The Walk

Nothing ever happened in Greensburg, Texas, population six thousand, and Karen was tired of it. She was tired of the children fighting. She was incredibly tired of dirty laundry, dirty dishes, dirty floors. She swept back her dirty brown hair, looked out her kitchen window, and watched the sun begin its evening descent. She gazed around and took in the clutter that was threatening to overtake the limited space a blasted realtor had called "quaint" a few short months ago. It didn't feel quaint anymore. She never seemed able to keep up the same pace as the clutter. "Miriam," she called to her eldest child, "I'm going for a walk. Start dinner and don't wait for me." She slammed two boxes of macaroni and cheese on the counter and ran out the back door. She was suffocating, could feel the bands squeezing her chest.

"Karen," she heard someone call behind her as she walked around the side of her modest home. She tried to ignore the shrill voice and quickened her pace. Her tennis shoes began a soft plod on the sidewalk, her arms swung in rhythm; she took several steadying deep breaths. "Karen," called the same voice, "I really want to talk to you!"

Karen slowed and turned to the voice. "Okay Patty, what's the problem?"

"I'm at the end of my rope," Patty's voice rose in pitch as she hurried towards her neighbor, dyed-blonde hair tucked into an uncharacteristically sloppy ponytail. "I can't find anyone to take the kids next week. Please, can't you do it this one last time? Please?" She folded her hands together, pleading and prayer-like with little-girl poutiness oozing from her watery blue eyes and nervously thin face.

The bands were squeezing hard. "Patty," Karen began as gently as she could, "I can't hear about your problems right now." She noted the gaping mouth. "I know, there's a first time for everything." She turned and began her journey. Her pace quickened as she walked. The farther away she travelled the more freely she moved, and she felt the bands loosen with every step. She went faster, faster, until exhilaration of freedom had her running with a speed that startled her. Those thirty extra pounds didn't seem to be slowing her down; her feet had developed a seperate will and she couldn't stop.

She thought about Bill. He'd be coming home soon, wanting to tell her about his day at the plant. The more she heard about it, the more excruciatingly boring it became. He'd walk in the door, peck her on the cheek, and reach into the refrigerator for a cold beer. He'd sit in the easy chair closest to the television and prop his feet on the matching blue ottoman. He'd sigh with contentment, his round ruddy face creasing into a simple grin. Nothing much bothered Bill. The children would be bickering. The television would be blaring. The dog would be barking, and Bill would be smiling.

At last her feet began to slow, finally coming to a stop at the edge of a patch of trees. Black asphalt had given way to gravel and she couldn't remember when she'd seen the last house. Her chest was heaving and she bent to her knees, suddenly crushed by a weight so intense, so overwhelmingly heavy that she couldn't remain standing. Her face was a sheen of sweat; when she began to cry the tears were intermingled, salt water on salt water. Twilight gathered as the tears gained strength and she began to wail, a desperate, keening sound.

The sun bled slowly into the ground, almost gone before her voice faded. She was physically spent, drained of strength, and she sat quietly, knees raised, arms clutched tightly around them. She drank in the early night, quietness feeling eerie but cathartic. Only the crickets were loud this far out. She sighed long and laboriously and began to hum, rocking back and forth, humming softly to herself and thinking about nothing and everything all at once. When her wordless song melted away with the last drop of evening color, she put her hands to the soggy earth and pushed herself up, struggling and panting from the exertion. She brushed at her jeans which were dirt-streaked along with the rest of her.

Gravel crunched underneath her feet as she began to walk. It was loud, almost blocking out the sounds of winged sparrows and chickadees above, so she was startled when a glare of headlights blinded her. The car slowed and pulled up to her, and Karen's pulse began a rapid drumbeat. It was a sleek, dark Lexus, the kind only one resident in Greensburg owned. "Great," she muttered, and put a hand to her hair. He leaned over and rolled down the window on the passenger side of his car.

"Hey," he called out, "Do you need some help?"

She didn't know what to say. She was embarrassed to see him this way-her hair askew, her face blotchy. It didn't matter anyway, she knew that, but she took a breath, still embarrassed, blood pounding in her ears. "I went for a walk." She stepped away from the car, away from the glare of the headlights. "I've never been out this far. Could you tell me which direction I should take to get back to town?"

He was silent for a moment and peered into the dark to study her face. "Karen Roberts?"

She felt defeated. "Yes. Hi Carl." She swiped again at her jeans.

Carl opened the passenger door. "Get in."

Karen hesitated. "Are you sure? I'm kind of grimy-"

"Get in," he barked more forcefully, so she obediently slid into the car. She was annoyed with herself for feeling like she was getting a ride with the captain of the football team and resolved not to look towards his liquid-dark eyes or slick black hair. At least not so he would notice.

The car slid back onto the gravel road and Carl commented, his hands loose on the steering wheel, "I didn't recognize you at first."

Karen closed her eyes briefly. She put a hand to her face and pictured what this man would see. She viewed her faded, soiled jeans, her ancient t-shirt stretched far beyond its limits, her freckled face, plump and devoid of makeup. An old, boring housewife. "Thanks for picking me up," she ventured. "It was nice of you."

"I'd hate to see your husband at work and tell him I left his wife on the side of a dirt road." Karen laughed, she couldn't help it. As if Bill would have a word to say. Carl glanced at her. "Did I say something funny?"

"I'm just- I'm laughing at my own little joke."

He nodded and began to fidget, drumming his hands on the wheel, tapping his foot to some tune Karen couldn't hear. Even his head began to bob a little. She glanced at the stereo to convince herself she wasn't going deaf. No, buttons and switches were dormant. The suddenness of his question jolted her. "Has old Bill been saying anything about the goings-on at the plant lately?"

"Not really. I don't listen much when he does talk about it, to be honest. The whole thing bores me." She put a hand to her mouth, emitted a small gasp. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude. It's just hard to listen when I understand about half the vocabulary."

"Sure, that makes sense." He was quiet again, so quiet Karen became agitated herself, wondering if she could ask to turn on the stereo. Maybe she could feign interest in that sort of thing. His next bullet-like question jolted her again. Too much time around this guy, she mused, and she'd need some sort of heart bypass. "I work on the processing belt. Have you ever been there?" He continued when she shook her head. "I'm a quality control genius. I punch buttons on a computer and the thing tells me whether the packages have the right combination of ingredients."

Karen nodded, her mind already beginning to wander. "Do you and Bill work together?"

She felt, but did not see in the dark, that his eyes were intensely upon her. "You're joking," she heard his soft response, and those little hairs on the back of her neck rose.

"I told you, I really know very little about the plant. I know you make some sort of sugar substitute but that's all." She felt the need to justify herself, something she hated. "Remember, we've only been here for three months."

Silence, and then, "I'm nowhere near the big shots who make the stuff. I'm out on the floor, making sure those bozos don't get sued if something goes wrong."

"You don't like your job?"

The quiet this time felt like a bomb, the kind that was set to come apart, the kind that tensed you up until you were nothing but a knot. Karen could see that Carl's hands on the wheel were clenched white. "I'm the nobody who lets your husband and his buddies screw me around."

It was said so softly, so eerily quiet, that Karen thought she must have heard wrong. Her eyes widened as he continued a desceptively calm sort of tirade, and it dawned on her that she'd done something she'd told her children to never do: she'd accepted a ride from a virtual stranger. She had met him at the company Christmas party, had spoken to him for a sum total of fifteen minutes. Attractiveness aside, she didn't know him. She'd been so wrapped in her own misery...

"You don't know what it's like to get no respect, no consideration, no attention. No nothing." His eyes and body were rigid; he was staring straight ahead, into the night, as he spoke. "You don't get it. I've given everything to that plant. All I have left is the blood in my veins, and they'd take that if they could. I've watched them come and go, come and go, but I stay on. I stay and work my ass off. I haven't got a damn thing to show for it. Not a damn thing." Abruptly he turned to her. "They fired me, today. After fifteen goddamn years, they fired me." His breath began to puff and he was suddenly animated. "You know what they said to me? They said the company had outgrown me. They outgrew me. ME!" He was shouting, becoming contorted with rage.

As his breath puffed into Karen's face she smelled the alcohol and cussed at herself for not noticing earlier, for being too distracted by muscled thighs and a well-developed chest. All she saw now was a drunk maniac with the power of a Lexus at his fingertips. She heard her own breath quicken, felt her hands become moist with nervous sweat. This was all so unreal, so like some disjointed dream sequence.

"And now I have you. It was like fate talking to me, seeing you there in the dark. I'm driving along thinking about how worthless my life is, how worthless I am, and there you are."

"Carl," she tried to keep her voice steady, soothing, "what is it you want? I don't have anything to do with the plant. If you take me home we can talk to my husband. He's a reasonable man, he really is. He'll get your job back." She'd never tried so hard to keep her cool. She wanted out of the car, just out. Out. She never knew her hands could sweat so much.

"I sold my soul to that place and I'm taking it back." His driving became more erratic as the car's speed continued to increase.

Karen couldn't think anymore, she was panicked. All she could do was jitter, attempt some sort of rational thought as the adrenaline in her body screamed for release. Instinct, desperation, and a carnal need to live took control of her senses as she lunged for the steering wheel. The car careened off the road and into underbrush before Carl had a chance to react, but then he wrenched the wheel from her and threw her to the passenger side, yelling "bitch," and fighting for control of the vehicle. She moved her foot to press down on the accelerator and the car surged ahead, throwing Carl back. Once again Karen had control of the wheel and tried to steer it back onto the road, but it was too late. The car veered into a mass of trees. The impact was bone-crushing, the sound was deafening. Karen's head erupted into dozens of brilliant colors.

* * *

Her eyes opened slowly, heavily. She felt hungover and wondered fuzzily if she'd done something she shouldn't. When she attempted to raise her head, she couldn't help crying out from sharp stabs of pain. She tried to move, but her legs encountered resistance. Her mind was trying to right itself, trying to make sense out of her surroundings. She felt as if she were trapped inside some small, tight labrynth of leather and tin. Movement was difficult because she was stiff, like wood, but at least everything seemed to be working. She crawled awkwardly out of her metal trap and sat, swaying, on the spongy earth. Even her teeth hurt. She stood slowly, awkwardly, and was able to fully view the wreckage. Realization dawned gradually, and when it did, she raised her face to the black sky and thanked her Maker for her life. The car, once a beautiful black Lexus, was now a tangle of metal, plastic, and leather. Karen began to walk unsteadily around the mess until she found what she was searching for some ten yards away.

Carl had obviously been thrown. His left arm was bent at an odd angle, and his face was buried in dirt and vegetation. The legs were splayed unnaturally at the knees. His right arm was invisible, pinned beneath his body. Blood was trickling slowly from what had been the back of his head. It was pooling onto the ground and meandering its way, forming a river of sorts that was disappearing into the underbrush. Karen swallowed, refusing to allow revulsion to win and she dropped to her knees, compelled to check. She pressed violently shaking fingers to the neck and put a hand to the mouth that was almost completely hidden in dirt. She felt no stir of breath. She gagged and stood quickly, paying for that speed of movement when her vision swam. She turned and stumbled away, eventually finding her way back to the road.

As she tottered along, she could hear her own ragged breath resonating inside her head. And she was so very, very cold. Just at the point when she felt she must stop or collapse onto the road, she noticed a shimmer of light. It was small and far in the distance, but she felt a resurgence of energy and grunted in relief as she picked up her pace as much as she was able. The shimmer gradually began to take shape, and she eventually found herself at the front door of a large old farmhouse. She stood on the wooden porch, shaking till she thought she'd fall to pieces. An elderly man, stooped and looking suspicious, opened the door which squealed in protest. He stood, staring at her mutely, until someone shrilled a question from the inner recesses of the house. "Ma," he responded, his voice wheezy and thin, "we got us a car wreck. I think."

What happened next for Karen fell into a kaleidoscope of broken images. She was vaguely aware of being pushed into the house and onto a musty couch, then surrounded by a blanket that smelled of cabbage and mothballs. She heard the scream of a siren and felt herself being placed onto a padded stretcher. The light around her was too bright, so she closed her eyes.

* * *

A Herroll County Sheriff's deputy tried to get a statement from her until a nurse shooed him away, but he left with a promise to return. In the emergency room, Karen was pronounced to be in remarkably good shape with the noted exceptions of a wrenched shoulder, various cuts and bruises, and a concussion. They kept telling her how lucky she was.

A rush of air from the hospital curtain announced the arrival of her husband and two of her children. Bill's apple face looked unnatural with a frown marring it, and he hugged her to him awkwardly, taking care with the shoulder, and asked gravely, "can you tell us what happened?"

Miriam poked her head around from behind her father. "Mom? Are you okay?"

"Mom?" She heard the hesitant voice of her son before she saw his freckled face. "Heather wanted to come but dad said no. They don't let little kids in the hospital." He scrunched his face. "You should have heard her yell when dad said she had to stay with Patty."

Miriam, almost as tall as her father, shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably and finally spoke. "I hate to bring this up right now, but does all this mean I can't go to Jean's tomorrow?"

"Hey, if she doesn't go to Jean's, how am I supposed to get to the skating rink? You promised." Jeremiah began to whine.

Their father spoke. "Kids, that's enough." The children closed their mouths tightly, faces mutinous. Bill shoved them behind the curtain, telling them to wait in the hall, but not before he shoved a handful of coins into each outstretched palm. He turned back to his wife. "I'm sorry, hon. You know they were worried about you. Now that we know you're okay they're just-"

"I know," Karen rasped.

A nurse came in to take her pulse. She was being admitted for overnight evaluation, they said, and she was relieved when her husband left. Not too much time passed before the Sheriff's deputy came back. Karen told him she couldn't remember. "All I know," she said, "is that I went for a walk."