The cars

T

Kathleen Fraser

Kathleen Fraser

Sprinting across the freeway just ahead of them having set his left foot down
directly onto the pavement from the ledge of the cement divide and edging his
other leg forward deliberately—caught the way sports pages show an athlete with
muscles condensed in the effort of crossing through a particular space—and then
she sees the cars coming towards him giving off that early morning shine across
their hoods almost colorless but precipitous in the four-lane parallel rush of metal
and cannot tell if any driver straining into the distance further ahead has seen him
or possibly has caught that glint off the long black flashlight he appears to carry
with its up-beam turned on full and faintly visible due to the angle of early sun
falling over the midwestern plains fanning out in every direction away from the
sudden view of the airport hub’s acclaimed architectural design.

She sees the brief alignment of his body methodically finding its way across the
freeway lanes blue baseball cap fit snugly over his head to just above the hairline
where now dusky skin of his neck breaks into the picture. He’s made it halfway,
she thinks, but she can’t stop the cars rushing towards him even as he scans with
concentration the worn lanes for the thing he’s lost as if he’s walking through the
dark and shining his flashlight wherever the object might have landed, his right
kneestill lifting purposefully upward and forward.
— for C.W.

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