Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal by William Craddock

Author:William Craddock [Craddock, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780984758531
Published: 2012-05-11T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—MORGAN’S ACID TEST

I stayed home alone for two days and practiced do-nothing, slowing down at last to only a couple of notches past normal, at which time I slept.

On the morning of the third day I woke up to a holy quiet that brought to mind visions of post-card Christmases and gently falling snow. I savored the peaceful hum of silence and almost convinced myself that during the night the end had come and now, outside, the world was reverent and at peace and saved. I heard a diesel on the highway, but it sounded a long way off—droning along slow—an honest, satisfying rumble in the distance like I used to hear them late at night when I was a littler kid, lying awake warm and secure, wondering where they were going, dreaming myself inside the cab driving all night till sunrise on the road in some rough, He-man place like Montana, where I would get out of my truck (named Road Eater—a name I’d heard from a friend whose father was a trucker) at a truck-stop and greet all the men inside, who knew me by my reputation as a hard-drivin-man, and smile my craggy smile at the beautiful Spanish waitress (who also knew me well) and drink my coffee and smoke a slow cigarette while trading stories of Deadman’s curve and burned-out brakes with the other hard-drivin truckers before climbing back into my dusty rig to drive a hundred miles an hour all the way to probably Texas or Wyoming. The diesel honked once to say goodbye and I rolled over and put my feet on the floor, no longer a six-year-old hard-drivin man.

Why is it so beautifully quiet? I pulled the heavy curtains aside and looked at a drifting wall of solid cloud. The entire outside world cushioned in thick, white fog. So thick that it even muffled the street sounds. A day made up of nothing but soft edges. Cool and soft.

I dressed in coat and sweater, walked out into Sherlock Holmes’ London and strolled along with just my boot-taps for company, pretending that I was on the water-front—a lonely sea captain at home in the fog—actually hearing waves lapping on barnacled hulls and fog-horns calling to one another. With every step I took I could feel the depression that had been sitting like a fat toad on my brain rip itself loose one suction-cup finger at a time—like sinuses opening—until, when I reached Tenth Street, the toad fell off with a final croak of surrender and dismay, and I saw with absolute clarity that everything was fine. Only my own hungup mind that produced conflict and confusion. The universe was in perfect harmony. Everything was fine.

Walking back to my apartment, zigzag and really just wandering glad, having met no one in the miracle-healing fog and having been passed by only two or three cars driving slow and quiet with their lights on, I thought of Adriel who loved the fog and the rain and

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