Tag: car stop

The lights are obvious, their staccato rhythm mesmerizing against the gloomy backdrop of the highway at night. But they are alone, with no siren to punctuate the otherwise still air, as the old car eases to the side of the road. Steam rises from the car’s exhaust pipe, disappearing into the dark sky as it climbs. Sliding into place a moment later, a police cruiser blocks out the view of the old car as it sits idling on the shoulder, like an old lover tossed aside.

A man emerges into the shadow cast by the blinking lights. He gazes for a brief while at the passing traffic, at all the cars that ease across the lane line in the opposite direction, their drivers splitting their focus between the lights and their own destinations. It’s easy for him to forget the past when the present is so immediate, so sensitive. His cruiser purrs at his back, bringing him back to the moment, and the reason why he stopped in the first place. He approaches the old car, his long stride getting him to the driver’s door in four steps.

The man in the old car sits ramrod straight, but his back is crooked so it hurts him to no end to assume such a position. He just knows it’s expected of solid citizens, something he is not, but something he wants to portray to the officer who is approaching his vehicle. He checks out his eyes in the rearview mirror, and they sparkle with a pent-up mischief that might just be his undoing on this starless night, on a road he’s never been on before, in a county that detests his kind.

He has long, greasy hair that hangs limp past his shoulders, in the fashion he has always preferred, even after the lice were found to have infested that same hair some months back. In fact, he still itches from time to time, what he perceives as a ghost itch but what is in fact still lice doing spring cleaning in the nest on top of his head. There are beer bottles scattered across the back seat of his car, something he can do nothing about. At least it’s not light beer, he thinks, strangely proud of his manly attitude in the face of difficult questions to come. Continue reading “Firefly Lights”