Terminal

The truck didn’t want to start right away. It coughed, the same way I’d been doing. I ended up having to pop the hood and hit the starter with a hammer. Then it turned over. The power button on my stereo was broken, so I’d wedged a toothpick in and taped it in place to keep the power on. As the engine sputtered and choked, the radio came on. Howard Stern was interviewing a midget. I thought about all the guys I’d heard call in to the Stern show over the years, dying of cancer and wanting him to fulfill their last wishes— usually to get laid by a porno star.

My wish was that this would all be a dream. It couldn’t have been real, could it? Maybe the doctor was wrong.

My hands started to shake, and everything began to spin again. Howard’s voice grew muffled, like it was coming down a long tunnel. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, waiting for it to pass.

I didn’t feel much like laughing, so I turned off Howard and put in Eminem’s The Eminem Show instead. The thudding bass made my headache worse. Eminem was rapping about dying tomorrow and wondering if the people left behind would feel love and show sorrow or if it would even matter.

I turned the stereo off and drove in silence.

There was no way I was going back to work, but I couldn’t go home yet either. My hands just wouldn’t stop shaking. I stopped at a gas station, bought a pack of cigarettes, and lit one up. I inhaled, savoring the smoke. The nicotine rushed through my veins and everything was okay after that. My hands quit shaking. The headache became dull. I was awake and alert. I felt alive. Alive. For the time being, at least.

* * *

That was how it all started. Everything that came after— John and Sherm, Murphy’s Place, the plan, Wallace and his crew, the robbery, the standoff, the fucking bloodbath— all of it started with that trip to the doctor. I hadn’t even wanted to go. Michelle made me when the headaches got really bad. Maybe if I hadn’t gone, none of this would have ever happened. But it did. All of it; the bank, the hostages, Sheila and Benjy. Especially Benjy. Especially him . . .

That was how it started.

Let me have another cigarette, and I’ll tell you what happened next.

TWO

Like I said, I couldn’t go back to work at the foundry, but I couldn’t go home yet either. Michelle got off from the Minit-Mart at two, and by then, she’d have picked T. J. up at day care. They’d be waiting for me, and Michelle would have questions. Questions I wasn’t sure how I’d answer.

Instead of going back to our crib, I drove around town on autopilot— just aimlessly cruising the streets and back roads and alleys. I’d grown up here, lived here, and the way things looked, was going to die here, and I knew those roads forward and backward.

After a while, I experimented with the radio again. Pink was getting the party started. I turned it back off. Radio sucks these days, with the exception of Howard Stern. Pretty soon, I guess he’ll be gone too, and then I don’t know what the fuck people will listen to. I popped in Dr. Dre’s The Chronic instead. Perfect background music. I kept the volume low and turned the bass down so it wouldn’t make my head hurt more.

Eventually, I rolled by the trailer park where I grew up. The old trailer that I’d lived in with my parents was in pretty bad shape. The landlord was renting it to a group of migrant workers up from Mexico for the summer to pick apples at the orchard in Fawn Grove. There must have been twenty of them living there, and I couldn’t imagine how they all fit under that roof. It had been crowded when it was just the three of us, before Dad left.

I was born Thomas William O’Brien, but everybody called me Tommy. Everybody except for my old man, who didn’t call me much of anything, and my mom, who called me “asshole,”

“little cock-sucker,” and “shit-for-brains.” I was white trash from white trash, and I admit it. Around here, you’ve got no choice. Everybody in this town is trash, and everyone is poor. The only difference is the color of their skin, what they drive, and whether they listen to metal, rap, or country music. If you live out in the suburbs, you’ve got a chance, but here in town it’s always the same story.