Benjamin shifts to make sucking flatulent noise on the wide leather seat. His glands feel hardened, swollen inside Him just under the skin pricked, as if balloons of condolence, inflated with bile. I’m sorry, get well soon. His throat’s thorned, His mouth a bouquet of tongues, wilting flowers. A limousine a womb, its mother luxury — offering every amenity without such twin of guilt: there’s the latest model television screen, which is blaring technological snow, racked alongside a stack of recent magazines and newspapers headlining the tragedy throughout the last week of shock, onto specifics, statistics, facts, then the editorializing calm that is the grind of daily blame; and then a bar, too, from which He retrieves a can of soda in a flavor purporting to be diet, pops the top, proceeds to spill atop a skidding rumble half the thing all over, PopPop’s robe and Israel’s shirt underneath that are actually two robes and two shirts held together only with hope, the pants that’d been three pairs of Arschstrong’s before the surgery to his gut and its effectual weightloss, which’d been extensively scarring — a deepening stain aired as if the twin or mate of the blood let from the road’s shoulderborne, rubberravaged corpses stacked for disposal and slicking the freeze, their flow sustaining the grass giving way to stumps, the stubby trunks of trees the pubic pines of the earth, the needled gravel, which is the death of the earth, its own grave.
Revived, and sticky with thirst, amid the trickle of waking, His having to go, Benjamin flings kicks at the partition, slings fists against the window inside.
Are we there yet?
And silence.
How about yet?
Which we ask when we’re nowhere, lost to the void to be mapped between dislike and hatred, betwixt irritation and rage.
To count the licenseplates, to bitch the taunting signs. Patience, patience, shalt thou pursue, to pacify, subdue. To memorize the miles, then recite their wear. Only the idle shall distract the idle, and none shall inherit the perpetual revolution of the earth. A tire, enumerate every tiresome turn.
Mada finally faces Him and says, be quiet, sit still…your grandfather’ll be waiting for you, we’ll be there soon enough.
I called him my PopPop — shows what you know, schmuck.
Mada taps down the window inside the limo, taps on the shoulder the shvartze seated up front.
And why didn’t he ride with us…I’ll give you one guess, you putz. Hamm, Mada says, we need more, another one quick — three ccs or so should do it, thinking, stat.
Thinking, too, He might not even remember. Both can only hope. It could’ve been worse, it could’ve happened to me.
I need to pee, Benjamin says and holds at Himself. A rummaging up front, clammy hands, a testicular bag. Hold it in, Mada says again, biding time, as if anything you want to hear’s already been said by better. Benjamim flails, turns to grope the stranger’s suit, His hands pale, His loins tensed. A rumbleseat, up and down as if to nod — it’s urgent.
Jesus goddamned, the shvartze says from his search his head down, we’re out of tranqs; must’ve used them all up just to get Him out of Florida.
I need to pee!
Who knew He’d be this big?
Now, I need right now — oowww, and Benjamin hits His head on the headrest in front; in pain scrunching His face so that His glasses pop from their ears’ safekeeping, to tumble to His lap.
I’m blind, my bladder, too — my everything’s complaining!
Heber from behind the wheel lowers the rear windows to let in the air and wet, the frozen issue of their unholy union. He’s like this little kid, who says, he does, and without taking his sunglasses from their mirror of the darkling road, who’s like a grandfather, too, His own, and with the worst qualities of both; the Mormon just making a suggestion — piss out the window, will you?
I won’t have Him urinating all over, says Mada and he ups the windows on his own, dusts the snow from his hat, which is still on his head despite the wind and his seatmate’s own gusting.
Hamm, when are we expected?
In this weather?
Heber tears the meridian, ripping the shift, and He’s either thrown or throws Himself along with the motion to wedge within the void of the window separating front from rear, not to be raised.
Another thing, Benjamin says from His hang with His body halved, I have to shed…it’s personal — you wouldn’t understand.
A flake, a fall — you would?
A sign flashes from out of the mist, and on Mada’s order Heber swerves from the Parkway exiting into the turn, through the lower lot then skidding to stall just in front of the northbound entrance to the concrete bunker reststop, with such force that Benjamin pudge and all’s set free, unstuck — sent flying through the void separating Him from the shielding’s sprawl, the wipering arms, the obscenities that madden the dash, His legs straddling the head of the shvartze thrown, His teeth gnashing themselves mourned at the wheel.
Hamm staggers out of the limo, then tugs Him after him by the feet, then the legs and waist.
