Gerrit Hatcher

Westward Nor’Easter

I’m crawling around on my hands and knees in the backseat of my car which is mostly clean, but there are pulverized fall leaves all over the floor and it is spring, I can pick up each little leaf bit and the smallest ones are basically sand or dust, not worth worrying over. I wouldn't pay to vacuum this. My phone buzzes in my front right pocket, maybe two inches from my testicles, I waddle backwards out of the car like a cat reversing itself out of a narrow box. It's not worth taking the call, actually.

OK. That's pretty good. It looks better.

There’s no AI overview for Storm King in Safari on my phone, there was no branded ballcap in the shop, and there’s nowhere to eat at here, I forget that. I wanted to post
something funny, like, “not buying this” about the hat, or was hoping the AI overview would sort of superimpose the institution and the mountain and talk about both as one. And it’s a rainy day, miserable. Or cozy, depending on your attitude. I have images for rainy day (good) and rainy day (bad). I need to cover some ground, but I would much prefer to spend today in limbo looking at my phone in a Panera or eating lunch meat in my car, parked, at one of the big NY turnpike rest areas. I wish I could drive for a profession but without any strict deadlines, or monitoring, or responsibilities, or doing it on anyone’s behalf but my own. I wish.

The wide beige noodles in the Panera Chicken Noodle, a sensory harpoon into the sea of past trials, days of eating B.R.A.T. in my little room back home, all caused by the kind of bad food only available in the richest country, ever, on Earth.

The orange sun in my eyes. The hot tub full of MRSA. At the end of my rope because things didn’t work out. Matte black trucks with deer guards, snorkels and floodlights hunt me through Pennsylvania and Ohio, tailgate me for miles. Jadakiss is on and they are DEA agents, later Blue Oyster Cult and they are the same people as in the black helicopters. I drove too close to some humming fulfillment center powered by a Dyson sphere in another system and now I have to be wiped and primed for reentry. Or just retired.

I’m in a Waffle House full of vodka-drunk teens, deciding in the moment to eat my diner food out of plastic in the car with the dome light on.

I need to go back in, I need to pee.

Squinting and hunched over the wheel at 2 AM I pull off the highway. I see a spreading metal wound like pitted steel, a lethal crash at this time of night on a switchback of unlit highway producing a tangled tank trap that would slowly claim more drivers in the wee hours before anyone managed to make a 9-1-1 call. There would probably be a survivor from one of the vehicles, but it’s a reverie. Off the exit the Motel 6 front desk guy is telling me about Nibiru. It’s all so boring, I try to explain to him, if it happens, it happens. He has long fingernails, and he looks like shit, so it’s not worth belaboring.

Law and Order SVU pops on with a press of the TV remote’s power button, and they are using the semen blacklight at the crime scene while I am lying in my motel bed with the sheet touching my lower lip. I take a shower. The shower floor has a rough slip-resistant application that makes my skin crawl. I am in a sort of elder care facility, gripping beige fixtures. I should probably wear shower shoes in this motel. Could I die if I try to sleep in a latex suit?

I send all this to her and tomorrow it sits on read, embarrassing. My folks remember. I call them up and we have the same logistical conversation. Should we see some people or not bother? Is it all really so miserable between places in America, anymore? They have a good grocery store because they have a bigger college, we used to drive over.

I buy some Delta 9 drink that makes me clench my jaw to the point I think my molars will crack. I head out for a walk. No cigarettes, all clenching. I root around in my car for something, sit in there and charge my phone, play with the phone holder that attaches to the air vent until it breaks.

There’s a wild thunderstorm and there are branches down all over the frontage road that serves the motel. The largest branch has split a fence down into a drainage ditch with rich black mud that feels like a creek. My cell phone light in one hand, overpowered LED torch in the other I clamber along the log and down.

Now, after all these little dreams, I have a real vision. At daybreak in the ditch, I am surrounded by spotted lantern flies and toads. The toads are weak, they have been through everything I have and more. I catch the flies and feed them to the toads. The flies must be eliminated. An NPR Morning Edition story described them as “an invasive species of bug.” “Bug” seems so colloquial and disrespectful, they are insects. It feels like an added little insult in the kill order. They are an ecological disruption. The toads have a permeable, breathable skin, for cutaneous respiration, a nightmare. Their bones are just like ours.