.

So I'm looking around, wondering what to do. The car is wrecked, the front tires are blown, and I don't see any lights, any houses, any signs, nothing. I patted my pants pockets, shirt pocket - no cell phone. I heard rustling, over where the deer lay in a big heap, flailing around. If you didn't know better, you'd think a human was lying there in the dark. And then I saw this glow, like two red Christmas tree light bulbs, coming towards me, wobbly, about three feet off the ground. Holy crap, I thought, it's the freaking Jersey Devil and I almost tore the door off the Olds to get back in. I jammed my eyes closed and held the door shut tight. I'm not ashamed to say I made the sign of the cross and said about five Hail Marys. That must have worked. When I opened my eyes, it was gone.

After a while I got back out, looked around. I felt like I was in a cloud, shivering, damp, sucking down air, ready to cry. I'm standing there, praying my ass off, and I saw two yellowish lights through the mist - headlights - coming my way. I stepped into the road and waved my arms back and forth. Please, God, I prayed. And hoping I don't get hit.

The lights slowed. It was a beat up old Chevy truck -- looked white through the dark and the fog. A young guy rolled down the window and leaned out. He goes, "Hey, you need help? You okay?"

"Yeah, deer hit me," I said. "Can you give me a ride?"

"Get in. Looks like that car isn't going anywhere. Where you going?"

I told him, "Philly. But you can drop me where-ever there's life."

"I'm going to Philly. I'll take you home."

The kid looked to be 20 or 22. Hippie type, long brown hair that needed a comb. Scruffy beard. But a really soft voice, sort of musical. One of those kinds that always sounds like it ends in a question. I just hoped the guy wasn't on drugs. But God Almighty, I would have taken a ride with Mikey Cigars to get off that road.

"You're sort of bloody," he said. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

He fumbled around and pulled a hanky from his khakis. I know, who carries a hanky?

"Nah. You got a cell phone?"

I thought I'd call Bill to tell him what happened. There's no one else to call. My ex-wife moved to Rhode Island with her Captain when he was transferred from the Willow Grove Naval Air Station. She did not go, so I found out, for her job. The son is in graduate school in Memphis. I don't talk to him much since he brought his boyfriend home last Thanksgiving. It's basically just me, in the Mount Airy row house my parents left me, fending for myself. I do okay. I got friends from work - and I got friends from the neighborhood, people I've known all my life. But no one to report to. That's what I call freedom.

So the kid's like, "I don't have a cell phone."

"No kidding?" I said. "I thought all you kids had cell phones, I-pods, the works."

He glanced over. "I don't need one. My house-mates let me use their phones if I have to make a call. It's not like anyone calls me anyway." He sounded nonchalant.

"What are you doing out in the middle of New Jersey on Halloween?" I asked him.

"Well, I live in Germantown, in an old house on Queens Lane, with four guys from LaSalle. Sometimes it gets loud, like this afternoon, when the Eagles are playing. So I just headed out, wound up at the shore, and on the way back heard you calling me. People are always calling me. And there you were, standing in the fog."

Right, so I'm thinking Twilight Zone and I'm trying to watch for mile markers and street signs to make sure I'm right here on terra firma, you know what I'm saying?

The truck bounced down the road. Its headlights hardly cut through the dark haze. All I could see was a fuzzy glow. He drove back to Route 30. The fog began to lift, and finally I saw some street lights. Big white signs with black numbers appeared over closed gas stations. The wide window of WaWa beamed along the road -- you could see the clerk leaning on the counter. I reached up to my forehead. It felt just like the fish gills I ripped out that afternoon - all sticky and

slimy. My head hurt and the cut felt jagged on the edges. The guy

looked at me. He smiled a little and raised his eyebrows.

"That's a nasty cut. Apply direct pressure to it."

I swiped at my head with his hanky.

"You go to LaSalle?" I said.

"Well, sort of. I haven't actually gone much to classes. I hoped this time it would work out. I just have such a hard time, sitting in class, trying to listen, hearing the stupid crap people say. I mean..."

He stopped in mid-sentence. It was real quiet in the car. He turned off Route 30 and got on to 73. At least we were going in the right direction. I got to tell you, I was kind of woozy by then. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I think I was asleep when I heard him talking.

"I thought I could major in English -- poetry -- you know?"

I raised my head and shook it. "That sounds great. I'm sure you can get a good job with a degree in poetry. But you got to go to class, right?"

"I try to concentrate in class, but I just keep thinking. People say

I think too much. It's a funny thing? Lots of people go through

their whole lives without thinking at all. They're the lucky ones. I can't stop thinking. I can't stop hearing. Always, someone calls me, needs me. I can't make it stop."

So, I say to him, "Man, I must be one of the lucky ones then. The only thinking I do is about when I'm gonna get laid. But you're young. I wish I had the opportunity to go to college when I was a kid. My old man couldn't wait for me to get a job, move out, be a man. You should enjoy this time when you have it, it's damned hard to go back."

He smiled. "I have gone back. This is my going back."

"To LaSalle?" I asked. He didn't look old enough to be in his second career or anything.

"I planned to be a pilot, like my grandfather, a Navy pilot in World War II. I wanted to fly. I love jets. I got into the Delta Academy in Orlando. You can get a college degree and your pilot license there."

"That sounds good," I said. "So what happened?"

He looked straight ahead. Al's Auto Repair, Johnny's Tap Room, Vito's Deli, WaWa, a big Acme supermarket, and Beverly's Bakery passed by

like we were in an old moving picture. I felt a drop run down the

center of my chest, then another. I hoped it was sweat.

"When I got to the Academy, they put me and another guy in an apartment near the airport. It was good at first. We registered for classes and I signed up for Math and English at Broward Community College. But Paul, my roommate, I felt him in my head, putting his ideas in my head -- that nobody cared about me and that they were

after me, they knew where I lived. And then I heard people calling

me, needing me. It got so hard. After a month my mother drove down and brought me home. But there's nothing for me there. So this spring, I thought, LaSalle. My mother agreed it was a good idea."

He rubbed his right finger along his nose. He took short tight breaths, and I got to tell you, he was freaking me out.

"Son, you OK? I mean, I appreciate the ride, you have no idea, but you seem upset or something. You're kind of different, no offense."

"Yeah, no offense." His laugh was bitter.

"Different. Do you know how many people have told me I'm different?

Ever since I was a kid, they said I was different. In high school, they never invited me to parties, to hang out, whatever. I ran on the cross country team and won the district championship. Even so, they were always laughing at me. Just that one girl, Clare, she talked to me. She always said, you're different, but that's not a bad thing.

You just feel everything more than anyone else. You have a poet's soul. Clare was my best friend. My only friend. She goes to LaSalle.

I saw her a couple times in the library but I haven't talked to her yet."

"Oh," I said. A girl. Well, that made sense anyway.

Believe me, by then I thought the kid must be on something. But I wasn't scared of him. I mean, he seemed like a nice kid, gentle, just, you know, troubled and weird. Maybe I'm stupid or maybe I'm nuts, but I sort of liked the guy and I wondered what the hell he was talking

about. I said, "Yeah, that's tough."

Then he starts with,

"Do you know about maya? The circle of illusion? I go to school, I walk through the city, and all I see is illusion. In my classes, the professors, the students, they think what is unreal is real. Do you ever think about why we are here? Why are you and me, strangers, riding in my truck at this minute, in this place? Why do we get up every day, go to school, go to work, go home, start again? See what I mean? It's a circle. My father was a cop for over twenty years. He died from a heart attack the year after he retired. What happened to his essence? What difference did his life make? In the end, there's only death."

As we approached the Tacony Palmyra Bridge I watched a far off glow become the toll booth. I found two bloody dollars in my shirt pocket and handed them to him. He gave the guy the money and drove through the booth, but pulled on the brake just past the collector and rummaged through his pockets and the ash tray for coins. Then he stepped out of the truck. What the hell, I'm thinking. The light from the booth glowed off his white button-down shirt. When he slid back in the car, he said, "That woman didn't have any cash." And I'm thinking, how could you know that?

"That's what I'm telling you - people call me, all the time." He looked over, then laughed quietly. "How do you think I found you?"

We crossed the bridge and drove west on Levick Street. It was late, but the streets were lit and shadows moved about their business behind venetian blinds in the rows of houses that lined the street.

Skeletons, witches and black cats bounced in tiny front yards decorated for Halloween.

"Do you know Rimbaud?" he asked.

"Rambo? Sure. But I like Rocky better. More realistic, you know what I'm saying? I love Stallone," I told him. Now he was beginning to talk sense.

He looked at me. His eyebrows creased down and his eyes were squinty-like. He didn't say anything for a second, and then he began to laugh, like when you're a kid in church and the nuns are looking at you and you know you have to stop but you can't. I started laughing too. Tears rolled down my face and I started coughing. I was sure he was going to plow into one of the cars parked along the street. Then he got sort of serious. He nodded his head.

"Rocky is definitely the better of the two," he said. "But I didn't say Rambo - Rimbaud. He was a French poet, died when he was like 35."

"Oh, don't know the guy," I told him. Still sounded like Rambo to me.

"The guy did his best work by the time he was 20, then he just took off to Africa, and never wrote again. He wrote this book of poems called Season in Hell. The first time I read it, I felt like, finally, someone gets it."

In the city, the street lights shone through the car windows and I got a better look at the guy's face. Brown hair and beard, sort of greenish blue eyes - they were a little disturbing I want to tell you.

Anyway, I swear, I think I see tears in the guy's eyes. Now, you know, I got no time for tears, not from a woman, not from a man. We turned onto Roosevelt Boulevard so we weren't far from Mount Airy, thank God. Then the guy says this poem, "...One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her. I steeled myself against justice. I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care! I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy... Rimbaud," he said.

"Frankly, I'll take Rambo - less violent," I said. And he started laughing again, crazy laughing.

So we turned onto Germantown Avenue and I told him, I live on West Mount Airy, and he's like, "Yeah, down by the Allen Lane Station?"

"Right," I said, "How could you know that?"

"I know the area."

We parked close to my house.

"You wanna come in, get something to eat?" I asked.

"No, thanks," he said. "You OK?"

I opened the truck door, but when I leaned out, I got real dizzy. I think I sort of wobbled and sat back in the seat.

"I'll help you in," he said.

I didn't pretend like I didn't need help. Man, I was never so happy to walk through my front door. The mail jammed up the slot, and the house smelled like old socks and tuna fish.

"I'll boil some water for tea," I said.

Then I guess my knees collapsed because I passed out cold between the living room and the dining room. Next thing I know, I'm laying flat on my back looking up into his eyes.

"Whoa there, buddy, I think I better call 9-1-1," he said.

"No, don't, I don't want all those sirens and lights coming down the street. I'm OK. It's been a long night."

He sat me up in a dining room chair and got some orange juice from the refrigerator. He found a dish rag, wet it and wiped the blood off my face. I didn't have any Band-Aids or anything, so he went upstairs and found a wife-beater t-shirt that he wrapped around my head.

"Your red badge of courage," he said.

He must have gotten me upstairs, because I woke up to the phone ringing and the sun burning my eyes. Headache, holy God almighty, throbbing. Every muscle in my body ached and it took all I had in me to roll to my left to get out of bed.

"Joe." It was our dispatcher, Honora. "Where are you? It's almost 7.

It's not like you to miss work."

I told her about the accident, that I'd be in tomorrow. I had trouble seeing out my right eye - it was swollen almost shut and looked purple in the mirror. I unwrapped the undershirt from my head - gross yellow and brown and smelling like death. I limped to the bathtub, fell in and turned on the water, hot as I could stand it. And I tried to remember last night. I could hear his voice, "I have withered within me all human hope."

I felt better after the bath -- the crusty blood washed down the drain. My right eyebrow could have taken stitches, but the bleeding stopped. It'll leave a nice scar -- maybe I'll look like Rocky.

Anyways, I found some Bayer in the medicine cabinet and chewed a handful, then got myself downstairs. I made coffee, hot and strong, and carried it in a cracked cup that was my father's into the living room. I pushed a bunch of old magazines and bills off the end table to make room for the pot -- and then I saw it -- a small dog-eared book. A thick red flame rose up through the middle of the front cover and a man stood, naked, facing the flame with his arms raised like he was on a cross. Across the top in orange letters it said, Season in Hell, by Arthur Rimbaud.

I sipped the coffee and leaned back against the armrest, hoping the guy's name and address would be inside. No deal. First, I read, Season in Hell, the poem the kid quoted to me. Then, I read, The Drunken Boat, cause I thought it was like me out on the fishing boat yesterday. But it wasn't. The kid underlined the last few stanzas three times in thick black ink.

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. / Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter: / Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours. / O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom! / If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the /Black cold pool where into the scented twilight /A child squatting full of sadness, launches/ A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May. / I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,/ ...".

I read it out loud and the words were bizarre, unlike anything I ever heard. They floated in the room then dropped to the floor -- like they were out of place in this house. I wondered, why? I read it again, trying to understand. I decided to drive to LaSalle, go to the library, look around the campus. Find him. I swirled the coffee in the cup until tiny drops seeped through the crack in the porcelain.

I must have dozed off again. I woke up with a volcano erupting in my stomach -- the coffee and aspirin weren't such a great idea. I ate some saltines with Velveeta cheese and drank water from the sink faucet -- the old Philly chemical cocktail. I figured I ought to call Jersey to see about my car. But instead I flipped on the TV to catch the end of Action News in the morning. I'm thumbing through the kid's book and half listening to the weather and traffic report when something caught me -- there was a big accident around midnight over by LaSalle, a vehicle fire, the traffic guy says.

Traffic is tied up for miles, you need to detour around Germantown.

Erin is on the scene. Just look at the smoke and cinders that are flying around her. Erin?

As you can see, Matt, behind me is the truck that crashed into this utility pole and erupted in flames. It will take the accident reconstruction crew a few more hours for the investigation and then PDOT can get this debris hauled away. It appears that the only occupant of this single vehicle crash was the driver, and Matt, you might want to tell the Moms out there to send the kids to another room. This must have been an inferno, Matt, because the driver was burned beyond recognition. The police have not been able to identify the driver or the vehicle owner-- even the license plate was incinerated. They're trying to determine what caused the crash and the fiery aftermath. They are asking anyone who has information about this vehicle to call the information hotline at 215-222-5555. This is Erin O'Rourke on the scene of the midnight crash and fire that's caused today's traffic nightmare.

No. No. Please God, no. It isn't him. It can't be him.

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