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Garithin

Garithin is a small town that lays outside of the big city. It is a fictional town/suburb that may or may not have a real world equivilant. It exists in my mind. It could really be any small town that many of us grow up in around the country, and the idea is that anyone can relate to it. Like Katonah, New York, Middlebury, Vermont, Amherst, MA, Encinitas, CA, the burbs outside of Omaha, or any of the other millions like them in our country.
The idea is not so much to be spcific about the location, but to be specific about the people. Characters in a story are the ones who truly capture our attention and our heart. [When I am melancholy and deppressed I seem to do my best writing.]We want characters that are real and we can sympathyze with. By creating real characters a plot will evolve, and these are the two most important parts of a story. Building characters takes some time and filling in their history is essential to getting to the meat of the story. By meat, I mean the present situation of the characters and where they are going, not where they have been. That is why so many of my favorite novels, the beggining tends to be slow and slightly drawn out, because there is much exposition. Dealing with exposition creatively and assertively is what makes great writing.
So, in my story of Garithin, I introduce the characters that are important to the story. Steven, Molly, and the old Bicyle Factory owner. After introducing these characters and giving them a bit of a back ground, other sub-characters will come out.
Of course getting through the post mortum deppression and withdrawl from a loved one has to be dealt with.
Garithin has a population of about 100,000, which is rather irellavant to the story. The Bicycle factory is rather large, employing almost 2,500 people. The city needs a change, and needs to identify itself. Like most cities in our country there is nothing to differentiate it from other cities in the country. It is a cookie cuter culture, where different will get you killed. Yet, Old Graver has been different, in that he left a wealthy endeavor for one that would seem to many to be idealistic in nature. He lives the oil business, where he makes billions of dollars to persue a clean air project that supports a town, and makes a positive change to the masses. Would this really happen in real life? I guess in my heart I have always hoped so. I've often wished that some Rising star would branch away from the American Dream, and realize that "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness for all," means that we the powerful, we the rich, we the strong, have an obligation to help those less fortunate then us. On this road, unfortunately we will get burned, as Graver does. His wife dies. He looks for comfort in a younger woman, and when she takes him for all he is worth, he is virtually left penniless. His friends abandon him, then his dog dies, which really sucks cause that was the dog he and his wife found milling around Coney Island homeless. One minute he's on top, the next he is abandoned and left to die.
On this path of solitude and disaster, he gets in his car and drives from his home in Houston, Texas, all the way through the midwest towards Ohio. He is just driving, no real destination, and he's not even sure that he will live much longer. That's about the time that he reaches Garithin. He drives by an old motorcycle factory and see's a big sign, "Space For Rent. Convert Old Factory Into $$. Call 515-678-7890." So, he pulls off to the side of the road and dials the number. He waits for the ring. He starts asking himself what he will do with a factory. He has seen the world from the top. The money laundering, the squanering, those less fortunate then him get swept away. For thirty years, he never thought anything of it until it was all taken away. In the car, by himself, he had done a lot of thinking. His business partners had offered him zilch when his new wife left him, and almost blamed him for his inability to keep her. He had never experienced such rejection in his life, so he imagined that his friends must be right. He proceded to beat himself up and enter despair. He got in his Mercedes benz, and decided to drive. There was nothing left for him at his home, and they would just forclose on him while he was there. So, he moved on. Some might say he ran, and if you asked him he would agree with both. He released all his house employees and divided up there fund equally amongest them. He told them to take what they wanted from the house as well, and not leave anything behind for the bank. He would later claim that the house had been robbed and he knocked unconscious during the raid. He had been drinking a lot and not socializing much with his friends, so the story was legit. His driving staff also received bonuses from what was left of the salaries, and the cars that they drived except for his Benz, which he aqusitioned for himself. He signed all the Titles to the cars over to the drivers for $1 a piece. He had always been generous, or at least he thought so, to his servants. But now he realized how little they got payed. He had just payed them what everyone else in his neighborhood payed them. Didn't that seem fair? Now he realized as he talked to them before he left how little they made. $17,000 a year? Could some one live off of that? After he divied out the money, he realized that there was not much left for himself. He went to the local pawn shop, sold his gold watch, rings, and some silk suits. When all was totaled he had managed to get $22,000, which was a far cry from the 11,572,000 he had made the previous year. That didn't include all paid vacations, all paid car services, hotels, taxes, you name it. He was quickly learning what it meant to be a "Middle-Class" american.

Think about it...

Let me give you a little advice.
If you are young, don't rush to get into a relationship.

Here I am at work at 6am wondering what the hell I am doing.

I hate this job.

I spend my hole day sleeping and I get nothing done. I use to be so active. It is really annoying to because my roommate upstairs says I have no reason to be upset.
There is a lot going on in my life right now, but sometimes I wonder if it would be better if I could just be bymyself. Being in a show, work, the prospects of a new relationship.

Who am I kidding. I am deppressed. I am still not over Lauren, and still beating myself up about it. I went up to Amherst this weekend to visit with my friends and they listened to me talk trash all weekend. But that is all I did. Talk trash. I never showed them how sad I really was by her breaking up with me. You get into a realtionship, and for the first couple weeks it is nirvana. Then if you spend a lot of time with the person, familiarity sets in. Then you start integrating and changing your living patterens for that person. Next thing you know, you are leaving clothes there and she is leaving clothes with you.

Somehow during all that intensity, the coolness, the sweetness, the laughter gets lost and is replaced by tears and annoyance. You start looking around and saying, "Do I really want to be in this relationship?"

Sitting on the 22nd floor of my building waiting for the sun to set, I realized how deppressed I am. I started to think about my failed relationship and some how she seemed to be important to me, and I remembered all the good feelings. Those first few weeks. I almost started to cry, so I held that in to.

I am bummed, deppressed and lonely and I spend that time cramming it with activities so that I don't have to feel that way. I make calls to friends, and fill up my calendar so that I don't have to deal with it. But it is there. Then I moan, "Oh, how I wish I could make it better. How I wish I could change things. Oh I wish she would take me back."

I have only ever had one woman take me back. I've talked to friends who have had girlfriends take them back, and then they got married. I guess the right place the right time sort of thing comes into play.

Sleeping and eating have come back to me of sorts. I am not drinking as much as I work during the nights, and it is making me miserable even more. I should quit my job. I hate it hear. What else am I going to do? Where else can I work.

I feel terrible. The knitted hearts still sit in my bag. I guess I should just throw them out, but instead I ignore their presence. Maybe I should just spend more time at home bymyself being deppressed. I could play WOW again. But can't because it reminds me of her.

Why would you break up with someone if you didn't have something else lined up? I have been dumped before for an other guy. But just to break up with someone just to break up? Being single sucks. Being in a relationship is a lot of responsibility and I see how I failed that. Life is about learning. It really sucks letting someone down who you love. I am going to watch the sunrise now.

I got It!

Well, A little update for what is going on with me, and an interuption from the Novel.

I got in the show "Woodpecker" which will be held at ATA in November. More details to come. It would be great if you came to the show and showed your support.

Three

I sat up from a long knap at around four in the afternoon to the theme song of Jeoperdy and Alex Tribec giving his introductory speal. I lay on the bed for about twenty minutes staring at the cieling and listening to "Who was," "What Was," "Where was," and so on. Most of the questions I had no idea what the answers were and wondered how that information in some ones head could be of any use. Then again, these people were given the oppurtunity to win tens of thousands of dollars. I mentally kicked my self in the pants for not doing my homework for history class in high school. So much wasted talent. I got up at the second comercial break, sat at the end of the bed for a minute and went to the latrine to unload my blatter. When I came back final Jeoperdy started and I went out for a smoke.
I opened to the door to room 4e, stepped out on the balcony to the motel just in time to see a hippy chick get the door of 4c slammed in her face. Being a new resident ot the Motel, I'd only picked up the word this morning that 4c was never rented to anyone else other then one woman. This woman ran a "business" out of the room. Today was only my second day in the Motel, and most of the previous day I had spent cleaning out the insides of a Johhny Walker bottle. It was dirty, and I felt it my moral obligation to cleanse it of its smutty contents promptly, then dispose of the bottle itself. However, the bottle had not made it much best the side of the bed next to my Merril's.
Two days ago I quit my job, and decided that despite my over whelming debt, I'd get into some more and go on a trip. A very, very long trip. It landed me in Garithin on Tuesday and I was tired from driving three consecutive days in a row. Exhausted, bewildered and heart broken, I turned in to the only Motel I could find with a vacancy and was suprised at the pleasent accomodations at a moderate price. I kicked in the door to the room, after unlocking it of course, unscrewed the bottle to the Johnny, and proclaimed "Fuck Her!" The her being my now ex girl friend who had broken up with me two months prior and the subsequent break up, which I blamed for my life going into a tail spin.
Really what happened could not be farther from the truth. Danielle didn't really leave me anymore then I didn't leave her. We sat in our favorite coffee shop, and I told her that if I was so horrible to her, if I was such a horrible person that she should just break up with me.
So that is what she did, based on what would be best for both of us.
Of course, my ego could not see it this way and took it as a direct personal assault on all that I had and worked for the year and a half we had been together.
I mean, a year and half. Who breaks up after a year and a half. I mean, after you have invested that much time with someoen you mine as well give it a go, and see how long it can last. Well, at least that was my opinion on the situation but Danielle was not having it.
I watched the poor rejected hippy womans right activist sulk at the door for a moment, then shuffle down the balcony to the stairs and she descended. She walked out to the front of the parking lot which was defended by a grassy gutter more remeniscent of a castle moat then a gutter. She entered her Monti Carlo, started the husky V8 engine, backed up and drove away. She was a pretty white girl with a lot of hair on her head. She hadn't washed it in weeks, and this I could tell by the mass of dread locks that had formed. A man had entered the room of 4c after the girls debacle and I started to understand the "business" at hand a little more. I was always a slow learner and slow to catch on. Whenever someone made a jab at me, it took me a day and three hours to think of a come back. Of course, it was one that would have won the war only it came one day and three hours too late. I hated that.
I finished my smoke and tossed it to the pavement below. Bye, bye little red light. It bounced and sparked grandly for such a tiny flame and I turned and shut my own door.

Light in Her Eyes: Molly's Story Part One

Molly sat cross-legged on her bed reading People magazine and smoking a cigarette. Her back was to the lime-green-painted wall of the motel room, and the TV was on. Today had been a better then average day for business, and Thursdays often were. She had already put five hundred dollars in the bank, and would put at least that much in when the night was through. Molly was a modern-day prostitute.
She was not an ordinary hooker or whore that simply had sex for recreational purposes, although she did, in fact, enjoy it, or to obtain some kind of pleasure through drugs and alcohol. Molly was good at what she did, and what she did was please men, and on occasion, some women. One in particular, who drove trucks for Tropicana and came in on Sundays with the late freight and needed a place to stay. This worked well for the both of them. She needed a place to stay, and Molly hated sleeping alone.
Thursday nights were so busy because Molly had a high percentage of young men who wanted to jumpstart their weekend with a little sexual pleasure. Some of the men were newlyweds who had not quite bonded with their wives, or had too much money and not enough ideas to spend it on. Molly didn't mind them either.
Molly had a good reason for picking the profession that she did. She had a daughter who stayed home after school and would some day learn to be an engineer or some science that would give back to society. Molly didn’t care which, and her daughter could do what she did as far as Molly was concerned. But she hoped not. Her daughter took piano lessons, clarinet lessons, horse back riding, swimming lessons, etc. Molly believed that by instilling in her daughter the good things in life and the crafts used to make music and other arts would make for a well-rounded child. At least Molly thought so. She spent what time she could with her daughter, took her to zoos and Museums on the weekends and studied Math, Science, languages and the rest with her Mon-Wed. On Thursday and Friday, Molly sometimes left the house after tucking her daughter in, but lately had been leaving the house earlier and earlier. Katie knew what Molly did for work, and Molly kept no secrets from her daughter. She saw no need to. Already her daughter excelled in areas that Molly never could.
Of course she was right. Molly was abused by her father when she was young and forced into acts of sex by the age of twelve. Nobody in Garaithin held it against her for being the town call, and no one really cared. She served her purpose. Occasionally, a women's rights activist would find out about 4C on Perkins St., knock on the door, and try to convince her to change her ways.
"Don't lay down for men, but stand up for your rights! Take on a proactive job in the workforce. Prove to men that you can do it," one scraggly-haired woman with glasses said.
"How much do those jobs pay?"
"Well," she said pulling out a pamphlet and opening it, "you could be working as an Admin. down at Novak's making seven dollars an hour."
"Seven dollars an hour? That's not gonna put my daughter through school. Now you got some Tylenol? I've got a terrible headache."
"Oh, actually I don't, but I have some Advil."
"Sure, that will work. Can you give me two?"
"Ok." The granola girl dug through her bag and pulled out a bottle and shook two of the white tablets into Molly's open hand. Molly took the pills and popped them into her mouth.
"Thanks."
"You are welcome, now..."
BAM! Molly slammed the door and walked inside. The girl, stunned and rejected, stood outside for a minute and was gently pushed a side by a tall, potbellied man who entered the room, and shut the door behind him. The Women's Rights Activist heard a command and the door mechanism on the handle twist.
Molly knew women's rights. She was living them. She had had Katie when she was thirteen, and at a young age had decided on her own to keep the child despite the option of abortion and her own misgivings of the overpopulation of the world. Molly did not believe in kids, and up until that young age, she did not care for them either. She was a bright child, but fate had dealt her a raw hand. The senior high school boys saw the attractiveness and rawness in her and took advantage of it. One in particular, Bobby Bradshaw, the high school quarterback and often found her walking home alone and finally cajoled her into the car. Molly knew it was a bad idea, but she knew who Bobby was. Nobody said no to Bobby.
He drove her home, to his place, which in all actuality was not far from her father’s house. He lived in a newly restored and renovated colonial style house over one hundred years old, and had been the first house built in that part of town. His parents worked for the local college as professors, and were always leaving town for expeditions to do studies on the difference between men and apes. At that time, Bobby had informed her, they were in North Africa working with a group of apes, studying the differences between their mating habits and ours as humans. What neither Molly nor Bobby knew was that Bobby’s parents were actually, themselves, having sex with the apes to see if it was possible to produce a new species of man that had the benefits of both worlds. The school, of course, funded the research blindly because the Bradshaws came from old money and nobody questioned old money.
Regardless, Bobby had some experiments of his own that expressly involved Molly. Molly knew what he had in mind, and knew by getting in the car that she had already accepted what was to come. He invited her in the house and she agreed. Bobby put his arm around her as they walked in from the side porch and they removed their shoes. The addition to the house was modern, and was made of two walls of paned windows. There was a door to the garage and a door to the house. Molly placed her shoes next to the vacant dog bed, worn with lumpy grey fur. Bobby strutted into the kitchen triumphantly. He knew what he wanted. He had talked about getting it for a long time with his football buddies. They all laughed in a circle as he explained what he would do to her. Bobby was also a virgin, but Molly did not know this and neither did any of Bobby’s friends. Bobby had bragged to his friends that two years before he had slept with a girl from Ipswitch outside of Dover. It seemed realistic and plausible to them all that Booby had fucked the girl and that he had slept with many more than he shared. Bobby knew the truth, but fiction was better then reality for Bobby. At this point, he was sitting on the stool in the kitchen.
"Come on over Molly. Don't be shy."
He had walked in, gotten himself a glass, then put some ice in it. He filled it up with water, not offering her anything, and sat on the stool. Molly watched with mild contemplation. She did not care for this man’s behavior or his stature. She had come for one thing.
"Don't just stand there dumb. Come here."
She walked silently over to him with a caution in her movements. She rounded the counter that blocked his lower body to find him fondling himself in the open.
"Do you want to touch it?"
"Okay."
She reached down to where his hand lay on his crotch and held his penis firmly in her hand. He slid down on the stool, resting his weight on his feet and his buttocks.
"Put it in your mouth."
She knelt down in front of him, and he thrust his dick inside her mouth, a little more than she would have liked, had she had the choice. She grabbed the base with her hand, and lay her tongue flat out on the bottom. She had never done it before, and found herself growing excited. He did not last long, and came inside her mouth within what seemed like seconds, and was only slightly longer.
"Fuckin' A" He proclaimed as she choked and spat out his sperm on the floor.
"Sorry."
"Fuck it. Here are some paper towels." He tossed them down to her and walked off to take a shower.
"I'll see you tomorrow. Same time. Wait for me outside the school parking lot, and I will take you home from there." He nodded to her, and walked around the hall proscenium and up the stairs to his bedroom where he had his own shower. She cleaned up the sticky, white puddle, poked around ‘til she found the garbage in a closet, and let herself out.
She walked the main road to the dirt road that led to her house. The entire walk took no more then twenty minutes, and she was home with her school bag before her father arrived home. Unfortunately for Molly, her father had driven by the Bradshaw's on his way to work to discover his daughter getting out of the car with the youngest of their kids. He half expected what she was doing, but had no intentions of stopping her. Let her come home late, and he would show her the backside of his boot.
She walked into her room, shut the door, and began reading a book about a boy in London, who had started off with little or no means. It was for her English class that was taught by a flimsy guy that everyone, including her, suspected was gay. She heard the front door to the house swing open and close abruptly. When her father entered, the door often did slam with a forceful crash, but this evening’s pounding of the door told Molly that something was wrong.
"Molly."
Molly sat very still in her room not making a sound. She knew what would come next.
"Molly. Get in here! I gotta talk to you."
"Yes, sir."
Molly's father, Jon, had been a Marine right after Korea and right before Vietnam. He had beaten guys in his platoon for just looking at him while he was naked in the shower, and was given the nickname of Bruiser by the other men in the unit. He'd march up through towns, finding anyone remotely gay, and sending them bloody-nosed to the pavement. While stationed in Rota, Spain, this happened more than the company commander could stand. He'd be sent to the brig, and return ten days later only to do it again. What kept him in the service was his brute strength and ability to get the job done. He had been demoted several times, gone back up in rank, then demoted again. He didn't care, and when the rebels swelled in Spain, his platoon was called in first to clear up any problems. Jon was the first to go in.
There was a rush that entered Jon's body right before charging a mass of Spanish rebels on the cobbled streets of Rota. A rush of adrenalin he guessed that some doctors or scholarly types might call it. Whatever the case, that same rush entered his body in the front seat bench of his 1980 Ford pickup when he passed Bobby Bradshaw leading his daughter into the Bradshaw mansion. He could have stopped to get her, but decided to finish his plumbing errand and get her on his way home.
Now Molly stood behind her bedroom door, cowering indecisively, awaiting the blows to come. She shook herself, and stood up straight.
'I am not a coward,' she told her self, which she wasn't. Molly had lived with this man her whole life, and beatings for little things like losing a pencil at school or leaving her dolly on the couch when she went to bed were common place things in this dysfunctional household. She had faced the beatings before, so why was this time different? There was no way that he could know what she had done. There was no way that he could have seen her. She had probably just left the milk on the kitchen table, or he had noticed the extra cookie missing from the package from the night before. Crazy to think that he knew. She was a big girl now, and she could take care of herself.
She talked herself up like that for about two minutes while her father moved to the coat closet, removed both his boots and jacket, and placed them inside.
"Molly...Get out here now!"
She swung open the door quickly, and stood there facing the tall, overalled man bravely.
"Molly. What are you doing going into the house of a stranger? A boy?"
He knew, she was fucked. She looked at him in disbelief. How could this stupid man she called her father have figured that out? There was no trace, no note, no evidence. Had the Bradshaw boy called the house from the time that she walked from his place to hers? They had no answering machine, so if her father had been home, gone, and come back in that amount of time, he could have intercepted that call. But then why would the Bradshaw boy call here? He had gotten what he wanted. There's no way he saw her walk in, was there? Then she remembered her father’s plumbing job up at the MacGloughlin's at 4:30, which he would drive to at 4:20 pm from the shop. He always left ten minutes before every job whether it was twenty minutes away or five. Why hadn't she thought of this before? What difference would it have made? Where would she have gone? Molly was by no means a dumb girl. She figured that it was possible that her father drove by and saw her get out of Bobby's car at the exact moment they were walking towards the mansion. (Her father called anything that was bigger than their one-story mini-ranch a mansion.) She remembered right before she had exited the door, she had looked at Bobby, and upon glancing at him had noticed the neon baby-blue car clock had read 4:22. Two minutes after her father left for the plumbing job, which would have taken him right past the Bradshaws’. The Bradshaws’ house was a two-minute drive exactly from the shop. She clenched her fist in aggravation. Why hadn't she put that together before? She tried to remember if any cars went by while she was walking with Bobby's arm around her. She could think of none. Later, many years later, Molly would look back on this experience and recall that she was probably overwhelmed by the intensity of the situation, and the only thing going through her mind was that she was with Bobby Bradshaw the most popular boy in school. She got a little annoyed by the thought that a girl like her would get all queasy and lose control of her intellect at such a crucial moment, with such a controlling and abusive father. Of course, she would never make that mistake again.
While all this was going on in Molly's head, her father had advanced on her ten feet, and put his right arm on her left bicep and squeezed. She flinched arched her back to the side, wincing in pain.
"I asked you a question Molly?"
Wait-- another one, or the one that she missed while she was trying to figure out how this imbecile had caught her? Pure luck was on his side, and the growing pain throbbing up her neck and into her head was on hers. The fates were cruel. She stifled a sob and peeped out, "What question?"
Smack. That was the sound of his hand across her face. No use. The first tears sprang out of her eyes on to the floor much like the come from Bobby Bradshaw’s dick had an hour or so before. The comparison hit her as she looked up at her father with a tear-strewn, red-cheeked face. It almost made her laugh, except that when she straightened herself up to look at him again, he came down on her even harder, this time splitting her cheek.
She let out a noise. A cross between a sob and a laugh. To her, the situation was almost comical. Here was a man three times her size beating her like a dog that had attacked a neighbor’s child. Except she hadn't, and as far as he was concerned, he didn't know anything that had transpired between her and Bobby. That is what really made her want to laugh. The situation’s pure loss of sanity. Now, when she came up a third time with that resolute look on her face, and he drew the back of his hand across that defiant face of hers, now she was crying. He let her arm go, and she slumped to the floor nearing unconsciousness.
"Fine, Molly. Don't tell me what you done with that boy. But if I ever catch you going into his house or any other boy’s for that matter, I'll beat you so good, you'll wish that I ended you. You understand me?"
Now, if Molly could have responded the way that she wanted to, she would have laughed again. Oh no sir, you better believe I am not going to get caught. But yea, I am going to go back there and just you try to catch me. Cause I am going to fuck, suck, and screw every boy from here to Bristol. And boy won't that make you mad when I am gone.
She got about two feet from her bed crawling and she lay her head on the floor. So nice, the polished wood floor.
She lay her head on it, and went out.
For the next five years, Molly and her father never talked about that night, and he never laid a hand on her again. He did not need to in his opinion, and he did not need to in hers. He went on about his days, dying haphazardly in a water main burst, and she went on pleasing the high school boys, unknown to him, until the day he died.

The Beginning

Garithin lay just on the outskirts of the city having the population of a struggling suburb with little class and little hope of attaining any in the near future. The inhabitants of Garithin are law abiding citizens. They drink, do drugs, and have premarital sex as most free Americans are want to do.

On the particular day that our story takes place, the sunset fell on the buildings and trees with a red hue on the clouds and a blue dusk lying down on the rooftops. Men moved from the bicycle factory owned by old Martin J. McGraver Jr., which had been started in order to curb the tide of oversized vehicles. Old McGraver, as everyone called him, had been a wealthy oil tycoon his whole life. He had worked for the big companies as a supplier having acquired lands with oil wells in Texas several years after the war. He had been raised Christian, and was neither a tall nor a short man, but commanded respect wherever he went. He was a kindhearted soul, which accounts for his turnaround in business at such an old age.
McGraver had, at one time, been a ruthless business man, despite his personal politics of befriending everyone he met. Once he stepped into his suit and into the meeting room, he changed. It was buy, buy, buy. Send the geologists out, bombard the earth with aerial shots, find the oil, and buy the land. Then send in the mercenaries and drive the inhabitants off. He had been quite good at this, received the designation from his colleagues as "Oil General" and dedicated his life to the exploitation of the Earth’s most valuable resource.
Until He met Molly.
More about McGraver later. The important thing to note is that he changed, and invested his time in making bicycles and other free-powered vehicles for sale for the greater good. There will come a time when the story of McGraver's assent from hell will be necessary, and you will awe at the turnaround of this tycoon. And how Molly brought it about.
Now working at the bicycle factory was a young man in his late twenties named Steve. Steve drove a brand new Chevy pickup truck that burned precious fossil fuels. Steve was not a bad guy contrary to his lack of support for the company. Actually, most of the employees at McGraver's bike factory drove cars to and from work. Most of the bicycles were shipped to Seattle and Cleveland, where people abandoned the cars roadside for the freedom of wind-through-the-hair bike riding. Steve, however, did not. He enjoyed listening to the country music radio station to and from work, and considering he lived seventeen miles away, he quite enjoyed the warmth of his cab when December and January rolled around.
Steve also had a history with Molly. Every Thursday after work, Steve drove past the corner store, grabbed a pouch of Bali-Shag smokes, and rode over to Molly's place. In all actuality, it was not Molly's place, but Burt Stanson's Motel on RT. 9 just a little more outside of the suburb, outside of the city. It was a nice, remote location that received a plethora of sunlight during the day. Steve drove up to the front of the motel building every Thursday at almost exactly the same time. He knew this not because he looked at the clock radio that adorned his dash board, but because of the way the sun slid over the hood of his truck as he drove into the second parking spot from the manager’s office. The only Thursdays he was not exactly sure of the time were the days when it rained or snowed. The latter of the two rarely happened and the former every so often. On this particular day, the sky sparkled red and Steve turned the ignition, killing the engine, and took a puff from his cigarette. He still had about fifteen minutes before he headed up to her room, so he just sat on his freshly vacuumed cloth car seats and slid down in the chair a little. He rolled down the windows and breathed deeply the fresh Garithin air. Steve had never really breathed in much of the earth’s other air except for a couple locations in Europe, Iraq, and Kentucky. Aside from those times, Steve had been a dedicated breather of Garithin air for the past twenty-five years, and he liked it that way. He was quite pleased with the air, its rich, humid, full of freshness, with a tint of coolness in the spring and fall, and the robust, sometimes sweltering, thick air of the summer.
Steve puffed from his rolled cigarette and held in the nicotine for a bit. He hadn't always smoked. He hadn't even smoked while in the army, but he had always hung out with the smokers. He hadn't really started smoking until he dated Betty. Betty had smoked three to four packs a week, and Steve had been around her nonstop every day for almost a year. When you spend that much time with someone, it is inevitable that you pick up some of their traits and habits. For Steve, it was smoking, and he hadn't quit when they broke up, and that was several months ago. Steve still missed Betty, and had not decided to move on as of yet. Molly was a good place to start but nothing serious, and he knew it. She had her place in his life, and in the town, and everyone knew it. There was nothing more there than what he would have with her in ten minutes and that would only last ten minutes or so after that. He was okay with that. She, Molly was okay with that. The whole town of Garithin was okay with that. That is just how it was, and how it had been for as long as they could all remember. Some of the housewives might think it a crude way to make a living, but Molly was no crude girl, nor were her figures. She was fast approaching a middle-aged woman, but she possessed the desire, will, and passion of a teenager. She was giving, and sharing, and she cared deeply about her daughter.

All this Steve knew, and so did the town. Steve spent the next two minutes thinking about Betty, the two minutes after that thinking about his dog, Belly, the one minute after that about what he was going to have for dinner, and the five following about Iraq. Steve had been a homegrown American boy who believed in fighting for his country. That hadn't changed, but beliefs inside of him had. It is interesting that in the eighteen months that he marched from Fallujah to Bagdhad, he had passed Old McGraver five times, on five separate occasions, and didn't even know it. For the Old McGraver's part, he did not know it either. The lives they lived touched more often then some lovers for two strangers, yet their own conscious connection of the facts was less then none.

After Steve had finished running the story of his friend Miller (who had died last year due to a land mine exploding off the side of the road in Iraq) through his head, he sighed, put out his cigarette in the ashtray, and slid out of the truck onto the parking lot floor. As Steve locked --an unnecessary precaution-- and shut the door, he thought about Miller. He walked to the stairs that led to the second story of the motel and remembered how Miller had been the bully of the platoon. Somehow, Steve had managed to avoid this abuse despite his lack of size on Miller. Regardless, Miller had always found in Steve something amusing and fun, which saved Steve from a world of hurt and bruised eyes. Steve walked along the balcony and looked over his right shoulder to the setting sun. Two dormitories on the college campus besmirched it, which loomed liked the legs of a giant in a forest with no torso. Steve loved to look upon the mixture of man and nature and the sun's last blessing of the day on them both. He breathed deep again the mixture of steel, wood, and wind that gently rushed by his face and through his hair as he stepped outside of room 4C. He looked out across the parking lot, into Sergeant's Field, across the stadium, through the dorms, and into the mountains. A thought entered his mind as the sun cusped away. He chuclked, turned towards 4C, turned the door handle, and entered the room.

Huh, ooo ahh ahh ahh

I am not up on the latest trends and such
who is cool and who is not
I hate being hip at the same time
but I hate not being
it is a very dangerous place to be

Hey, somebody throw me a bone here. I think I need to learn flash.

Huh, ooo ahh ahh ahh

I am not up on the latest trends and such
who is cool and who is not
I hate being hip at the same time
but I hate not being
it is a very dangerous place to be

Hey, somebody throw me a bone here. I think I need to learn flash.