Sutton Avenue
Zus figured the blow out would blow off. Emeralda will get hot and tired and eventually ashamed and repentant, he told himself. Yeah. She was always doing that, saying that she’d just get out of the car if he kept ignoring her. She would leave, she’d tell him. Talk to me, she’d say. You never talk. You never say anything. This time she started shrieking - high pitched and loud like some kind of whistle. He practically shit his pants. What the hell? He half expected packs of dogs to chase down the car. He winced. He didn’t say anything. How could he? How do you respond to a shrieking girlfriend? He figured she’d run out of breath eventually. He tried to remember what caused this. He tried to figure out why she was upset. But then he got distracted by how smooth the road felt, how pretty the new blacktop melted into the hill, how strange it was to drive on a strip where no lines had been drawn. And it was a beautiful day. The light glancing off the hood. The wind. That blue, blue sky. She was still shrieking. Pull over. Pull over. That’s it. I am through. I am out. So he stopped the car. She got out. He kept going. She was so loud. He pressed down on the gas and took the smooth hill like a loud fast bird. .
When he came back around he couldn’t see Emeralda anywhere. Or, at least, not where he expected her to be, on the side of the road, ashamed, repentant and, he hoped, silently apologetic. But Emeralda wasn’t on the side of the road where he had left her. She wasn’t on the gravel shoulder. He honked his horn in three short bursts but the lilac scented air seemed to mute the sound. Had he turned off his engine Zus would have noticed that all sounds on this stretch were muted. Not a bird. Not a truck. Not an airplane. Not a buzz from an insect or a growl from mammal. Quiet, except for his engine. Then it was quiet again because Zus pulled off the gravel and kept heading south into town.
Zus followed the northeast corridor road south, passing the Black Eye Golf Course Driving Range which led to a quick rise up a steep hill. An observant passenger would see a flash of river before their view became obscured by columns of flattened cars rusting in the breeze behind a cyclone fence topped with ribboned barbed wire. Here, the road jolts a bit, gets a little rough before smoothing out and entering Chisel City’s northern boundary. Within city limits there are stop lights, bus stops and pedestrians. Ranch houses fade to row houses. There is a Perkins on one corner, a Denny’s on the next and beyond that a Shari’s. Then a break of cemetery green and sudden congestion. The interstate is at the base of a large hill and cars line up on their way out of town.
The interstate runs east/west into Crook County with ten exits into Chisel City. Sutton Avenue is the last exit into town if you are heading east. It’s the first if you’re heading west. Sutton Avenue used to be Sutton’s Crossing which used to be Sutton’s Place which used to be Sutton’s Farm which used to be a name no white man could pronounce, especially not Sutton, but he took the place fair and square back when the government was giving away free land to whoever got there first. This particular afternoon Zus was the last person to enter the remnants of Sutton’s Farm. He entered it in his 1985 Camaro via a back alley off Sutton Avenue. He slowed the Camaro so as not to injure its belly as he maneuvered over the curb. The tires crunched across time loosened concrete. He hadn’t intended to stop. He intended to take this short cut through the alley and across the corner gas station so he could avoid the interstate traffic. But he stopped when he saw a polished brown loafer attached to a grey pant leg jerk out unexpectedly from behind a brick wall. When he came to a full stop Zus saw a group of people the likes of which he had never seen before. At least not here.
There was a stout bald man sweating through a gray suit. There were photographers in jeans and hoodies snapping pictures of what looked like a very tall, silver water fountain. A group of middle aged people and one twenty-something couple stood to the side getting their pictures taken. The Chisel City mayor was there looking petite in front of the silver water fountain thing. She smiled for the camera and held a large over-sized pair of scissors. One overweight woman in black capris and a baseball cap held the end of a thick green ribbon, an eight year old boy in a similar baseball cap held the other end. There were maybe 30 people in all and they all looked at Zus as if he’d shown up to a party naked. Zus hit the gas and reversed. He heard the crunch. There was a gasp and now they were all running towards him and all he could think was how grateful he was that they weren’t shrieking.
Shrieking, that’s what awakened Dexter Johns that hot summer afternoon 145 years ago. Saved his life too, it did. When he took his hat from his eyes to find the source for the intolerable sound he noticed buzzards overhead. Circling. He swore to himself that the big ugly birds looked disappointed when he got to his feet. He cursed at them. They flew off but they smelled bad. Or maybe he smelled bad. Heck, he didn’t know. He knew though that it was hot and he needed water. Soon. He had some plans he needed to carry out. Big plans but his brain was swelling in the sun. He could feel it. He looked for where the vegetation was growing thickest. The hills near him were bare. The hills beyond those hills were greenish brown. Too far. The flat space to east - that was more promising. He thought he saw patches of grass in the dust so he walked toward that, each shrieking step stabbing his hungover dehydrated brain.
