Tag Archives: death

Riding the Union Pacific

May 22, 2012

“C’mon, Johnny, run. Get up here, douchebag.”

Johnny sprinted after the westbound Union Pacific, stumbling over the small rocks and blackened scree bordering the tracks. The engine was a distant rumble ahead, rising in pitch, and Johnny knew he would soon be left behind; worse, he would be prone to terrific ridicule from his twin brother later that night. He tripped and nearly fell, but with a final gasping effort reached out to catch his brother’s hand. Charlie swung him up to the rail, clapping him on the back once his grip was secure. Together, they climbed to the top of the car.

Despite the heat of the Arizona sun overhead, the air blowing past was chill, and the boys sprawled out upon the roof of the container, glad for its metallic warmth and enjoying the delicious feel of the air streaming over their bodies. On the horizon, a monstrous serpent crept across the desert landscape – Interstate 10, stretching from Jacksonville, Florida to nearby LA. And there in the middle loomed the tunnel, a black, yawning hole bored through and under the long spine of desert rock on which the freeway ran.

Read the rest at A Twist of Noir http://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/2012/05/interlude-stories-kip-hanson.html

Until the Road Ends

September 9, 2011

When I was eighteen, I bought a 67’ Chevelle for five hundred bucks from a guy at work who was looking for some quick cash to score a pound of bitching Columbian.

My buddy Paul and I towed the car back to the apartment building and worked on it every weekend, tearing it down into a greasy mountain of parts and hopeful that we could put it all back together again, but better, faster – bolting on a wicked intake manifold and roaring headers and lifters that went tick-tick-tick, a thirsty 4-barrel and a screaming cam, and fat sticky tires wrapped around mag wheels that glittered in the summer sun.

Read the rest at Six Sentences http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/2010/09/until-road-ends.html

The Smallest Perfect Number

May 14, 2010

Six is the smallest perfect number.

You can reach it by adding one, two, three, like Count von Count, ah, ah, ah, when I was six years old watching Sesame Street on Saturday morning, the sixth day of the week, six years before the madness came for us, and the pastor at the church stood before us, he said that God created the earth in six days, he said that God let his own son hang on the cross for six hours, yet he couldn’t say the right words, not even one or two, to save my brother, my family.

In grade school I learned that Adolf Hitler led six-million Jews to the gas chamber, to the trenches, to the dark woods where the monsters waited, and I wondered why God sat by and watched.

One light-year is six-trillion miles, and the nearest star after our Sun is over six light-years away, and I wonder sometimes if maybe God is out there, that he’s too far away.

Six-hundred thousand died in the War Between the States, sixty-thousand never came home from Vietnam, six died last week in a winter storm, six thousand die on this planet every hour, the numbers drive me crazy and yet…six years ago there were over six-billion souls in the world, now there are more, we make six new babies every hour, we just keep on going, so maybe God has it all figured out.

I hope.

 

Published in the 6S Review, Issue 3, May 14, 2010 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1452872198/ref=nosim/paperbackswap-20