William Burke

Jimmie Jones was stuck in a crawlspace. He could still move but he had lost track of time and direction. Some light leaked into the crawl from the vents, but damned if he could see much, or make any sense of the not much he saw. There were shadows and shapes, that boxy concrete thing over there might be the furnace pad, but Jimmie had no idea where to go, what to do next. And really, he did not want to move, ever again. When he moved bats fluttered in his guts and something roared in his ears. Dizzy was too small a word for what he felt.  It was asking too much to remain Jimmie, to go on with his life. If he moved he was certain that the man he had trained himself to pretend to be would break open like a dead husk and a million random pieces would spill out; each proceeding to take this opportunity to race faster than thought in its own direction.

“Damn it!”  The simple act of speaking brought Jimmie back to himself, put the strong Jimmie, the Jimmie that got things done, back in charge. “There. Okay now. You’ve still got the old magic.”

He scuttled and writhed a bit forward. Where to go? What to do?

“Get a grip. Get the job done.”  In Charge Jimmie barked, letting the harsh voice of authority serve as the essence of an argument.  Who needs logic when have to rules your life?

Maybe the book would have something to say about how he was feeling. Finish early and take a few minutes in the shade somewhere to study. Damn that book. Damn it all you want. You won’t stop reading.

 Ok. Let’s get this job done. He tugged his spray hose to create some slack. But which way should he go? A sludge of half dried chemical covered the inside of the foundation where. Jimmie had treated this same crawl last week. He had done a proper splash job, broken every rule known to God, man and the Environmental Frigging Protection Agency, yet still the bugs kept coming back. Fat bastard cockroaches popping out of dark corners, sending the customer racing for her phone to call Maguire, who chewed out Jimmie, who came out here and crawled around. The everlasting circle of life. The chemical smell, like rotten cherries soaked in fuel oil, made Jimmy’s eyes leak tears he couldn’t blink away. He damn sure wasn’t taking off his goggles to wipe his eyes. He did that once; removed his goggles in a chemical soaked crawl his first week as an applicator and was rewarded with an all expenses not paid (health insurance took ninety days to kick in) twelve hour stint in a hospital emergency room. About the time Jimmy learned he was going to keep his eyes Maguire told him he was on suspension for unsafe practice. But ol’ Maguire went to bat for him and after Jimmy signed a release he was back at work. Exterminall even paid forty percent of the ER bill and they claimed they didn’t have to do that.

So here he was again. This damn crawl. Nothing was living down here unless it breathed chemical. But still the bugs came up through the vents and ducts, still the lady upstairs called the office and complained. I want that guy fired! Jimmie had heard her scream this morning. Maguire had grinned when he held the office landline away from his ear.

Jimmie’s elbows thrust through the crawl’s bed of dirt and mold. What to do now? He could wait a while, go outside and poke around. Calm the customer. Hope the bugs went away. Oh yeah, that was a plan. Hope for the best and wait to get screwed. That plan was the bedrock of his life. Him and every working stiff since the first foreman told the first worker to get his butt in gear.

“Damn it all, “Jimmie said, and paused a moment to admire his eloquence.

Then he saw it, along the far wall, a black space at the top of the foundation. "It's false" he said, and pulled himself that way, elbows and knees digging into the loose dirt, crushing the bones of a rat.  He'd splashed that wall, splashed it good, but damned if he saw that little hole.  Anything could be back there, most likely chunks of concrete, maybe old cans of paint or solvents. The kind of stuff contractors had to pay to drop at the dump.  So they saved a few bucks by sealing them under the porch.

Jimmie couldn't feel his hands. But that was all right. Sometimes that happened. So far the feeling had always come back.  At least he still had hold of the spray hose. Here we go. Just take a few seconds to breathe.

Proper dilution is the key to chemical safety, it said in the manual.  “Proper dilution my big fat ass,” was Maguire’s way of putting it.  You have to cheat. That’s the thing they don’t tell you up front. You have to listen between the lines, watch who gets ahead and how. The manual said a quarter jug in a hundred gallons of water was right for a crawl this size. Jimmie had poured three jugs into about half that much water. When he poured the chemical in his mixing drum the thick liquid sucked in the sides of the jug and made a thumping sound as the air rushed back. They called it buttermilking. It only made that sound when you were really running some juice.  God the smell.  His overalls, hair, fingers, always reeked. His first week he had complained about the smell, about being soaked in chemical. Maguire said “Smells like money to me."

“Time for business,” Jimmie said. He’d get the job done, and then he could take ten, look something up in the book. The tired fell away and Jimmie snapped his goggles tight and crawled forward. He tugged the hose and squirmed towards the dark space at the far end of the crawl. Bugs in every corner of her house. Jimmie felt for the lady upstairs. The little bastards even came up out the sink drains when she washed her face. Everything about her world was wrong and Jimmie was gonna fix it. She was just living her life like the rest of us, hoping there really were rules and someone somewhere was going to make everything work out. If only someone would take care of us, make everything right again. Jimmie had a chance to be that guy. Get the job done. Now.

Jimmie worked his way to the false wall and pulled out his bicyclist's mirror and pocket flashlight.  He poked the mirror up into the dark space at the top of the wall and shone his pocket flashlight on it.  There they were. All the roaches in the world swarming over each other, fornicating like Satan’s pets, eating each other. A squirming, shiny, slippery black thing. The nation of evil taken root in the foundation of this ranch on Sycamore. They had waited, kept about their foul business while Jimmie soaked the joists and foundation with chemical. He hadn’t even touched them. Evil existed. But not for much longer. Not on Jimmie’s watch He slid his hand into his right front pocket for his wide nozzle. The world was yellow and blurry through the scratched goggles and it didn’t matter a damn bit. There was only one thing he had to do. Kink the hose so the nozzle slipped into the black space.

"Thank you Daddy," his son Ezra said each night when Jimmie carried him up to bed. A strange thing to think of with your finger on the spray trigger, with all hell about to let loose.  But that was life, sometimes you thought strange things. It was the doing that counted. Just keep on with it. Keep on doing it till you’ve done it right. Somewhere in there was a philosophy and if Jimmie wasn’t ass deep in a crawl that didn’t even count towards his month’s commissions he would have taken the time to work it out. As things stood he let fly.

Even though Jimmie half expected it he wasn't ready for what came next. Nobody could have been.  When the chemical hit that hidden cave black shapes scuttled out of the hole hitting Jimmie like a wave foaming up a beach. Feathery legs scratched under his cuffs, along his arms and up his face. He held down the spray button, kept the nozzle pointed down into the emptiness beyond the wall.  The roaches were writhing, dying and crawling over him all at once, their tiny legs scraped along his cheeks, one found its way into his hair. Somewhere above his head he heard screams. His customer. They were no doubt busting out of every drain, dark corner and flooring crack in her house. There ma'am, that ought to take care of your problem, Jimmie thought, and he smiled, laying in the half dark with roaches scratching along his neck, dying under the collar of his overalls. He had won.

Halfway out of the crawl the dizziness planted Jimmie's face in the dirt. He had just flat out missed the ground with an elbow as he crawled forward. His face drove into the mulch of stale dirt under the house. He hoped that wasn't fur under his cheek, that wasn't a rat skull that had smashed under his temple. Dirt ground into his face as he turned it to one side to draw a breath. His body was something he had to flee. The whole house was resting on him, the weight of floor and walls and ceilings, all of it coming down on this hopeless bag of flesh. It wanted air, but he could not breath, could not move. If he could only let go of everything. Something spiked through his breastbone piercing his heart with a pain that reminded him he was trapped.  But Jimmie knew what to do. Let go the panic and the pain. Ignore the smell. It was just a smell. A smell couldn't hurt him. The rest was just imagining.  He moved his arm, there just an inch, and again. He dug his elbow into the soil. He could crawl now, slowly, knees chugging through the dirt, pushing him forward, toward the pure light that shone in where he had pulled a vent to access the crawl.

“The world of the happy man is different from that of the unhappy man,” Jimmy said. It took a bundle of math and logic to stop hiding from that truth. Jimmie smiled and kept crawling. That was from the book. The book that waited in the truck, in the world of the sun.

Standing outside the house, hands on his knees, bent over, respirator down around his neck, his lungs gradually got the notion they could suck at this air all they wanted. The pain in his chest faded away. He felt a little better, looked around a bit and saw worms squirming through the customer’s lawn. Millions of them, a living green carpet that was going to pull him down if he didn’t....

  “You’re just dizzy,” he said. Let the air in, push it out. There you go, look around. Yellow swings, a red bucket, blue chipped paint on a kid's wooden sandbox. Sandbox, bucket swings, yellow, red, blue. These were things he saw. His seeing meant they were real. He was not seeing a writhing carpet of green worms. That was just a green thick lawn under a late afternoon sky.

"A trick of the light," Jimmie said. He looked into the neighbor's yard and saw stuffed animals lying beside a playpen, a purple dragon with silver wings and a lion with a long red tongue, all scattered the way they get when a little one hoists them over the wall of netting that encloses her. The pain in his chest was a knife. It twisted. It was ripping him apart. Jimmie Jones stood straight and breathed deep past the pain to the place where he kept his will, the stubborn truth that kept a man going. A man did for his family. If the hurt don’t matter the hurt can’t get you. More philosophy. He was the applicator Aristotle today. But wishing and farting don’t pay the bills. That was Maguire’s philosophy. Time to check in at the office and write up his report. Then he could go home. Damn the book. He repeated his vow to toss it in the dumpster behind the office after he finished his paperwork. He made that vow at least once a day.

“I heard from your customer,” Maguire said. He’d come up behind the desk where Jimmie was filling out his report. 

“There was a devil’s hole down there. Full of the little bastards. I butter milked them. I guess some of them scooted out to do their dying.”

“That I didn’t hear,” Maguire winked. Jimmie studied again the acne scars on Maguire’s cheeks, the tobacco stains at the corners of his mouth, the oily spikes of hair over Maguire’s collar. Maguire was tough; he knew how to handle EPA guys and angry customers. He took care of his boys. Real good care.

“Sounds like it was a nasty one,” Maguire said.

“You tell her the stragglers will be showing up for a few days?”

“She threatened to sue. I reminded her they were her bugs; we were only killing them for her.”

”Should I be worried?”

“Not unless I tell you to be.”

“Okay then.”

“Worst comes to worse we’ll send her a guess what letter.”

Exterminall had a special letter that went out to complaining customers explaining that they had agreed to arbitration when they signed a contract in their panic over seeing bugs.  Exterminall of course got to pick the arbitrators, mostly retired managers of offices just like this. If the customer lost they had to pay the arbitration fees, five hundred dollars an hour while the panel mulled things over for few days.

“Okay.” Jimmie signed his report and put it in the wire box on the desk.

“I need you to hit Floyd’s Pancakes first thing tomorrow. City health inspector had a close encounter with one of our little friends. “

”You know what will make me happy? When you get a seasonal to do these damn recalls. My commissions won’t buy a hamburger this month.”                                                                     

“We all have our dreams,” Maguire said. He leaned forward and tapped without aim at his computer keyboard. Just letting Jimmie know the conversation was over.

In the tiny changing room Jimmie took his sneakers, socks, clean jeans and a fresh t shirt out of a sealed plastic bag in his locker. Pulling on the new clothes felt like pushing his pickup truck up a hill. He sighed and watched his feet carefully while he braced one arm on the locker and stood up. By his second long slow breath his sneakers had come into focus, the laces had stopped writhing in loops and swirls. He headed out to his truck. In the lot the late sun hit his eyes and he stood for a few beats of his heart with his hand on the truck’s door handle. He put a hand over his heart. Damn thing was beating harder every day.

He settled himself facing the steering wheel and dashboard of his truck and the heroic tired of a father at the end of his working day washed through him. Another day done.  Turning the ignition key made him want to sit there, rest his head against the steering wheel while he mustered the effort to pull the lever that dropped the truck into gear.  Send her a letter, That Maguire. Nothing stopped the guy. Nothing. Jimmie would never be as tough as Maguire, not if he lived to be... To be what? Thirty one? Thirty two? He was dying. That was what he knew when he paid attention. And that was what the book was about; paying attention.

“You’re killing yourself.” 

“Shut up.” Jimmie was now officially the kind of crazy that talked back when he talked to himself.

It was time for the book. Time to be a happy man.  Jimmy had found the book a few weeks ago, in a cardboard box with free scribbled on one side that had been set on the curb outside a rental house carpeted in filth where Jimmie had done a carpenter ant job that took six hours that had felt like half his life. The box held old clothes, magazines, a Felix the Cat ceramic doll with one broken ear and the book. The name was what caught him.  He could make no sense of it. The Tractus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Other applicators carried bibles and pictures of their kids. Jimmie carried a damn book that made no sense. Tried to read. It was all little bits of thought numbered like it was an engineering manual for your mind. And half the book was signs and symbols. Stuff Jimmie had never seen the like of.  Jimmie had looked it up. It was logic.  If you couldn’t understand it, it was logic. If you could it was what you had to do. That was Jimmie’s life. But the words. The words were like shapes given to thoughts he had carried in the dark all his life. Jimmy kept the book hidden under some paperwork in the glove compartment of his truck. He studied it when he had a few minutes to pull into some shade between jobs. When one of the sentences made two bits worth of sense to him he got a thrill in his gut.

The book told him it was okay to live his secret life.  He could be that rarest of creatures, a happy man. Say and be it. But there was a catch.

 You can’t say anything about yourself. Not anything real. Jimmy had always known that. Because the guy doing the saying was only a person that you had made up. Our only choice is who we pretend to be. Unless…

Here, look at this. 6.522 There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

What can you do with that? Wait. That was what he would do. What he liked about the book was how it provoked long slow thoughts that might not fully come to him until days later. The kind of thoughts nobody wanted you to have. Like the other day when he suddenly understood how Maguire had trapped him, had watched day by day as Jimmie built a world that had swallowed everything Jimmie could have dreamed or done.  What Jimmie called getting through the day was his hopes being digested by his choices. But then a few days later, a new thought came to Jimmie. There was an answer and it was not to rebel against Maguire. The answer was to step into a world where Maguire did not exist. 

 A happy man.  A new world. That was enough of an idea to let Jimmie sit up and drive himself home one more time. The cool evening air washing through the open truck windows eased the pain in his lungs. He was coming home from work.  The Michigan Lilies bloomed across the yards. The bright orange petals spread so wide they curled back on themselves. It seemed the buds had burst from too much happiness. Kids on bikes hung out in front of the Dairy Barn. Jimmie took the right hand turn there that looped him through the subdivision, past the little river that oozed through a bed of marshes. The wind in the rushes made a comforting rustle.

He had taken Raleigh to that Dairy Barn on their first night out.  The middle of his second semester at West Oakland Community College, all of his heart and mind were taken with the possibilities of fluid dynamics and the theories behind air brakes and this skinny girl who never looked at him but always wound up in the seat beside him in precalculus. "Raleigh" she had said when he had finally worked up the nerve up to ask her name. Like the town. The level sound of her voice, the way she looked at him without blinking, spoke to Jimmy of a deep determination and wisdom, deeper than either of them understood. They both still lived at home so they used to go parking up the river in a place where a stand of cottonwoods lined the riverbanks. Once one of the rear hubcaps of his old El Camino had fallen off in the middle of things. Raleigh had sat up at the noise and looked into the darkness under the trees. She gifted him a laugh when she realized what had happened. Her eyes wrinkled. Her teeth shone in the moonlight and Jimmie knew he was home.

 All those years ago. When not having money still lent romance to their future dreams.  Before he felt lucky to grab a job that would at least let him pay a mortgage and a car payment and leave a bit for food. Raleigh had not changed. Her yellow hair still lay flat as corn silk. She cut it short, the way he liked it, so he could see the way her cheek flowed into her neck. Raleigh wanted Jimmie to tell his doctor about the black outs, about the pain ripping at his chest. That was not a good plan. Exterminall owned Health Right Industrial Care, which employed Jimmie’s doctor.  When they knew you were getting sick Exterminall fired you on some cooked up malfeasance claim.  Maguire would plant something, make something up and Exterminall would back him all the way.

Nothing could beat a lie if it was backed up all down the line. It was the new way of the world. Work around that with your philosophy. Work around the burning in your chest that never goes away, just ebbs and flourishes as you notice it, try to ignore it and try to pretend it is nothing to worry about. Jimmie sucked deep breaths of the cool air flowing in the truck window until he had quieted that particular voice.

By the time he pulled in the driveway Jimmie had found an exact definition of his problem. His problem was fifty nine thousand five hundred dollars a year and health insurance for the kids. A connects to B and that means C has you by the balls. That was the logic of Jimmie’s world. But now he was home. One day was done. Another would come in the morning. In between he got to live his life a little bit.

The kids were hooked up to their nebulizer machines when Jimmie came in the door.  The sitter waved to him and was gone before he waved back.  Ezra looked up and went on reading his book. Bright boy. He had his yellow hair from Raleigh. He was always wondering about something, asking Jimmie question after question. Holly was drawing something with her markers. The nebulizers hummed along, puffing the healing mist though the kid’s clear plastic masks.

The bell rang on a baking timer and Jimmie set about turning the machines off.  He rubbed Ezra’s too thin shoulders. Guilt socked Jimmie's belly like a fist full of needles. Look at your son. Thin, sucking at a plastic mask, seven years old and once, only once had they ever played baseball.  Ezra threw the ball back to him like it was a stone that held all the world's weight. After ten minutes and twenty dropped throws, Jimmie had said, okay and watched Ezra run inside to watch TV.

Jimmie had worried about dust and disease and allergenic pestborne vectors. He had made sure their home always had proper chemical treatment.  The logic of his life had demanded it. Jimmie kept telling himself he was not a poisoner in a poisoned world, not like the eco-nut websites said. He was being responsible. He was doing what he had to do.

Ezra pulled his mask off.

"Hi dad."

"Hi."

"Mom came to get me from school."

"What happened?"

"I had a fit."

"What?"

"In the lunchroom. I was getting my tater tots. The lady gave me a whole plate of them. Then I fell." Ezra fidgeted with the clear plastic nebulizer mask. Jimmie went to his boy, hugged him, and crushed him close.

"Dad."

"What?"

"You smell."

 The chemicals were in his hair, in his blood. And Ezra’s. That was truth. That was real.

"Take your sister, go play for a while. We’ll go for ice cream later."

“Cool.”

Holly had drawn what looked like a horse or maybe a big lizard. It had six heads and was waving a squiggly line at a bunch of blobs.

He lifted the mask off her face and turned off the machine.

"What's that?" He asked.

"That's you daddy, exterminizing the creatures."

"Why do I have so many heads?"

"To get them all."

"What kind of creatures are they?"

"All different colors."

Ezra coughed from the doorway.

"You go on outside and play with your brother."

The two of them clomped down the hall. The back door opened and closed.

Jimmie went through a pile of mail on the table sorting the bills from the crap. He  stared at a flyer good for a half price pizza while he tried to chase from his mind the scariest sentence he had yet read in the book The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. The front door opened and closed. Raleigh came in wearing a green blouse with tan slacks and her white walking shoes.

“You’re home,” she said.

 Raleigh moved towards him, arms at her sides. She reached him and brought a hand up to rest on his shoulder. Jimmie could not feel the weight of her hand. He reached up and laid his hand on it. There it was. Flesh upon flesh.

‘You look beautiful,” Jimmie said.

"Bullshitter," Raleigh said. She pulled on a loose string hanging from one of her sleeves.

"I had to run out and get Ezra,” she said.

Jimmie laid his hands on the table, the wood was cool.

“He got sick.”

“I know.”

“The nurse said we have to get him in to his doctor.”

“I’ll take him. I’ve got some personal time on the books.”

“Good. If I take any more time for the kids Fred is going to have a fit.” She poured herself a glass of water and sat down. 

“Did you talk to a lawyer?” she asked

“Not yet.”

“You have to do something.”

“These guys don’t mess around. They will lie and cheat and crush anyone who gets in their way. We could end up sleeping in our car.” As the fear gripped his heart Jimmie longed for just a glimmer of a moment to be back at work, to once more believe Exterminall’s BS. They wanted to him to poke out his eyes so he could see things their way. How things worked.

“They are killing you. You have to do something.” Raleigh said.

Jimmie slipped his hands in his overall pockets.  Something in his right hand. A pen. No. His tire gauge.  He pulled it out of the pocket and it slipped through his fingers and fell onto the table. Raleigh watched the water in her glass, waiting for him to speak.  He slipped the gauge back in his pocket. He might need it in the morning. The left front tire was looking a little soft. 

"Okay.” He said.

“Okay.”

“So tell me about your day.”

“Oh, Darlene made some of her little comments. She had to give me a ride to pick up Ezra and wait for the sitter. ‘I know how it is sweetie,’ she said, ‘when you have small ones and are trying to work.’”

“Sounds like she was being helpful.”

“Trying to work, oh she’s helpful alright.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge.”

“She’ll help make sure she’s the only one they think about for senior clerical.”

A quiet settled in between them. Holly shrieked with delight in the backyard.

"We have almost seven thousand in your retirement,” Raleigh said. With paying to continue the group health insurance and covering the shortfall of his salary they had nine weeks before they got into real trouble.

“What do you think?” Raleigh asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go watch them play.”

They held hands as they walked down the hall.

“I saved us that last bit of that steak from the other night,” Raleigh said. “I’ll boil up some mac and cheese for the kids.”

That night Ezra coughed as he always did, the sounds tapering off gradually.  In their bed Jimmie held Raleigh and she held him back. Outside a late night wind brushed the leaves of their sugar maple against the dormer that held the master bedroom. Jimmie fell asleep. Then he was at the top of a long slide, at the bottom was a field of flowers, yellow, red and purple, big as his fists, with leaves like velvet.  He started down the slide. Halfway down it occurred to Jimmie that the shape of the flowers was wrong, that he had never seen colors so deep and true.  Black tendrils of cloud reached for him from a suddenly gray sky. At the bottom of the slide waited not flowers but a seething carpet of roaches, each big as his fist, climbing over and onto each other with long feathery legs, legs that would in the next instant be crawling over him.

His T-shirt was soaked by sweat. He sat up in his bed and fear washed over him like a wave tumbling him through the surf.  He smelled cherries. Something seared his lungs. What’s in my blood? I need tests. That bastard Maguire. Raleigh was snoring, lying on her back. Jimmie slipped out of the room without waking her. Quiet hung in the hallway. Ezra slept with one arm around his Captain Commando doll. Holly was perched on the edge of her bed, her bottom in the air. He slid her back to the center of the bed, tucked her covers around her, and kissed the warm spot of her cheek.

He let himself into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. In the soft gray that comes before real morning light he poured himself a glass of water and sat at the table. Years were peeling off his life while he watched the shadows fade in his kitchen. Jimmie took a sip of water and looked at some branches through the window over the sink. Two young peach trees and a stunted apple tree with a dead limb grew along the side lot. Come spring they were covered in white flowers. He used to spray the yard to keep away the bees.

When the sun was full up Jimmie headed upstairs and watched as he slipped into his daily habits. He washed and shaved, pulled his socks up tight. He checked how he looked in the mirror, combed his hair back over his ears, pulled on a jacket against the morning chill. The restaurant was an easy gig. Sometimes the manager gave him a slice of leftover pie.

 Raleigh met him in the front hall with Ezra. She took Jimmie’s hand, looked into his eyes, walked him to the door the way she always did. They kissed. She broke it off a second early and ran upstairs to wake Holly.

Ezra walked out with Jimmie. Without reason, Jimmie found himself reaching out, taking Ezra's hand, leading his son to the door of the pickup. 

"Dad, I'm not a baby." Ezra said and Jimmie pulled back, he'd been about to kiss the boy after buckling him into the pickup. Jimmie and Ezra shared their usual quiet along the streets to school.  Making the turn onto Winter Street Jimmy just let the truck roll like every morning. Here comes the day. But then he couldn't feel his feet and hands. He went for the brake and the truck roared at him and he knew he'd hit the gas by mistake. The truck lurched into the wrong lane. There were horns going off all around him and he saw a woman's face through her windshield, eyes wide like she was seeing her last moment.  Then Jimmy felt his grip on the wheel and swung the truck back into its lane.  He saw the woman’s face in his rearview mirror, stalled and cursing him out. 

"Dad!" Ezra screamed.

"Everything's fine son." He laid a hand on the boy's corn silk hair.  "Gas pedal stuck. I'll loosen it when I get to work."

When they pulled up to the curb at the school Ezra hopped out before Jimmie could even think about giving his son a hug or roughing up his hair in some manly way. The boy was going to be alright, Jimmie thought, and hoped like hell he was right. Ezra was already halfway up the steps to the old stone school building. Jimmie had gone to this same school as a boy, had pulled open that door, stacked his books in his locker and waited at his desk for teachers to tell him things. Ezra reached for the door. He wouldn't look back. He never did. He had friends. Kids who waited for him at his locker. His life was already happening. 

The truck engine idled so hard the steering wheel shook. Jimmie pumped the gas to smooth it out.  The wooden school door swung shut. Jimmie listened to the sound of the engine. At that precise moment he remembered his sick time. If he called off all eleven days and started searching now he was up over eleven weeks he could pay for being out of work. He could go ahead and report his symptoms to the industrial clinic. Exterminall couldn’t mess with him if he never went back. Jerks and bullies. Leave them to their world. That was punishment enough.

Still, it was taking a chance. The world is independent of my will.  Damn right. And it will kick you in the ass if you give it half a chance. He had fooled around online and learned that after the book came out all the big minds were sure that it proved once and for all there was some mathematical--logical basis for reality, some one idea that could tie together how we think and  how we live, if only we could find it. And then some German guy, a professor, proved them all wrong. Nothing was right all the time. You have to look around you. Take the time to understand where you are, who you have made yourself. That was where the book left Jimmie. Somewhere, somehow he had to make a leap of faith. He had to dive into the barrel of Jimmie and see who waited for him down there where he had hidden the best part of himself.

After today he would be a different man. To become something is to leave something else behind. So there was no one thought that would be true all the time, for all time. Who needed that? Being able to see things change, to be part of it. That was something, that was life.

 Like the three weeks of vacation Exterminall had to pay him. That made fourteen weeks before the hammer came down. And all the times they didn’t let him use safety precautions. Oh yes, he remembered all of those. If he got a lawyer and an outside doctor to back him he could probably get unemployment or disability.  He would go today. Jimmie dropped the truck into gear and drove into the soft cool of the summer morning. He might never see Maguire again. That would be alright.