You reckless, feckless pustule of slag and drool, try! Jus' try! Say your name gravely. Don't wait for that faraway bell promised to signal the cavalry of you into battle; it was a lie you ought to stop tripping over before you break more than a hip or head or relationship. The brugh you thought never spent has emptied and another has to be fashioned from the drawn filaments of will left you, unnamed inheritance, bundled in fist to pull yourself out and over for something else.............the holy place is spent...................
A boy named Joey or Jimmy decided one day he should leave his house, never deliberating a goal except the one of leaving. He emptied his father's suitcase, packed a whitebread sandwich of peanut butter, a can of pop and a few curios that he'd once imagined magical, though for all the world they were the cheapest trinkets: a piece of copper wire, one smooth stone sized the center of his palm, a sheet of paper he had found three days before, wet and yellowed and smelling of dung. Fingers curled around the suitcase's handle, dressed in his Sunday school clothes, he flung open the door to his first floor apartment, felt the burst of sudden sunlight, smelled the smell of nearby bushes, gasoline city air, things unknown, and briskly marched out onto the street.
A car knocked him down, squashed his head into a crunchy mulch, and Joey or Jimmy died. The car drove on to meet the intersection, rolling to a slow stop at the red light, the driver wondering if he should go right and then left on the next street, or wait out the light and continue north. He had an appointment with his dentist.
Colgate traded three points above expectations that morning. The driver's dentist read this and smiled. His teeth were white. People said "pearly."
The dentist's wife came. Joey or Jimmy's father sighed, spent. She smiled. Her teeth, too, were pearly.
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