She lay on the couch and her long blond hair lay in wisps on her face and throat. Her arms were limp and bent in a gauche way on her chest and her eyes were closed.

“I’m bored, babe. I need a change.”

Her hair puffed with each word she spoke. It fell off her face and down to the floor as she turned her head to look at Jack.

“I know, hon. I know I said that. We can take a trip. We’re too broke for Rome, though.”

“I know,” she said. “I can wish.”

“Let’s go to Maine. We’ll take a nice trip to the coast for a week. They have good food there. Fresh crab, fish… We’ll stay at a place right by the sea,” said Jack.

Jack typed at his desk, his eyes locked on the keys that he struck hard.

“For now I need to get this done, Jules,” he said.

“Maine is too cold. I don’t want to go there,” she said.

“Jules, can you make us some iced tea? It’s warm out. Not so warm that we have to put on the air, but warm. I’m warm at least. Are you?”

“No,” she said. She stared at him with blank eyes.

“Oh. I guess I can make some, then.”

“I’ll have some too, so I’ll make it. I’m bored.”

Jules got up from the couch and stretched. The shades were drawn and the spring sun poured through the glass panes of their flat. They could have heard the birds sing if the screens were put in.

She made the tea and put ice in it. She thought of when she and Jack first met; they went out all the time for drinks and hung out with friends. They laughed a lot then. They made plans to take trips and they saw most of the states.

Jack tried hard to hear what Jules was up to from the front room.

When the tea was cool, she poured them each a glass.

“Jack,” she said as she sat down in the chair next to him. “I know you need to write, but it’s so nice out babe. Can we take a walk to get some lunch? We can find some seats in the sun. We might need some light coats still, but it’s so nice out. It’s so nice that it’s not gray and cold. It makes me sad when it’s been cold for a while, you know?”

“I know, Jules,” he said. He stopped his work and took a sip of the tea. “This is great, thank you hon.”

He drank down the rest of it and looked at her.

“You’re so cute,” he told her with a smile. “And I’m so glad I’m with you.”

She smiled back as she looked down at the floor.

“I’m glad too, babe.”

“Oh, damn, that’s right. Here you go,” he said. “I got you a gift.”

He gave her the thin slips and kissed her on her cheek. She looked at them and she screamed.

“Jack! Jack!” she laughed. “Rome! You bought these? For us?”

“Well yeah for us. For you. Round trip. I don’t want you to get bored of me and of what we have. I don’t want to lose you. We’ll go in two weeks. For now, let’s go get some food and sit in the sun.”

I tried not to use a lame lie, like I was “off to buy smokes.” That would have been too trite. It had been done. I just left for work and had a bag stowed in the trunk of my car. My bag was blue. I tied up some loose ends at the job, got all my cash from the bank and caught a train to the coast. I hate to fly, so then I hopped on a boat for the rest of the trip.

I ran. I don’t know why.

Then the boat was a bird and I flew, and I looked down and I knew that the fall would not kill me. It would be the fast change in course.

There were lights, and I was on land. Waves crashed.

I did not leave a girl or kids at home… I mean, I’m not a dick. I just left friends and loved ones. Then time skipped six months once more and I had a pen and pad and told all the folks back home I was safe and sound and well.

It rained now and then, but at night. The moon was out at night too, on clear nights though, and there was more than one moon and they were close to the point where they took up half the sky. And the food! The fresh fish and shrimp. There was a plate of shrimp in sweet sauce that made me hate home more.

It all glowed. All the plants and fish and trees glowed in the night, through the rain too, like bar signs on a main street.

Most of the time I had no shirt on, and I kept a gun strapped to my chest, but there was no need to fire it. I just liked the way it looked, I guess.

I wish I knew what the train ride to the coast was like. I love the train and half the time that’s the best part of a trip. The cars and track sounds and snores and laughs and booze. The air gets a little stale, though, so I like to chew gum so I smell that.

Time skipped back to when I was six years old and my mom told me that I had a gift and that I should share it with the world and that I would be… but the words blurred. I would be.

I was back on the beach. It was day now, so it was hot and light out. I sat in a cloth chair and drank beer, and watched the birds that brought me there dive and call. Toy boats sailed past close to shore, but I was the sole soul on the beach.

I sat and basked and smiled in the sun.

The waves crashed, and the rain and the moons peeked from out of the blue.

When his speed topped out, he closed his eyes and turned off his lights.

The crash was swift and loud.

He was thrown from the car through the glass that sat strewn on the road. It made a path to the ditch a fourth of a mile up. The car rolled five times and the leaks seemed like blood that poured out of a corpse in the night. Gregg lay in the ditch near the road. His eyes were still closed.

A car passed by the scene and the man saw the wreck. He called for help and a flight for life came to take Gregg to St. Joe’s. Clouds hid the stars and it snowed.

“You should be glad he still has a chance. You should be glad he’s still with us. Thank God for his sake, and yours. By all rights his neck should have snapped.” said the nurse to the Redds.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” asked his mom.

“How’s his brain? Will he… will he be the same?” asked his dad.

“There’s no way to know. We just have to wait,” said the nurse.

“Why?” his mom asked his dad. “Why do you think… do you think he was drunk?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s worth the thought right now. Let’s just hope things work out for the best. Let’s hope he lives.”

Luck was on Gregg’s side, if you see it that way. In two weeks he could talk, though he did not have much to say. His mom and dad asked him how he crashed. He said he lost the wheel and it all went so fast that he could not be sure.

Gregg did not know how to feel. He did not feel blessed. He watched folks be rushed to his ward that died, both young and old. He did not know why he was the one who lived. He kept his eyes peeled for drugs he could take to try it once more. He knew he had to.

Gregg thought by now they would have found what was in his trunk.

“Get it? Get who I am? Guess? Who am I?”

Grace thought Zack was an ass.

“God, shut your damn mouth or else I’ll slap you,” she said with a sneer.

“I just made a joke,” said Zack.

“No, Zack. Jokes make me laugh. Fuck. You just make me mad.”

The rain hit the glass of their truck, and Zack stared hard at the drops that splashed and died. It was cold now, and the sun was low in the sky. Red leaves blew through the field of the park on Grace’s side.

“It’s hard to make you laugh, Grace. You don’t smile hon. At least not in the past month or so. Why not?” asked Zack.

“It’s not hard, Zack. It’s not hard, and if you think it’s hard, then you’re… well, you’re just a fag. Plain as day. That’s what I think. I think you’re dumb when you do that voice. And say those things. So there. What do you think I am?” she asked.

Zack winced.

“You’re just… well… mean…  a bitch, kind of…” He shrugged. “Why are you in such a bad mood? You… you just have a way to cut me down a notch with each small thing. I do one small thing, and you cut me down. I try; I try to make you laugh. To make you smile. I try to take gray days, like this shit, these sad days when it rains in the fall and we don’t have a clue what to do and I try to make them fun. I thought it would be nice to look at the park… but you make them… I don’t know.”

Zack turned the knob to turn on the fan and make it blow, and then he leaned down and took a smoke out of the pack of Pall Malls he left on the car floor.

“I thought I did a good Bush voice,” he said with a frown. “You know, he laughs like that. Kind of dumb like that. My fault.”

“No, it’s my fault. You have a point,” she said, as she looked out at the cars that zoomed by them. “The bull stops here. I should have said no.”

She paused as Zack turned to face her.

“This won’t work, Zack. We need to break up… I can’t kid you, and that’s the truth. That’s the real truth. Here’s the ring.”

“You can try, but let me pick out the right tool for you,” said my dad.

When I was a kid, I watched my dad toil in his small shop for hours. Once in a while, he would let me stay up late and help him nail boards or cut a piece of wire, or glue my mom’s things so they were like new again. Then we’d go home and I’d dream of tools.

“Here’s how you turn it,” he said, as he showed me which way made the screws tight.

“I know how to turn it,” I said with a sneer, “left for loose and right for tight.”

“Smart kid,” he said with a laugh.

It was like a dark crypt when the lights were off in the rooms down the hall from the shop and I was scared of them. The shop was hot that June night. There was dust all over the room, and it made a cone shape when it blew up and caught the light that shined from the bench lamp.

“Do you hate the dark?” I asked my dad.

“No, I don’t hate the dark. But it’s sure hard to see things in it. That’s why a lot of folks don’t like it. You just have to be safe, that’s all,” he said as he bent down to work on a board.

“God damn board,” he said as he tried to force the screw the wrong way. “This one’s stuck. Christ, come on!”

“You’ve got it wrong!” I said with a howl.

He looked up and smiled at me.

“Look at that, so I do. It was the weird view, I guess.”

“I’ll do it! Let me try!”

“That’s fine,” he said with a sigh. He wiped his face with an old brown rag. “We have to go after that one, though.”

“Oh, come on!” I whined.

“You heard what I said. Last one. Let’s not make your mom mad.”

I turned the screw the right way, and was in bed in no time.

It’s been ten years now. I had fun with my dad on those nights, and I look back on them all the time.

But how could I know? I was just a kid. How could I know it was him, of all folks? How could I know he was the one who made the bomb?