A raindrop hits my bare arm as I place a tire in the back of the van. Then a second drop hits, and a third and a fourth. By the time I'm settled in the driver's seat, visibility is zero.
I wait for the clouds to empty; start up the audiobook; listen as Jonathan Livingston Seagull begins his quest to eat-to-fly rather than fly-to-eat, to reach beyond the norm, to push the flight envelope, to reach for the stars, to determine to be free.
Then the rain stops as abruptly as it started; allows me to be on my way; to turn the van around in the lot and head north.
On Alma, Jonathan Livingston Seagull learns about speed, and at Confederation Road, the gull reaches terminal velocity in his dive. At that point, I turn off the CD player and watch for the pick-up address.
"Your name...?" I ask the waiting customer, a medium built, well-dressed man in his thirties.
"Ewasyke," he replies and I record the information.
"Oh, so you like to listen to books as you drive?" Mr. Ewasyke asks. His hair is cut short and dyed black.
"Ah, you spotted the case in the door rack, right?"
"Yes, I did. We listen to them on trips all the time."
"I get mine from the library."
"Me too... I'm in Essex, so I put them on order: I give a list of what I'm after to the librarian and she gets them in. The problem is they sometimes all come in at once."
We travel east, following a late model Ford Escort which is behind a Chrysler van. Mr. Ewasyke recalls how he and his family recently waited in a hotel parking lot after a long drive; listened to the conclusion of Steven King's Bag of Bones before checking in.
I pay attention but only partially: I'm focused on a black kitten with a red collar. It escapes through an open door and scurries toward the roadway; crosses the sidewalk and darts directly into the path of the oncoming Chrysler van.
I've witnessed squirrels survive these encounters, sometimes crouching under a moving vehicle until it passes. But in this case, the kitten is not so lucky. For what seems like an eternity the kitten, a red collar adorning its neck, bounces off the van and over to the side of the roadway. The Escort and Chrysler van depart the scene. But I slow to a crawl; watch in horror and anguish as the kitten squirts blood, flails, and dies.
The customer and I pass the dead kitten, look at each other, recognize the same heartsickness in each other's eyes, realize we need to stop. Neither speaks as the van is parked, and we walk back towards the site of the accident. We both feel a sense of empathy, perhaps feel vulnerable.
A young girl in jeans and a white T-shirt arrives at the kitten, bends over it, sobs, and wails, "Oh my poor baby...oh my poor baby...!" She's soon joined by several neighbors and the young girl's mother.
One of the neighbors, a man in his sixties, turns to me as I approach, says, "She saw a van hit it."
"Yes, the van in front of me hit the kitten. I think he could have avoided it but..."
"She's pretty upset," interjects the man.
"Yeah, I would imagine," I say.
"So, it wasn't you?" asks the man.
"No, it wasn't me," I reply, realize the man is too upset to hear what I say. "But I feel sorry for the girl," I continue. "I have a dog and I'd be devastated, like her, if anything like this happened. Before we go is there anything more we can do?"
The man doesn't respond.
"Well, we'd better get going," I advise Mr. Ewasyke, turn and head back to the parked van.
Panic, distress and a feeling of immobilization grip me as soon as I'm back behind the wheel; all I can think to do is warn my wife to always keep our dog on his leash. There's silence; both of us wait to see if anything needs saying.
It seems like I spot every black cat along the route to every pick-up; even a cat with a red collar: Images of the flailing kitten in the throes of death revisit my mind, followed by thoughts of my own dog meeting a similar fate. And being this close to death adds urgency to my own life.
And that's all to this story. But if the baker man brings me a pound of soap bubbles with candy in the middle for my daughter's doll, I'll tell you about the male stripper.
YOU ARE READING
CONFESSIONS
ContoInside the courtesy shuttle, people confessed very personal and intimate, sometimes awkward things. I didn't have my white shirt on backward or wear a cloak. But the 'parishioners' revealed things they'd never tell their friends or family. It often...
