Terminal

Hanover used to be a pretty happening place. But when the jobs started disappearing, it changed. First we lost the cigar factory, then the box plant, and even the recycling center. The shoe factory moved to Mexico and the paper mill relocated to North Carolina. Then the mall shut down after the big chain stores pulled out. Eventually, we were left with the foundry and not much else. If you were good at bending a wrench, you could get a job at one of the garages or dealerships. If you wanted to be a telemarketer, there were still a handful of those jobs available. But most people either had to commute out of town or stay here and work in the foundry or some other meaningless minimum-wage gig. Even commuting didn’t offer much hope these days. It seemed like the rest of the country was starting to get hit hard as well. The town used to be alive. Now industrial ghosts haunted every street and corner. The skeletons of dead factories rusted where they stood, providing shelter for the homeless and the rats. The abandoned buildings were depressing and stank of hopelessness and despair. They reminded me of my father. He’d stunk of the same things.

My old man was a horrible father. A drunk. He worked night shift at the foundry, then hit the bars that catered to third-shift drunks like him. He’d drink every morning from six till about noon, then he’d come home and smack my mom and me around until he went to sleep. Then he’d get back up and start the whole routine over again. I hated the bastard. My earliest memory is of me biting his leg to get his attention, and him kicking me across the kitchen floor. That pretty much set the tone for our relationship.

He died when I was seven. Skipped town with a waitress from the VFW, and two days later their car was hit by a train down in Westminster. Killed them both instantly. I remember thinking that something was wrong with me because I didn’t feel sad. There was no crying, and the people on Mom’s soap operas always cried when someone died. But I didn’t cry for him, not then and not since.

Mom didn’t work, so we lived on WIC stamps, government cheese (which makes the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world) and the paychecks from her string of boyfriends. She dated truckers, mostly. Some of them were assholes. Some weren’t. I liked one guy in particular; we called him Swampy Pete because he was from Mississippi. He used to bring me comic books back from his long hauls across the country, and he taught me how to play baseball and how to fish. I was pissed off when Mom dumped him for a cement truck driver with no front teeth. I didn’t speak to her for a week, and to get back at her, I busted out our picture window with a baseball bat. She beat my ass for that one.

When I was sixteen, Mom got breast cancer. She died halfway through the treatments. But it wasn’t the cancer or the treatments that killed her. One of her boyfriends did. He caught her slow dancing at the bar with another man. He waited for her outside, and after last call, when she and her new friend came stumbling out, drunk off their asses and laughing it up, he shot them both. Mom got it in the stomach and didn’t die right away, so he shot her again. And again. And again. Then he killed himself. Sucked on a gunmetal dick and pulled the trigger as the cops surrounded him.

I cried that time. I cried a lot. After the funeral, I lived with my friend John and his parents until we graduated, since my grandparents were long dead and I didn’t have any aunts or uncles.

* * *

While I was lost in thought, the toothpick popped out of the stereo. I bent over, feeling around for it, and almost slammed into a telephone pole. It would have been ironic, dying like that. In a way, it would have been like what happened to my mother. But I swerved, found the toothpick, and jammed it back into place.

I drove by my old high school and stopped for a moment back behind the gym. I saw myself, sixteen and hanging out in that very spot, cutting class and smoking cigarettes and selling weed to the jocks and the National Honor Society kids. John used to chill there with me. We’d known each other since first grade, grown up together, gotten in trouble together. Now the two of us, along with our friend Sherm, worked together and drank together at Murphy’s Place on Friday nights.