Calvin knew what he was looking at, despite it being a distant smudge against an unremarkable plane of turf. This was a talent of his, putting puzzle pieces together, making sense out of noise. And the state of things, indeed, were bordering cacophonic.
He felt it coming, asphalt twisting under the vibrating grit. He held his arms out and turned his back to the highway. As the tractor trailer hurtled past, his thoughts turned to the concept of velocity. His spine answered the intestinal bellow of the truck. Speed, metal, tonnage. Carbon, thrust, impact.
And the memory of a witching-hour whisper in the dark,
"Have you ever been in a train crash?""No," he had answered.
She had softly pulled his ear to her lips,
"You … would love it."Calvin pulled his head free from the daydream, back to the highway and the distant smudge. Behind him other members of the group spread out, swinging the hooks out like a blind-man's cane witching it's way down out into the crosswalk. It's funny, he thought, how the one's who were actually here voluntarily did the least amount of work. He lifted his bag, almost full with garbage, into the air.
"Lots more over here!" he called out, but was only rewarded with blank gazes. Nobody truly appreciated his humor.
He made a silly face and checked his phone. She was supposed to rendezvous with him for coffee before heading to the center. She never showed. He left a message. She didn't answer him back.
Perhaps he had been a bit too forward the day before.
On his suggestion they had spent the afternoon on a hike along the river's edge. It was the result of a foul week for her; her relationship with her father had deteriorated yet again. Another dinner argument; to cry in front of your father is defeat in it's most devolving. The same as when the doctor tells you that you need to come back. The same as undressing.
His solution for her was simple, "Get out of the apartment. Get out of the city. Walk on the rocks, listen to the river. Let me hold tree branches out of your face." It was the last line that got her smiling.
As they leapt from stone to stone they seemed to pick up a natural rhythm in their movements, each knowing which path the other was taking without looking, knowing when to pause and be still, when to move on. She could not help but notice it felt natural to be near him.
The playful pushes and tugs grew more insistent and lingering, and it was not long before Calvin stopped and asked her to sit down. They had come to a large pool, and found shelter under an overhanging boulder.
"Do you like it here?" he asked.
"It's beautiful," she answered.
"It was my duty to bring you here, " he smiled.
"Yeah sure," she responded.
"This part is called Elena's Pool. In the summer, all the high schoolers come here and jump off of that ledge." he pointed, and she looked. "In the winter, not far from now, it will ice over." Calvin's gaze fell somewhere over the treeline and he seemed lost in thought. "Completely."
Tamara looked down at her hand resting on the cool stone, and then looked over to his, following it up his arm. His muscles.
Calvin continued, "This is one of the most beautiful places I know, I come here whenever I can, when things get messy. This water is much, much deeper than it looks. The current and the rocks are constants. A world in turmoil and it is marvelous. The way it should have been."
He looked over at her, "What would you do if I kissed you?"
She sighed; in relief almost. "My friends have asked me that as well."
"Your friends know about me?"
"A few. My roommate isn't the only person I spend time with, you know. I mean I can barely stand the girl."
Calvin did not take his eyes from her.
"The truth is... I don't know what I'd do." And she already knew that he wasn't going to kiss her. Not there on the rock.
"This is a day for you Tam. I'm not here to make your life more complicated."
"But you are Cal."
He didn't answer, and for a long while they sat quietly.
"You're bad news."
His eyebrows raised sharply in offense, but inside, he liked the sound of it.
Back on the boundaries of the highway Calvin turned his gaze towards the far off smudge. There was life there once, and he had to respect that. Had to, with unassuming temerity, knowing that someday everyone would become such a smudge on the wan face of the galaxy. Time was running out.
As he trekked his way along the tar stretch, the other volunteers paused to watch him go.
A small fat-fingered woman who called herself Hazel leaned on her picker and wondered to the group, "He always seems a little lost doesn't he."
Another woman, an unlicensed electrician and mother of four, aunt of eight, piped up, "You just want to take him home right? And give him a good shower and a few beers, loosen him up, let him watch TV for a bit…"
Billsy threw a milk carton down deeper into the drainage and nodded, "and feed em, and pet em, and blow em… that bout right Rachel?"
Rachel laughed caustically, "yeah something like that." Hazel smiled and blushed, but kept her eyes on Calvin's retreating figure.
"He's either a great husband, or a freakin serial killer."
Billsy puckered, "Yah, or both. I'm picking trash with a fucking Lifetime audience. Let the poor brother be, the man obviously has a lot on his mind."
Hazel finally pulled her eyes from the man in the distance, "Yes. And her name is Tamara." They snickered and returned to their work.
The smudge in the distance, once within a stones throw, began to take on the characteristics of a Darwin Award. Roadkill. Tufts of hair were easily the most recognizable characteristic, the skin folded in and stretched like an umbrella plastered to a signpost. A ribcage played peekaboo. Small pointed teeth curled out in a split-zipper grin like a pair of blue jeans blown outward by a cherry bomb. It had rained since this creature has passed; every part of it caught laying flat, pressing down in its drive to return to the earth.
Calvin sighed as he crouched over the corpse, "Young fella, you either were in the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time." He lightly ran his fingers along the exposed ribs, smooth and grit-worn. "Be at peace."
What was once a fox then heaved and shuddered, and a light shrill passing of air escaped the craters that had been once ears. Calvin's heart filled with lead and dropped to his bowels. He attempted to jump up, and flee, but found his throat slowly gravitating towards the dead's maw. Like the classic office pratfall experience of getting one's necktie caught in a paper shredder, his throat constricted and pulled lower, completely resisting the stiffness in his arms, the alarm in his knees.
He breathed out a short, "NO!" but something greater had him in its grip.
The fox-corpse peeled its half-face from the hardpan. It regarded Calvin with worm-eaten slits and attempted to work its jaw. A gelatin tongue spilled out and splashed across Calvin's hands. The jaw then split wide open.
Follow us! Leap, leap, leaaaaaaaaaaap!Raising into a scream:
LEAAAAAAAAAAP!From afar, it was a man and a smudge. The man then collapsed, and Billsy sprinted after. Eighteen-wheelers shrieked by, scouring rubber and leaving the heavy stench of extinction across the interstate.
