Why It Crashed

The glowing inconstant moon was engulfed by the black pillow clouds; its dessert was the twinkling stars sprinkled through the violet night sky. What little moonlight was present fought its way through the clouds in a silver veil and shone in streaks upon the vast valley below making all the buildings shine a soft, blue. The mountains and valley floor emanated with dark purple as waves of heat from the morning sun escaped from beneath the dirt and into the air warming the streets of the town.

Lonely and shimmering, the stars froze in the vacuous black of space as the lonely quiet town they twinkled over yearned to feel a fraction as cool as they were. The roads leading into and out of the town were punctuated with yellow dots of that came from the traffic lights that lit alongside them. The howl of the summer breeze blew dust from one end of the valley to the other interrupted by the occasional train, usually a freight train this late in the evening, roaring by.

The put-putting of that dilapidated faded tan pickup truck signified that Robert had finally returned home after another long day of work. His house was of a simple design to reflect a lonelier period in the town’s history. It looked as if a hollowed out cube emerged from the grains of dust and brittle shrubbery of its environment and Robert made a home of it.

For the past 27 years, he had set out to work at 7:30 in the morning and headed back home pulling into the driveway at approximately 6:45 every evening. It was a pattern he started when he was just 17 years old and had barely deviated from it ever since. But today he came home nearly three hours earlier than usual dragging with him his metal lunch box, his flannel shirt thrown over his shoulder, and the worst news he has had to bring to the wife in 27 years.

The factory from which Robert returned was the latest victim of greed, but no one outside the town would have known. Men in three piece suits and slicked back hair saw fit to buy out the competition in the small towns, their remorse neatly buried in the sands of that barren valley where nothing grew but their already fat pockets.

Normally, any other man in the town in Robert’s situation (which was more than half of them) would refrain from showing up home early. Instead they filled their times with the same substance with which most folk would drown their sorrows. But that was a vice that Robert had given up many years ago upon feeling the miniature grip of his newborn son wrap around his calloused thumb. With a deep breath he rubbed the back of his neck and leaned his head back looking towards the thinly veiled moon overhead.

Almost out of reverence, he bowed to the haunting blue and white light that glowed upon him and rubbed his brow. It was almost as if Robert was attempting to squeeze out some amount of tears that had dried up long ago. The lump in his throat would have been easier to handle with some bourbon, and the temptation crawled up his neck as a hot, tingling bead of sweat crawled upwards along his spine.

He approached the walkway reluctantly and his hands felt heavy as he lifted it to open the front door. The air inside was cool, almost chilling in comparison to the dry heaving heat outside. There was a faint smell of smoke as if candles had just been lit and just as quickly been blown out. He looked in the kitchen felt an ominous heat from the oven. Peeking inside, he could see that the roast had just been placed inside less than an hour prior to his arrival.

Robert was a quiet man and never wasted a single word unless the situation called for it. He searched the pantry: empty. The backyard: barren. The hallway leading to the bedroom was dark and menacing but subtle breathing can be heard at the end of it just beyond the bedroom door. Robert was a smarter man than his quiet sensibilities implied and his heart sank as he walked towards the master bedroom.

Hoping to stall the inevitable he opened his son’s bedroom door and found the little one fast asleep still in his school clothes. The sweet look on the boy’s face brought a smile to Robert’s tanned and worn face. He softly stepped to his child and gently kissed him on the forehead. The boy winced as boy’s do when being kissed on the forehead. Another deep breath and Robert turned to the hallway and inched his way to the master bedroom.

His fingertips barely touched the door as it silently swung open and reveled the epitome of his worst fears comes to life behind it. Robert had no idea who this other man was, nor did he care to find out. His heart shriveled into the recesses of his ribcage. The lump in his throat grew larger. And his fingers wrapped into a tightly wound fist. Vertigo replaced any of his senses in that very instant and all he saw was a blanket of white.

Robert did not remember hitting him. The stranger, unclothed, lay in a pile in the corner of his bedroom; jaw sickeningly askew with blood dripping from the side of his lip. Robert’s hand was hot and cold and numb. It didn’t hurt until he unraveled his fingers loose. The stranger’s blood was dripping from his large knuckle. Robert’s wife was crying. Was it out of guilt? Remorse? Was she regretting that her infidelity was discovered? Robert didn’t know. And, frankly, he didn’t care.

A cold chill pierced through the summer heat and dragged down Robert’s spine. The sweat began to collect on his face as he ran to his truck and jumped in. All the way, whimpering, but never crying. His eyes drew back and tightened as if going into a dry heave. It was his body’s vain attempt at weeping. With a screech, the truck sped from the driveway.

Somehow he found his way to the church and saw some of the town’s elderly marching slowly out the front door. He ran into the building and the cool air seemed to calm him for the time being. Its grand structure was cold yet comforting. The shadows of the columns and pews danced on the earthen walls against the faces of saints and the heavenly hosts in rhythm with the dancing flames of the candles. Alas it was empty but he took a seat, unfolded the kneeler and began to pray. Words that only he and God could hear were silently whispered into the still air to which the stale smoke of incense still hung.

His face was hot and red as the glass that held the candles in that church. Blood began to trickle down his chin when he bit down on his lower lip, still not able to cry. He awoke some hours later. A gentle hand nudged him out of his dream. It was the priest whose eyes twinkled with pity but whose brow furrowed with the sternness that was usually reserved for the sinful. Behind the priest was the sheriff who kindly asked Robert to leave. The broken man nodded and obliged the officer.

As he slumped back into his pickup truck, Robert slid the key in its place and the engine rumbled a muffled growl under the hood as it turned over. His eyes were frustratingly sad and yearned to be moistened even by a single tear. The synthetic leather of the steering wheel was hot and burned his forehead so he lifted his eyes up over the dashboard and facing east looked into the vast nothingness of the town. The dawn bled through the satin sky of night as a crimson beacon for the new day making matte obsidian shadows of the jagged mountains that surrounded the valley. The night sky met the morning sky in a streak of white cutting across.

Robert clicked a button and turned on the radio. Through the static a DJ’s voice could be heard: “That was ‘Richard Cory.’ Let’s keep rolling this early, early morning show with the next track off of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic 1966 album, ‘Sounds of Silence.’ This song’s called ‘A Most Peculiar Man.’” The somber rhythm of the melancholy acoustic guitar melted Robert’s shoulders away from his neck.

With a gentle rumble the truck sped away from the church and towards the edge of the town on the west side of the valley. At 80 miles per hour, Robert seemed to be running away from the sun, which was listlessly climbing higher into the sky with each passing minute. In just over two minutes, he had arrived at his intended destination. The orange sky just barely outlined the railroad crossing. The tracks extended out to infinity on either side of the pickup truck.

The music faded out into the warming morning sky as Robert reached over and turned off the radio. His face grew hot and red as he felt the tracks beneath him rumble violently. In the distance, the warning horn of the 6:00am train howled as it usually did. Another burst of the horn sounded, this time longer and it grew louder trying to capture the attention of the pickup truck’s driver. The howling turned into screeching as sparks flew violently from the brakes of the train. Robert’s face was wet with tears that finally came streaming down his reddish purple face and he let out a scream into the sky that could be heard from the town. With a loud crash of steel and glass, it all ended for the man whose only intention was to be the bearer of bad news and not the recipient of it.