Goodbye, Cruel Heart
The two o’clock night air is cool and crisp, but as he approaches the intersection the sweat starts pouring and he rolls up the windows and turns on the air conditioner full blast. The lights go red. He eases his foot off the accelerator onto the brake pedal and a red-hot bullet rips into his chest. The car jerks to a halt. He slumps sideways onto his briefcase, gasping for air. He lies still for a moment, then manages to raise his right arm to his chest. Finding only his shirt-front, damp but intact, he tries to remember which side his heart is on and the lights go green and the car behind him is honking then gets impatient and passes on the right. He sucks in air and tries to right himself but the pain is like a huge prickly wedge in his solar plexus and he has to expel it right away and the car pitches forward across the intersection.
The second spasm strikes as he nears the vegetable mart. He anchors himself to the steering wheel and a third comes like a cold violent rush of metallic air into his lungs and back out again. His sight goes white with pain and he tries to find the brake but he’s lost his foot. He wants to let go of the steering but he’s holding on so tight he’s afraid he’ll rip it out of the dashboard and the car is careening along but he can’t make it stop. Everything in front of him is swimming like somebody’s thrown a bucketful of water across the windshield. His chest inflates again then in an instant comes crashing back down on top of him. He swerves across two lanes. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out but a low rattling groan, and in any case there’s no one to hear it and the windows are sealed. He’ll make it home. He’ll make it home and then what. He thinks he might turn around and make it to the hospital, then the pain subsides and he wonders if he’s still alive when a wrecking ball comes crashing through his torso leaving a jagged pit of spiky, searing pain where his stomach was and his face smashes into the dashboard and the car stops suddenly. The sound of a horn tapers off into the distance. He thinks maybe if he filled his head with thoughts it would override the agony, so he thinks of his wife, only he can’t remember her face, and he thinks of his children, but he can see them only as babies. He sees two women and he knows one of them is his lover. Then he recognizes the other as his Mother and he wants to say sorry for not recognizing her. He’s remembering this game she used to play with him after his Father left, where they’d take turns naming animals beginning with each letter of the alphabet. He remembers how it took the sadness and pain away if only for a moment then somebody rams a cannonball deep down between his ribs and he screams out in agony as he feels them cracking apart. With every breath he’s being forced to drag ground glass through his lungs. His teeth are throbbing and the inside of his mouth feels raw and ragged. In the pit of his stomach is a roiling like impending diarrhea. He grapples and chews at the dashboard and tastes Armor-all and dust. His eyes cross as blood rushes to his head and explodes behind his eyelids.
“Antelope,” he gasps. “Baboon, Caribou. . . .