The TinterPeter the car tinter was subcontracted to repair the tunnel panels in the Alleghenies, two hours northwest of the Seventy/Seventy-six interchange. The job was to begin on Saturday, February the thirteenth and continue until the job was done. Peter didn't mind. He could rely on Kurt and Will to maintain his Glen Burnie tint shop--Nice Tints--until he returned. The winter was usually slow anyway, so Peter saw the tunnel work as a win-win situation. Peter loved to drive the winding mountain roads, although he took his time. Cars whizzed around his Buick Skylark at seventy-five miles an hour to his fifty, but he didn't mind. He could enjoy the view, and the clear mountain air. But Peter had unusual taste. He got something out of driving in rush hour traffic or construction. He viewed it as a learning opportunity: how to handle yourself in what some viewed as stress. It wasn't stressful to him. In fact, Peter thought that he gravitated towards situations like the tunnel repair where he was in danger or in some low-grade pressure spot. Why? Peter didn't care why. The tunnel was a mile long pass through a mountain near Donegal. The work he was slated to do involved painting over graffiti with white gloss and examining the ceiling tiles for fractures, and marking which tiles had been weakened with yellow-green paint that glowed in the dark. The state reserved a room for him at the Motel 6 in Donegal where both types of paint awaited his arrival. When they called him a month ago they estimated that the job would take him two weeks. On a scale from one to ten, they said the graffiti problem in the Donegal tunnel was a three. "We're not talking about some slummy New Jersey tunnel here," the man said. "It's grunt work that nobody has time for right now. But the sector's up for annual review in a month, so it's got to get done." In his life, Peter tried to maintain a calm and rational world-view. At thirty-five he wasn't married, since he hadn't met a woman he felt anything for in that way. He still lived in the one bedroom apartment that he lived in when he was twenty-five. He settled close to his family because he knew how important it was to be in proximity to people who knew you when you were young, and could help you if you needed help. He owned his tinting business because he was unhappy doing body work for somebody else in the way that somebody else deemed fit. He wanted a modicum of control--artistic control--over his fate. He may have made less money, but that didn't matter to him: it wasn't how much you made, Peter thought; it was how much you saved. If anything made Peter proud of himself, it was this steadiness that he found easy. He liked the sensation of being reliable, hardly ever sick, consistently dependable, robotic in a human way. Peter always drove ten miles slower than the speed limit. On many occasions other drivers gave him the finger, or yelled at him, or simply beeped their horns. If they wanted to raise their blood pressure, that was their problem. The work in the tunnel was slow and laborious. Peter spent the greater portion of the first day carrying the paint cans into the tunnel and stacking them along the catwalk, which ran parallel to the tunnel. He also had to set up the spray gun and lighting system so that he could see the tiles. After lunch he began to inch along the far wall inspecting each tile for cracks of graffiti. The highway commission was right: it wasn't too bad. He could handle low-grade. The worst part of the job was the noise. Although it was cold and damp, that didn't bother him. The incessant rush of the cars, though, was distracting at first. The mufflers echoed in the tunnel long after the car that issued the sound had passed. Peter decided to purchase some earplugs, and start working at night to minimize the noise. The next morning Peter drove into town to find a drug store, and he found one on the strip near a cluster of fast food restaurants. Peter had an intuition that something was going to occur in the drug store; he had a feeling that some moment was going to crystallize. Later he would wonder if his intuition actually made him more receptive to things that he would usually ignore. He parked his car to the right of the store, and entered the building. When Peter had trouble finding the ear plugs in the store he approached a man kneeling in the feminine hygiene aisle. Peter thought the man was a store employee. "Excuse me," Peter said. The man didn't move. Peter gently tapped him on the shoulder. The man turned around. The man's hands were clasped together at his waist, and his head hung loosely from his shoulders. He had beery skin and a face nubbled with forty odd years. "I'm sorry," the man said. "I saw a woman...she almost died today. I'm...I guess I'm paying my respects." "Hey, what happened?" Peter asked. "The woman must have fallen asleep behind the wheel. I don't...I'm not sure," he said. The man held his hands as if they were manacled. All I know is that I was driving along and the woman drove right off the road. Really casually. She just slipped off the road and drove down an incline. The car hit a tree a hundred yards down and burst into flames. A police cruiser was right behind me. I kept going." "How do you know then--" "I saw somebody get out of the car," the man said. I don't think she died. I saw somebody get out of the car." "On the driver's side?" "Yeah," the man said. "Driver's side." The man seemed shaken up in a way that was beyond the consolation of words, but Peter felt that he wanted to help. When he was watching and listening to the man Peter suddenly realized that he hadn't thought much less prayed for someone in this way in ages. He didn't know if it was selfishness or cold detachment, but he hadn't felt bad for a stranger in years. It wasn't as if he was self absorbed, concerned only with his own professional accomplishments and well-being. He cared for his friends and family, yet this man was praying for a woman he had never met, and never knew, which seemed both alien and meaningful to Peter. Peter placed his hand on the man's shoulder and brushed his hand back and forth against the fabric of his shirt. The earplugs could wait. The two men went to a fast food restaurant and ordered coffee and juice. They sat in a booth and the man told Peter his name was Alex. They shook hands and the man apologized again. "I...you know, I feel like a fag," Alex said, "but I kept thinking that could have been anybody. Me, I don't know, my sister, my wife. Right? Whoever." "Without this invention," Peter said, "a lot of people would still be alive. I mean that's--" "But it's not as if--" "Right, it's not as if," Peter said. "Nobody can do anything about it," the man said. "It's a fact." "Right," Peter said. Peter told him what he did for a living, and Alex asked him questions. Peter said that sometimes he tinted cars for people and in the back of his mind was the thought that maybe by tinting the car he was contributing in some way to the person's death. Maybe the tint would obscure a headlight, or a pedestrian, and as a result of the tint somebody would be hurt or killed. "There are repercussions for what we do," Alex said. "There are things--" "It almost makes you not want to do anything," Peter said. "Doesn't it?" "But we have to do some things," Alex said. "If we worried about these things all the time, we would never do anything." Peter told him why he was in Donegal, and that he was partially worried that his efforts in the tunnel would somehow affect somebody somehow. He realized he had thought about the ramifications in the back of his mind. But it was deep down. "But that's...it's not what you can think," Alex said. "You can't help but effect people." "But it's what I do think," Peter said. "I don't want to change anybody's course, you know. I--" He fingered the edge of his pocket and knew that he had to work later anyway. Alex was right. He wasn't going to worry about it. For all practical concerns you could only take care of one person, if you can even do that. Once he got into the rhythm he would forget about other considerations anyway. Peter would slip into a comfortable working trance and forget, and forget some more. That night Peter parked his truck by the tunnel, and climbed the ladder to the ledge that would take him along the interior wall of the tunnel. He carried his paint and his tool belt hung from his waist comfortably. He wondered what Alex was doing that day. Peter was surprised by the man's sensitivity in an age that is usually called insensitive. He wondered if the woman was recuperating in the hospital, and how bad it really was. Was she alive even? Peter imaged Alex visiting her in the hospital and stroking her head. She was fine. She was fine. He wanted to think of everything as a pretty picture, even death. He didn't want to think about the aspect of tragedy or tragedy averted. He was happy to think the way he usually thought, not the way he thought when he was talking to Alex. Peter walked into the darkness and listened to the cars echoing inside as he walked along the wall. He held a flashlight to see where he left off. He knew the paint cans and the lighting system were about one hundred yards up the tunnel. The cars sounded particularly loud to him that morning. He could hear the friction of the rubber over the cement. But he knew he would get used to it; anybody could adjust to anything. The Distant Land There once was a man who was fascinated by a far-flung country. On his wall he hung beautiful pictures of the mountains, forests, and rivers of this land. He listened to the music of this country, and learned how to eat its strange and exotic food. When they were young and filled with energy his wife encouraged him to visit the land, but her husband always replied "I cannot visit it until I am close to my death, since if we go now, I will surely be disappointed by all that follows in the remainder of my life." Years and years passed and both the man and the woman grew old together. Having barely left their own city, the wife again broached the subject of going to visit the distant land. Again the husband replied with his usual answer and would hear none of his wife's suggestions. Finally the man was old and weak, and again the wife brought up the idea of a vacation. "Now is the time," she said. "If we don't go now, when?" This time the husband agreed, and they packed their belongings for the long and vigorous journey. After many days of travel the man and his wife reached their destination. They set foot into the faraway land that the husband had so admired. However, the husband was alarmed to see the poverty and filth of the country, the death and bloodshed that seemed to follow him wherever he traveled within its borders. The mountains and rivers were clogged with trash and the smoke of fires. The trees which looked so luminous and beckoning on his posters were long removed for buildings and paper. Even the food was bland and lifeless compared to what they read about in books and sampled in their own country. The husband was distraught. Turning to his wife in the shadows of the shabby inn where they slept, the husband cried out: "I have wasted my life. This land is not the one that I loved, and I have waited all this time. Why was I so foolish?" The wife patted his hand and held it as darkness descended. As sleep crept upon him, the husband's mind surveyed the visages portrayed on his idyllic prints. He felt thin and airy, as inconsequential as a pigeon's feather. The ArrivalMy mother barely wrings her hands at all the preparation. Yet she has so many things to do. The sheets and towels must be washed and purified, the dishes must be blessed, the chair he will sit on must be scrubbed and purified, a jug of spring water must be placed at his bedside. The food? Don't get her started: Mushroom knishes, dhal, fresh pita, organic fruit, organic ice cream, organic English muffins, the finest homemade butter. She whisks me to the shopping center to help her carry the food, vegetables mostly. Though she is harried, she pats my back and thanks me. I tramp through the aisles of the grocery store, looking at the Frisbees and Nerf ping-pong paddles dangling from the shelves on thin aluminum sleeves. I count how many cans of pineapple they have, how many different types of peaches. "Come on now, we should get going," she says. Her voice is steady, despite the fact that he will be here in three hours. She sways to the checkout lane. "We have plenty of time." I'm not sure if she's telling herself or me. I protest. Don't we have to go to the health food store? Don't we have to vacuum and scrub. "Shhh. It will all get done." When we get home I'm furious. Why must she do all the work? Why does he get waited on hand and foot? What makes him so special? I do whatever she asks me to do to help. I dust and vacuum, mop and polish. I don't tell my friends a thing. That night I am nervous when I hear my father's keys jingle on the front porch. Through the curtains I can see the multi-colored robes, the beads, the form under them. His shadow is tall, but his neck is angled downward. Now I understand. The door seems to make way for them, and they float through it into the inner warmth. My mother stretches forth her arms in greeting, her hands loose and pliant. He stares into me, and I am blown open. She stands off to the side, suddenly fuzzy and indistinct. He bends down to me on one knee and shakes my hand, saying how pleased he is to meet such a "young soul." Something is different, though it's hard to verbalize. He walks ahead, into the kitchen. We follow in his wake, as if drawn by ropes. The work is now a long forgotten spot on a large swath of linen, and for just a moment, I don't think of anything other than light. |