by Bryan CRUMPLEY

I’m stuck in traf­fic on the 355 be­low an elec­tric sign that reads “398 Traf­fic Deaths In Illi­nois This Year. Dri­ve Safe­ly.” I stare at the sign and the num­ber blinks and comes back “399.” An­oth­er one bites the dust. I’ve nev­er seen it change be­fore; it’s sur­re­al, like my gaze caused the death. A chill sweeps through me. I won­der if any­one else on the road saw the num­ber change. I won­der if any­one else feels re­spon­si­ble for it.

I feel like I should take a mo­ment of si­lence, turn off the mu­sic, put my hand on my heart, and — and what? Pray? I don’t pray. What would I even say? Hon­est­ly I just hope their fu­ner­al is crowded.

I don’t feel bad about the death, but this makes me feel worse than I prob­a­bly should. I won­der what the ac­ci­dent was like. Was it an ear­ly morn­ing drunk? A sleepy com­muter? Or just a neg­li­gent tex­ter? I start to spec­u­late on the means of the death as I con­tin­ue my way to work. I pic­ture dis­em­bod­ied heads, glass pierced limbs, and cars turned in­to accordions.

Truth is there are hun­dreds of ways to die on the high­way. It could be black ice, oil spill, drunk dri­vers, teenage tex­ters, road shrap­nel, the list goes on. It’s a won­der any of us are still alive. Every time I dri­ve a lit­tle piece of me be­lieves it might be the last time. I know I won’t die of old age.

Ner­vous­ly I check my blind spot through my side view mir­ror. I read a no­tice on my mir­ror that tells me ob­jects may be clos­er than they ap­pear. You can’t trust any­one. Turns out even mir­rors lie.

There’s a UFO that re­sides un­der­neath a patch of for­est off the side of the high­way. It takes a keen eye to see it, but it’s there. The aliens are out there, some­where. Peo­ple have al­ways treat­ed me like an alien, and when I think about the UFO un­der the for­est it feels like a way home. I imag­ine some­day the UFO will pick it­self up out of the patch of for­est and leave this place.

…

I get to work 20 min­utes be­fore my shift. The air is stale and the build­ing is silent. It feels like a mausoleum.

Peo­ple like to be­lieve that used book­stores are ro­man­tic. They im­pose mem­o­ries that fill you with nos­tal­gia. But the books are full of dust and mold and af­ter six months, all they do for me is make me sneeze.

A cus­tomer comes in the store with his base­ment pack­aged in box­es to sell.

You can learn a lot about a per­son by the books they own. You can piece to­geth­er their lives. I go through this man’s be­long­ings and find books on fish­ing, par­ent­ing, preg­nan­cy, how to man­age un­ruly teenagers. As I con­tin­ue the sto­ry gets dark­er. I find books on man­ag­ing drug ad­dic­tions. AA man­u­als with the Twelve Steps. Books on griev­ing. These books are puz­zle pieces that make up one sin­gu­lar story.

Fif­teen min­utes lat­er I call the man back up to an­nounce his of­fer of $10.

“What? You’re kid­ding right? For all these books?” His pulse quick­ens and the veins in his fore­head throb. I can tell it’s still fresh. I try to re­main in­dif­fer­ent to the mem­o­ries he’s throw­ing away. Every per­son wants their mem­o­ries, even their bad ones, to be worth something.

Every cus­tomer does ex­act­ly what he does in this sit­u­a­tion; he stares at me across the oth­er side of the counter and sizes me up, judg­ing whether if he jumped on­to my side and tried to fight me how well he’d do. All I want to do is hug him and tell him it’ll all be OK. In­stead, I bow my head and hand him his money.

…

Lat­er in the day more cowork­ers ar­rive. There are two kinds of peo­ple who work at the book­store, sim­ply put, the bit­ter and the op­ti­mistic. There are the ones like me, young, in our 20’s, fresh out of col­lege, sav­ing up mon­ey to pay off stu­dent loans that feel like the Na­tion­al Debt and save for cars and our ways out of town. We have un­trav­eled roads in our eyes that shine like di­a­monds. Then there are the old, the ones who’ve set­tled in­to their lot in life, work­ing in a used book­store, liv­ing be­neath the pover­ty line, eat­ing Kraft dinners.

The bit­ter ones scare me be­cause they show me what I could be­come. I don’t think any of them thought they’d be here for the rest of their lives when they start­ed. Maybe they were just like me and saw it as mere­ly a step­ping-stone to the next big thing. At what point did they sim­ply give up? A part of me feels like I’d rather be dead than just give up like they seem to have.

One of my cowork­ers, a di­vorced mid­dle-aged man with hair gray­ing at the sides, and a chain-smok­ers laugh, greets me at the counter. “Hey Isaac, how’s it go­ing? Any hot chicks come in yet?” he cack­les and it sounds like two lumps of coal grind­ing against a chalk­board that fell on top of a screech­ing, dy­ing duck.

“Nope,” I re­spond, look­ing down away from his gaze. He wears glass­es that hide the sad in his eyes, but I can still see it; the lit­tle man is trapped in a cage that he’s no longer try­ing to es­cape from. Now he just lies there with a slumped head, silent­ly crying.

He grunts dis­sat­is­fied and slinks away to the backroom.

…

Cheryl likes to mon­i­tor me while I work. She thinks I’m still a rook­ie, de­spite the fact that I’ve been here for six months and we’re paid the same. Cheryl’s been here for five years. This job has last­ed longer than all of her mar­riages combined.

She’s on­ly in her for­ties, but her back is slouched, and the be­gin­ning of a hump has de­vel­oped on it. Her face is a mix­ture of de­feat and bitterness.

I won­der if be­ing watched has ever made some­one work bet­ter. When Cheryl watch­es me I drop books and stum­ble over cor­ners. She scoffs at me each time as if say­ing, “I knew you wouldn’t be any good.”

“You know, I had a dream re­cent­ly you got in a car wreck and died,” she says to me.

“Oh?” I say, try­ing to ig­nore her.

“Yeah, it was re­al bloody too, your head was flung 20 feet from the car.”

Cheryl claims she’s a psy­chic and does read­ings for peo­ple as a night job. I won­der if she’s ever made some­one else wealthy or suc­cess­ful or happy.

“Well, let’s hope not,” I say. I want to say, “Well, good thing you’re not a re­al psy­chic.” I want to see those words burn their way in­to her, but I’ve nev­er been able to bring my­self to con­scious­ly hurt some­one, not even when they de­serve it.

…

A few hours lat­er the phone rings and I pick it up. The voice on the oth­er end be­gins be­fore I can even say a word.

“Hi, I’m Cindy, I was won­der­ing if you have a book.”

“Uh, sure, let me check. What’s the book?”

She mum­bles some­thing incoherent.

“I’m sor­ry, can you re­peat that?”

“Of course,” she says and then con­tin­ues mum­bling incoherently.

I pre­tend to type some­thing in­to the com­put­er. “Nope, doesn’t look like we have that.” I an­tic­i­pate this be­ing the end of the con­ver­sa­tion and ready my hand to slam down the receiver.

“Oh, that’s quite al­right,” the woman says. “By the way, have you heard of the movie Rise of the Guardians?”

“Um, no, I don’t think I have.”

“Oh, well it’s a fan­tas­tic movie!”

“Do you want me to see if we have it for you?”

“Oh, no that’s quite alright.”

I ready to hang the phone up.

“It re­al­ly is a great movie,” she con­tin­ues. “In the movie there’s all these myth­i­cal crea­tures. Well I don’t know, are they myth­i­cal? I don’t know. In the movie they’re all real!”

“Hm-hm.”

“It’s re­al­ly fan­tas­tic. Do you have kids or grand­kids or anything?”

She an­swers her­self be­fore I can say anything.

“If you have kids or grand­kids you should show them this movie! Do you teach them to be­lieve in San­ta and the East­er Bun­ny, and the Tooth Fairy and all them? You re­al­ly should!”

I look down at the phone mon­i­tor; this con­ver­sa­tion has gone on for 10 min­utes now.

“My daugh­ter-in-law is sick. I don’t know if you can hear her be­hind me, but she’s so sick!”

“Oh, I’m sor­ry to hear that.”

“There’s this aw­ful bug go­ing around. You heard of it?”

I re­call hear­ing some­thing about a stom­ach virus spread­ing in six states, a news re­port claimed its dan­ger­ous and urged peo­ple who are sick to seek treat­ment im­me­di­ate­ly, but I don’t want to stay on the phone. “Nope, nev­er heard of it.”

“Oh well it’s just fuck­ing aw­ful. Ooh! Sor­ry about that. I’m 72; some­times I say bad words. Any­ways, it’s aw­ful. First she was just sneez­ing and hav­ing headaches, but now she’s just puk­ing everywhere!”

“Well that’s not good,” I say try­ing to sound empathetic.

“It’s not good at all! Do you know about flu shots? Should I get a flu shot?”

“Um?”

“I feel like I should get a flu shot. Maybe then I won’t catch what my daugh­ter-in-law has, but I don’t know. I don’t like nee­dles, and it al­ways seems fishy get­ting a flu shot, y’know?”

“Hm – hm.” The phone mon­i­tor now says 17 min­utes; I don’t even talk to my fam­i­ly for this long.

“Well, I feel like I should let you go,” she says. I perk up, ex­cit­ed to be let free. “Well actually…”

When I fi­nal­ly break free the mon­i­tor reads 26 min­utes. I can still feel the im­print of the re­ceiv­er on my ear, hot and moist.

…

An hour lat­er I’m stand­ing at the reg­is­ter. I stare at a teenag­er rum­mag­ing through our DVDs. He’s wear­ing a hood­ie and sun­glass­es. It’s 87 de­grees out­side. He glances up every once in a while to scan the store. I make my­self vis­i­ble to him, but this doesn’t de­ter him. I see him place a few DVDs in his sweat­shirt pock­et. Com­pa­ny pol­i­cy is I can’t ac­cuse any­one of stealing.

“Ex­cuse me, sir?” I look up from the thief and see a girl around my age. She has red hair and the kind of face you know be­longs to a girl who isn’t used to be­ing pretty.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I ask.

She lifts up one of our lit­tle knick-knack items, “How much is this?” she hands it to me. “I saw this one for $4.99 but then I saw a few oth­ers of the same thing for on­ly two dollars.”

I in­spect it, the price tag clear­ly reads $4.99, but I’m bored, and she’s pret­ty. I grab a price gun and re­tag it to two dol­lars. “Now it’s two dol­lars.” I smile and hand it back to her. She blush­es, brush­es a wisp of red hair be­hind her ear, and takes it.

I no­tice her key lan­yard has the North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty lo­go on it. “You go to North­west­ern?” I ask.

She looks con­fused at first but then sees her lan­yard, “Oh, uh yeah, just fin­ished my first year.”

“It’s a good school, you like it?”

She nods, un­sure of her­self, “Yeah… it’s difficult.”

“I’m sure. What are you go­ing for?”

“Busi­ness.” The way she says it I can tell it’s not what she wants to do. I want to ask her what she re­al­ly wants to do. I want to preach to her about throw­ing cau­tion to the wind and fol­low­ing your dreams, but I fol­lowed my dreams and now I work in re­tail with stu­dent loans that weigh more than a house. Who am I to preach?

I hand her the change and say good­bye. She smiles shy­ly and be­gins to walk to the ex­it. Sud­den­ly the door opens with a burst and a large young man walks in. “Na­tal­ie!” he yells, “Do you re­mem­ber me?”

I don’t have to see her to feel the un­com­fort­able shud­der re­ver­ber­ate down her spine. I stare at them through the sides of my eyes. He has on a stretched out, stained white t‑shirt with a large gut strain­ing the seams. His head is bald­ing and he has a shag­gy lay­er of un­kempt stubble.

Af­ter a while she fi­nal­ly re­sponds, “Oh, yeah, hi.”

“Yeah, we had His­to­ry to­geth­er, ju­nior year. Re­mem­ber? I sat be­hind you!”

“Yeah, I re­mem­ber.” I can hear her brain strug­gling to re­call a name.

“How’ve you been? It’s been so long!”

“I’ve been good.” I see her try to side step him out of the store, but he steps with her.

“That’s great! I’ve been do­ing good too! Well, I had to leave school, and I lost my job, but oth­er than that I’m do­ing great!”

“Oh, cool.”

“You look great by the way!” I can tell he strained his courage to get that sen­tence out of his mouth. It sounds like an ac­ci­dent, and the words float awk­ward­ly in the air be­tween them.

Af­ter ten min­utes of un­com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion I’m un­sure of whom to feel worse for. On one hand this guy is clear­ly try­ing hard for this girl. He knows he doesn’t have a chance, but still he holds on­to hope.

On the oth­er hand it’s hard to be a pret­ty girl in a small town where you’re re­mem­bered as just that plain chub­by girl with braces who sat in the cor­ner of the lunch­room with just a cou­ple oth­er qui­et friends. Most peo­ple will al­ways see her that way. Mem­o­ries are a damn­ing thing.

Fi­nal­ly she gives up her at­tempt at be­ing po­lite, “Y’know, I re­al­ly have to go, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well we should hang out sometime.”

“Yeah, to­tal­ly.” It’s the tone I’m all too fa­mil­iar with, the tone of in­sin­cer­i­ty, the tone that says, “The mo­ment I walk out of this door I will nev­er see you again, and I will be happy.”

“Well let me get your phone num­ber.” He reach­es in­to his pock­et for a pen but she’s al­ready gone. He looks up at me and I dart my sight away. The split sec­ond that our eyes met I felt as if I was star­ing at my­self. This is who I used to be. Some­times when I look in­to a mir­ror I still see him. Just one or two dif­fer­ent choic­es and him and I would still be the same. His heart­break is my heartbreak.

I walk away from the sound of his shat­ter­ing heart. This book­store is full of bro­ken hearts, sit­ting in shelves and walk­ing down aisles. You can hear the bro­ken hearts sing out ghost sto­ries if you lis­ten close enough. All I hear any­more in this store are their songs.

To­wards the end of my shift I’m stand­ing at the counter with two oth­er cowork­ers. The store has be­gun to die down.

“I heard a ru­mor we might go out of busi­ness,” Sarah says while stack­ing books. She has long black hair in a pony­tail and it wob­bles from side to side, brush­ing her bare white shoulders.

Nick grunts in response.

“What do you think you’d do if we closed down?” she asks.

Nick shrugs. “I don’t know. I got my de­gree in ar­chi­tec­ture.” Nick wears a shirt from Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois and he moves in squir­re­ly lit­tle twitches.

“Shit, se­ri­ous­ly?” she asks. “Why are you work­ing here?”

“Ran out of op­tions, had to start pay­ing loans back.”

“You think you’d try to get a job do­ing that?” Sarah asks.

“If I can, I couldn’t before.”

“What about you, what would you do?” Nick asks.

“I want to get the hell out of re­tail,” she says with a laugh. “Re­tail is the pit that sucks away souls.”

They laugh.

“I want to work for a not for prof­it,” she says, se­ri­ous now. “I don’t know, I just want to help kids lead not so shit­ty lives.”

Nick nods in ad­mi­ra­tion as they con­tin­ue to sort books.

Sarah and Nick talk as if I’m in­vis­i­ble. It’s like there’s a wall, like they know I’m there, but they can’t see me. I imag­ine what I’d say to their con­ver­sa­tion. I’d leave. I’d go some­where where no one knows me, where I can start com­plete­ly fresh. But I feel if I spoke these words they’d sound like some kind of alien gib­ber­ish. I with­draw down in­to a shell and dive un­der the wa­ter of vis­i­ble cri­tique. Down there it’s safe.

They be­come silent and in the si­lence I can hear the ghosts’ songs.

When my shift ends the sun be­gins to set over the Su­per Wal-Mart across the street. I’ve al­ways felt like this was the most Amer­i­can im­age you could pos­si­bly see. Vi­brat­ing reds and pur­ples, or­anges, and blues splashed to­geth­er in the sky like a mad painter’s can­vas fad­ing away over that pol­ished blue en­trance. Bring out Ol’ Glory.

I dri­ve back to the high­way. My air con­di­tion­er is on full blast and it feels like the out­side wind but de­void of the hu­mid­i­ty that fogs my glass­es. A splash of dust climbs through the vents and it makes me sneeze. Sud­den­ly a feel­ing of guilt ris­es through me. What if, by telling the old la­dy I’d nev­er heard of this new virus, I’d con­demned her daugh­ter-in-law to death? What if by karmic pun­ish­ment I con­tract this virus and die in a fiery car ac­ci­dent with my head punt­ed 20 feet from the car?

I be­gin to pan­ic, but my body calms me re­mind­ing my­self of the ridicu­lous­ness of it all. Cheryl is no more a psy­chic than I am an aphro­disi­ac. The street­lights place spot­lights on my car as the sun sets.

While I dri­ve, my mu­sic vi­brates the win­dows and I think about the man I used to be. I think about the man who threw away his mem­o­ries. I think about all those bro­ken-hearts and their ghost sto­ries that I hear sang through­out the store and echoed off the walls. No mat­ter how loud my mu­sic goes I can nev­er stop think­ing about these things. They play in a loop over and over again: the man I used to be, the man who threw away his mem­o­ries, the bro­ken-heart­ed ghost sto­ries, the man I used to be, the man who threw away his mem­o­ries, the bro­ken – heart­ed ghost stories…

At night, the UFO be­comes vis­i­ble. The street­lights along the road light up the edges of the space­craft, shin­ing met­al gleams un­der­neath trees. I hope some­day the UFO will pick it­self up out of the for­est and leave this plan­et for good. I hope they take me with them; this world has nev­er felt like home. Maybe then things will fi­nal­ly start mak­ing sense.

Above me an elec­tric sign reads, “412 Traf­fic Deaths In Illi­nois This Year. Dri­ve Safely.”

Filed under Fiction on April 24th, 2015

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