No matter how fast you drive, you can’t leave work and make it to town before sundown. When you finally get there, the welcome sign on the outskirts seems smaller than you pictured it in your memory.
Graphite and fiberglass rod tips peak out from truck beds in the supermarket parking lot. The guy in line ahead of you extends a hand, cracked and reddened from borax roe cure, to the cashier for his packages of lead pencil weights. His flannel shirt back fades on top of the shoulders, and rips and tears in the fabric map the grabs made by blackberry bushes crowding the river trails. Then the realization comes that no amount of money spent on hip flyfishing threads ever approximates a look as authentically cool as his.
The back of the parking lot under the weakest yellow glow turns into a methamphetamine amusement park at night, and out past the light, the ghosts of loggers knock hardhats about in the dark.
The waitress at the dinner with proud shoulders and sad eyes makes you think about ex-girlfriends. Nobody gets a good night’s sleep in the RV Park next to the road and you walk over the levee listening to the river’s voice, trying to gauge the flow.
You get a blast of rain spray off the tires of a semi as you skirt the bridge railing on your way to the river trail.
Now you’re awake.
TOWN
By Will Petersen