There Is No Year - Blake Butler [16]
PART TWO
Live audiences frighten me to death.
Sharon Tate
WHAT TOOK THE FATHER SO LONG AT WORK
The next day it took the father six hours to get home from work. He took the same way he took home every day but each day it seemed to take a little longer. The streets went on a little further each time he drove them. There were new things on old streets. There were new streets with no signs for street names. There were traffic lights spaced barely yards apart. Certain lights would sit for many minutes red with the father edging the car further and further into the empty intersection. There never seemed to be any other cars. Ahead, the horizon of no dimension—limbless and suspended, several states away.
For a while the father could not hear anything around him—not even breathing, not even wind—except the sound of something dragging under the car, but each time he pulled over there was nothing. The car stereo would not make sound.
At one point on one of the streets the opposite lane filled with running dogs. The dogs were black and had shining eyes and they were drooling from the mouths. The drool splattered on the windshield and made the street slick and the father skidded a little in his own lane. The windshield wipers made an awful screeching, as if soon the glass would break.
The drive home took so long the father got hungry two different times and at each he stopped at the same fast food restaurant and ordered the same thing, though the two items tasted very different. An attendant in one of the two fast food drive-thru windows had her eyes shut the entire time she took his order. There was a picture of the drive-thru window on her shirt and the father swore he could see himself sitting in the car outside that cotton window though the woman never turned toward him well enough that he could see for sure.
Q&A RE: THE FATHER’S CAR & HOUSE, ETC.
Finally in his driveway the father stopped and parked the car. He took the key out and he touched the key. The father saw the house. The father paused again and put the key in and turned the car back on and edged it closer to the garage. He moved as close to the house as he could manage without touching. The closer he got the car to the house, the more it seemed to shake. The father put the car in neutral and got out and put his head against the hood.
Q: DID THE CAR SOUND FUNNY?
A: The father could not tell. He was not good with his hands or with machines. To some this made the father not a man.
Q: WAS THERE SOMEONE IN THE CAR STILL?
A: The father didn’t think to look.
Q: WHO WAS WATCHING?
A: The house had several windows.
Q: WHAT SHOULD THE FATHER HAVE KEPT IN THE GLOVE BOX THAT HE DID NOT?
A: A gun, a length of wire, a set of rubber gloves, emergency money and some form of rations, Fear of Music by Talking Heads, fake flowers (the kind that never die), permanent marker (the kind that never can be erased), a photo of his wife from a time he’d like to remember (uh-huh), a photo of his mother.
Q: WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET THAT THE FATHER DID NOT SEE, DISTRACTED AS HE WAS BY HIS OWN CONDITION?
A: The father did not see the enormous object wrapped in black plastic that took up the majority of the yard.
Q: WITH THE GAS REMAINING IN THE CAR, AND ALL OTHER GAS PERHAPS FOR SALE OR UNDERGROUND ELSEWHERE NOTWITHSTANDING, HOW FAR AWAY COULD THE FATHER GET FROM THE HOUSE IF HE DROVE THE CAR AT EXACTLY THE SPEED LIMIT IN ONE DIRECTION AND DID NOT PAUSE?
A: The father could not get far away at all.
WHAT THE FATHER DID THEN
With the car still on the driveway burning fumes, the father came into the house. He’d thought of something he needed to tell the mother. He’d thought of this thing earlier while staring into the work computer and had meant to write it down but didn’t and now