For A Few Collars More

Sixty-seven fucking years old and still sulking severely at the surreality of life. I lost the woman I loved on a beach near a crude cliff dive called Careone’s in South Padre Island. My mother’s wedding band was in my trousers twirling between the fingers of my right hand as I walked towards the waves where she bathed silently staring at the setting sun. I had become nervous, I remember clearly, as the sound of laughing children dwindled in the distance, but pressed on through cool waters. And right before I uttered a word to get her attention, who knows what that first word was going to be, I heard an explosion followed by a sharp ringing in my ear, and then…nothing.

 

A violent slap woke me to consciousness as I coughed up sand and water and tried making sense of the dancing stars in the sky. Incoherent and muffled mumbling and then murmurs from afar, permeated the promenade next to the ocean. Wailing and wild-eyed bloodstained tourists ran to and fro, some carrying small lifeless bodies. Others crawled or curled themselves into fetal position  trembling and trying to assess the situation.

I was a babe in the woods then; a young man of twenty years old and unaware of the atrocities that awaited me—the challenges, the painful separation of that life and the one that awaited.

 

I get off at the next stop. My mark ( or “collar” is what we old guys call them in the business) appears asleep eleven rows ahead of me—but I assure you, he is not. I look out at the window and I am thankful to still feel the small semblance of humanity I do at times: the monolith enthroned in the midst of a million pine trees sits quietly, majestically, without concern for me and the lives of anybody else on this train. My countenance, now much older, white stubble, crow’s feet…overlaps the scenery and I notice the cigarette burn on the gray argyle scarf I’m wearing—the scarf she gave me the night after our first date right outside her university. The thin,cold glass separates us, the world that calls me home, to feed it with my bones. But I do not want to go the grave just yet, not just yet.

 

“Next stop, seven minutes!,” cried the voice over the intercom. “Seven minutes.”

 

 

As I took one last glance at the monstrous mountain through my window, I put my sunglasses on and pressed my left hand against the window pane. “Soon, you’ll see me. Soon…”

 

 

”…Just let me bring a few more with me.”

∞