Of a Picture from the Pennsylvania Woods

12/09/2007 8:24 AM – 8:56 AM

It is a picture, really, just a moment, a scene. Many of my stories start with one, but this one has been lingering in my mind for years and I haven’t written of it before. Perhaps because I never wished it to be fiction. It came to me somewhere south of Williamsville but north of Harrisburg. I can’t really narrow it down more than that. I was walking on one of the side-roads that I favored during that little adventure. It was little traveled but paved.

The trees grew close enough to the road that their branches mingled overhead at times. The day was sunny though, and cool. It was the morning, not yet eleven. Scattered along the side of the road were boulders that occasionally I would sit upon and rest. It was soon after I had gotten up from one of these and had started walking again that the picture came to me. It did not come to me fully formed or in a flash, but pieced itself together as my feet found their way across the cinders and rocks that made up the margins of the road. I have no doubt that it was born of weariness and little money, but such unflattering origins do not declare the picture void.

There in a car that is like a jeep but not a jeep, perhaps a little Rav or a Sidekick, rides a young man of about twenty-five (older than I was at the time but not by too many years). The top of the jeep that is not a jeep is down. The young man is worn but clean. His clothing is newly bought and washed: jeans, white-tee-shirt, new sneakers (Chucks, I think). Behind him, lying across the back seats, is a small duffle bag packed with new clothes, for the most part, variations on what he’s already wearing. Beside him is a drink of some sort, non-alcoholic but fizzy. As he reaches over to pick up the drink, he absently pats a briefcase that sits on the passenger’s seat. It is a metal briefcase, the kind with long curved grooves across its sides. Inside the briefcase is sixty-thousand dollars. We can’t see it as the briefcase is closed, but we know it’s there: thirty-thousand dollars packed neatly into one side, thirty-thousand dollars packed neatly into the other. How he got the money has always been a mystery to me. I think that it was obtained legally and it is without a doubt, his. But I do not know how he got it. I know that he had a little more, but he’s spent it on clothes, the jeep that is not a jeep, and clearing himself of his debts. He picks up the drink, unscrews the top, drinks, screws the top back down, puts it back in the cup-holder and pats the briefcase again. Up ahead, on the side of the road, he sees a dirty and forlorn little creature, scuffing his feet through the cinders and rocks that make up the margins of the road. I turn and move further off the side of the road. He nods to me as he passes. I nod in return. He drives on and I know exactly where he’s going. Wherever whim takes him, without a backward glance.