Virginia Lovers by Michael Parker

Author:Michael Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

5

DANIEL SPRAWLED IN THE shade of an oak behind a gas station. A dirty patch of woods in Somewhere, Virginia. Trucks and buses hummed past on the highway. Between them settled a bleak weekday quiet that reminded Daniel of sickdays. He held his head in his hands and watched ants swarm a hill. The things they carried back to their quarters—bits of corn chips, a crust of bread spread with pimento cheese—were too big for them, yet they shouldered their harvest dutifully He watched with admiration, as if their tireless industry might inspire him to action.

But all he could do was watch until his little brother came splashing through the brush.

“I’ve been looking all over for you. Thought you were in the bathroom.”

“Look at these ants,” said Daniel.

Pete kneeled, his hands plastered across the blown-out knees of his jeans.

“They working their asses off,” he said. Crouching, he watched not the ants but his brother studying the ants. “Anything in particular you want me to take away from this?”

Daniel felt a surge in his belly. It might have been a remnant of big-brotherdom, this rumbling, an instinctual attempt to lead his brother out of harm’s way, teach him a lesson. But it seemed too late for such an impulse, and he decided it could just as easily be thirst.

He said as much. “Take away whatever you want to, I’m thirsty as hell.”

Pete returned to the gas station and bought his brother an orange soda. Daniel turned it up and sucked bubbles from the bottom of the glass. When the soda was empty Pete said, “We best be motivating.”

In the parking lot, Daniel made for the car, but Pete stopped him.

“I sold it,” he said.

“What?”

“The Galaxy. He gave me eight hundred dollars for it. I could have gotten way more but there’s no title. I didn’t even know what a title was. Turns out I know fuck all about selling a car.”

“You sold the car?”

“He asked me if it was hot. I fed him all kinds of bullshit. We need to bolt before he changes his mind.”

Daniel noticed two coveralled men watching them from the mechanic’s bay.

“How are we supposed to get anywhere without a car?”

“I’ll tell you where we’ll get with a car. Jail, that’s where. You know they’ve reported us missing by now and you know damn well they’ve got every cop on the East Coast looking for that car.”

“I don’t remember deciding we were going to run from the police,” said Daniel. Actually, he remembered very little of the day before. What he did remember floated back to him fuzzily, out of sequence, which made it all the easier to forget.

“Somebody’s got to decide something. I don’t see you doing anything but studying your ant farm.”

“This isn’t some episode of Starsky & Hutch,” said Daniel. But what was it, really? It might as well be some tired cop show, for all the resemblance it had to his life up until a week ago.

“You want to go home?” said Pete. “Fine by me.

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