The joke ends.
I removed my beachrobe by the pool and dropped it to a chair.
The men in the pool turned to look at me.
They looked close, as if looking through holes in walls, their hands underwater, moving fast like fishes.
I said, What do you want, though I knew what they wanted.
God, who prepares one for moments like these.
The swimsuit felt like a cage.
And you want to know what the men said back.
Look. They said nothing. They turned away. They treaded water.
It wasn't lifelong, what they wanted.
So it wasn't me that they wanted.
I threw the chair into the pool. The beachrobe too. I watched them sink.
I can still hear how the men carried on.
How pathetic it was.
The men's heads bobbing in the deep end, laughing.
Gray light filtering in from winter.
Hydroplane
And several times I looked to the roadside and saw what I thought was an animal, curled, shredded, dead, but was only a pile of straw.
And this was several times of looking at a single pile on the roadside, bright in the headlights, thinking, Don't look, thinking of guts, blood smeared on the road, bits of bone and matted fur.
And every time, when I got nearer the pile and looked, after thinking, Don't, but looked because I couldn't help looking, I found this dead shredded thing was straw piled on the roadside.
I'll mention the road signs that looked like men. Wide-shouldered men on short, splayed legs.
I'll mention the tractors, how they looked like horses, how they looked like houses, hulking on the roadside, bright in the headlights.
What all this means: it was late, dark.
What it really means: look, I can't break it down far enough to even say what straw was before it was straw.
I'll say hay.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is the road was wet for miles from rain. What matters is the tires skidded. A tire blew. The car swerved into a shallow ditch past the shoulder. And a man pulled over to help.
But before this.
What I thought: If straw looks like dead things, I need to sleep.
I thought to pull off to the shoulder.
But I kept on driving as I couldn't stop. There was a power behind this driving and driving. I had a power. It felt like that. Like something holy. Or something soaring. Predictable even. A rocket soaring through space.
And there were crazy thoughts. The likes of which I can't explain. But look, they were crazy. Somewhat psychic.
I saw the rain stop before it stopped. I saw the car skid before it skidded. The tire blew before it blew. Bits of black rubber flew up from the road. I didn't see the bits of black rubber. But I smelled the scorch.
The car stopped in a shallow ditch.
And there I was standing, waiting for help, in that nighttime cow smell, alone.
We were told in drivers' ed to wait for a man. We were told to light a flare and wait for a man to show and help with the car.
But I didn't have flares. I never have. I have never even considered flares or the heavy blanket we were told in drivers' ed to buy and keep in the trunk for reasons then unknown.
I was driving across from Baltimore. And if a tire blows in Baltimore, there's a place to ditch the car and a bus to take home if one has the fare.
I was driving across to teach.
I stand in a classroom most days.
I stand there thinking, How am I here.
I think, Out the window, Look how flat.
It's Missouri out there is what I think. That somehow I got to Missouri.
I stopped out front of my mother's house before I went.
My mother was standing on the walk.
I rolled down the window and waved.
My mother said, Pull over.
She said, Come on.
I pulled over but didn't get out of the car.
My cat slept in a box on the seat.
My mother said, You and that dirty cat.
She said, Why Missouri.
Good question.
I imagined flat and endless farms.
And imagine. It was all I imagined.
To live, I said.
To make a living, I said.
You and your living, my mother said.
We shook hands through the window before I went.
Then the ride. The ride's euphoric moments. A song I knew. The sunrise in the rearview mirror. Predictable thoughts of what if what if what if.
Dumb.
He kissed my nose, and I will always say he didn't mean to. His aim was off. I will always say it.
Look, I hadn't thought of him of flares of blankets since drivers' ed, and that was high school, that was summers ago in the church basement, the teacher with the stained shirts and glass eye. What did we call him. I don't know. The boys all called him something. His eye like some kind of milky jewel rolling back and forth in its socket. His gut pushing out the sauce stains on his shirts. And his son who took us on the road in the long red car with the zigzag stripe and the brake on the passenger's side. The boys all talked about the long red car, even that boy with the off aim.
It's fast, said the boy one night behind the headstone.
But it wasn't fast, as it turned out. Sure it looked fast with the zigzag stripe. But the boy hadn't driven the long red car. He didn't know how slow it went. I was first to drive it in the class. I didn't want to drive it first. But the teacher said my name. He was not a Jew. This my mother told me. He had a good last name my mother said. He said mine wrong. He said, You're first, and everyone laughed at the thought.
When I went driving with the teacher's son, the car went so slow, the teacher's son said, Are you on pills, as if it were my fault how we crept. And I said to him, Your car has no power.
He said something back I can't remember. Something I can't quite care about now.
And had I told my mother what he said.
She would have held my hand.
She would have said, Fix your nails.
She would have said, You won't get married with nails like those.
I sat in the graveyard behind the church at night with the boys from drivers' ed. It was dark and quiet but for us. Just one boy worth mentioning today. Just that boy I already mentioned. Just one night worth mentioning in the graveyard. I gave that boy two pills that night, pressed them into his palm, and he showed them to the other boys. He said, I told you she wants me.
I said, I don't like you.
Then a scuffle. Me and the boy scuffling in the grass. The other boys running off for good. Me and the boy sitting in the grass.
The moon shone on the backs of headstones.
Crosses stuck up from their tops.
We were sitting in the grass when the cops came prowling.
But this isn't about him and me sitting in the grass. And this isn't about those Baltimore cops with nothing better to do but prowl.
This is about Missouri.
Imagine this place. There are no streetlights. The road is wet with rain.
And at some point my tire will blow. The car will skid and stop in a ditch. I will get out of the car and stand in a pile of straw with the cat. I will wait for a man. He will pull over. He will help me change the tire. He will drive the car from the ditch to the shoulder. Then he will touch me in the wet straw.