Brick and glass

1969

I feel small coming back here.

This brick and glass dinosaur looming over me, a monstrous shadow that I can’t stop thinking about, couldn’t stop pondering over, even as a drill sergeant screamed in my face for months for me to shape up.

Not quite a nightmare, but still a persistent nagging dream I can’t wake up from, I still feel guilty quitting the job the way I did, pretending I joined the army because I wanted to fight for my country, and I did, yet wanted to escape this the way I did high school, school, job, army, making me feel as if I can’t finish anything I start – though what I really quit here wasn’t a job as much as a heart break, a true romance I never expected, and got scared off when it leaped out on me and ripped out my heart.

I look at each of the cars in the parking lot and wonder which of them is hers, forgetting in the haze of this hot fall sun that she doesn’t drive, forgetting all those times I walked with her to the bus stop for her to take the bus back to Wayne while I waited for mine to carry me away to Passaic.

I keep thinking maybe she’s changed, the way my whole world does each time I step out of my life for a moment or a week or a year, the way my grandfather’s old house changed color that time I went away for summer camp, or how he replaced the squeaky screen door during my boys scout trip.

Everything changes when you least expect it, even whole towns like mine, where they buzz-sawed a whole block of trees on East First Street and filled in lots where we used to run wild after school, filling in each space with concrete, brick, glass and asphalt the way a dentist fills a gap with a phony tooth.

Brick, glass and concrete, making the world boil under my feet and the air too hot for me to breathe.

And this isn’t even summer anymore.

I keep thinking there should be snow on the ground or at least puddles from rain, not this heat creeping up under my clothing, stirring up sweat the way it did in boot camp.

But then, I remember this place is always hot, not outside the way it is now, but inside, where the presses bang out sheets of printed material paper for me to sort, paper making my fingers bleed from the thousand little cuts they cause, and my back ache from bending and lifting and carrying the bundles down from this place to put down in another.

The smell of the inside ooze out every pour of this building, seeping out the cracks between the bricks, a scene of ink and oil I could not wash out of me the whole time I spent in the army, even though the sergeant squeeze sweat out of me as if I was a pig.

I count the cars like I always did during breaks here, always coming up with the same number as I do now.

I’ve always been a crazy kid, counting things when I wanted to stop thinking, playing little games with myself, spotting out of state license plates or cars still with mud flaps a decade after mud flaps went out of date. And at night, I count my breathing, waiting for the time when I run out of breaths to take, but never did.

Maybe I’m mad like my mother is, only in a different way, she hearing voices, while I count my breaths. And like her, I just can’t finish anything, and watch the pieces of everything I touch shatter and scatter around me, while I count them all to make sure they still add up.

My uncles hate the fact I can’t finish anything and are peeved about the fact I didn’t even finish the Army, and came home, not the way Uncle Ed did, a hero, but wounded by some petty disease of the kidney and not even a bullet.

I hate coming to places that make me feel small. I am an insignificant insect buzzing in an out of control wind, not sure just where I am going to land next and whether I will hit so hard I won’t have to worry about counting breaths, since I won’t have any.

I quit the job, too, because it made me feel that way, slaving away, sweating out all the salt in my blood for a petty pay check at the end of every two weeks.

I want to be something more than that; I just can’t say what, and so I quit things, and search for something else to do or count, using some excuse as lame as love as to why I do it. I keep thinking my history teacher in high school might be right and that I might not amount to anything no matter how many things I start and stop. I won’t matter to anyone, not even myself.

It’s crazy to think like this at 19 years old, but I do.

I keep thinking about giving up on Louise, too, and how we nearly made love standing together on the bus stop waiting for different buses to take us in different directions, and the bus I took to Fort Dix taking me so far away from her, I could only make love to her in dreams.

I still have the letters she wrote me while I was away. I never wrote back. Even though the letters kept coming, maybe out of habit because she could not stop writing any more than I could stop counting, one perfumed letter after another that made the other men in my company howl, calling each letter a love poem, though none had poems, only aching suggestions of love.

I can almost hear church bells ringing between each word.

Two men in blue overalls come out of the building holding a football, scruffy men from the warehouse part of the building who haven’t yet manage to wash the dust out of their hair, carrying a football they will toss until the whistle calls them back to work, stopping just outside the door when they catch sight of me in my uniform.

I should not be wearing it, I hadn’t meant to, putting in on last minute, maybe to prove to my bosses that I actually went where I said I was going, perhaps more to show off for Louise, me needing to impress her with the idea that I am somebody after, or convince myself I am.

“She ain’t here,” one of the men shouts, recognizing me even in my disguise.

“Where did she go?”

“Don’t know. She just quit not long after you did.”

I nod, turn away, and march back up the hill to the bus stop, trying to ignore the brick and glass glittering under the harsh sunlight, trying not to count all the cars that pass me by.