The Late Bird's Tale: A Tale of the Floating World

Part 1 || 7 | Emma | A Truck Driver, A Good Samaritan, A Letter

Written on 1/1/21. New Year Season, January 2021 edition (1st scene).
Written on 1/1/21. New Year Season, January 2021 edition (2nd scene).
Written on 1/1/21. New Year Season, January 2021 edition (3rd scene).
Emma Vasari (picture reference).

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Part 1 || 7 | Emma

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A Tale of a Truck Driver

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After the three muse officers left, Taiso Takagi revealed the real reason for his errand, confiding in Nathaniel his suspicions about Judy's case. As far as Taiso could remember or tell, it started with a semi-trailer truck and an accidental death during one of his traveling vacations on foot in the American West in the 1980s. Anyway, based on a cursory investigation of the incident at the time, he said that the driver of that semi-trailer truck was a gloomy specimen of a man drinking a soda and eating a hamburger while he drove. For all he knew, this truck driver was an average Joe, but he had a peculiar taste in music. In fact, he had been listening to the lead singer of his favorite thrash metal band rip out his vocal cords on his stereo—

When something jolted his seat beneath him.

The jolt rattled the cabin and splashed some of the contents of his soda carton over the carpeting from his cup holder, soaking it in foaming suds.

"Fuck!" the driver said, who had bitten his tongue on the jolt and was now tasting blood mixed in with a mouth full of hamburger. He pressed the brake pedal, slowing his truck to a halt on the side of the road, and parked it on the shoulder. He checked the ruined carpet beneath the cupholder, where a good portion of it had been turned into a dark brown stain, and now faced the prospect of explaining to his boss why there was a stain there. "Ah, Christ! Fucking animals keep running across the fucking road. Why does this keep . . ."

This man went on cursing like that as he opened the cabin door and walked in the direction where the jolt happened. At first, he walked on without an idea where the roadkill was, but after a few more paces along the shoulder, he spotted a dark fluffy mass of bloody skin and meat and felt sorry for the creature. He crouched down and inspected it, feeling so sorry for the dead creature that he went back to the semi-trailer truck and got out a pair of dog tags and came back to it. He took off one tag with the name of Vasari on it, the name of a dearly departed dog he had bought for his daughter ten years ago, and placed it next to the corpse. He kept the other one and put it in his pocket.

"Sorry, buddy," he said. "Didn't mean to run you over. Say hello to Vasari for me. Emma would appreciate it."

The man then left, got back into his semi-trailer truck, and drove his way out of this story.

But for the dead creature the man had run over, death was the start of something wonderful, starting with the passage of the daytime into that of the nighttime that inscribed its new name into its astral soul. From the daughter of the truck driver's name and the dearly departed pet that he had bought for his daughter, the fox's name became Emma Vasari, though the fox wouldn't know for a while at the time.

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A Tale of a Good Samaritan

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The hours elapsed into nightfall. During that eternal passage, repeated since the God of Creation split the night from the day, the spirit of the dead fox got up from the edge of the road where its mangled corpse lay next to a dog tag. This fox had no idea it had been run over, nor had it any idea who that poor bloodied thing was on the roadside. All it knew was that the corpse was an unfortunate statistic, so it sniffed at the poor thing, wrinkled up its nose at the stretch of death fluttering up its nostrils, and stalked off into the night.