the Glowing chapter 2

Chapter 2

2013 summer

Nerves are shaken, the bedrock or reality eroding away, a lifetime of nightmare conspire to invoke crippling anxiety. Austen runs down the street to the bus stop, past the burned down store. Briskly he follows the curb to distances himself from the object of his fear nearly at a jug he strides backward to keep an eye on the house as if his unbackable gaze could hold back the flow of otherworldly horrors.

Vision blurs, Austin's blood pressure spikes, body fluids with adrenalin. Austen attention a laser focus. Over a block away and all he can see is the house in the approaching distance. The sound of a car horn becomes a whisper as he stumbles off the curb. The bus stops, his line of sight broken, the driver waves Austin in. Austin pores a fist full of coin into the deposit box and taps the booth waiting for his bus pass to print.

Austin doesn't know what bus he boarded. It really doesn't matter, so long as he is facing west. Austin walks to the back of the bus, his head down, one hand has pushed his glasses out of the way so the man can squeeze his eyes. He takes an autogenic breath, he has turned his focus inward to command his heart to slow and vision to clear.

A voice coming from the seat across from him is the only thing that draws him back to this world. "You know, once upon a time, I knew this white nigger. He was a crazy motherfucker. At 10 years old punched a giant so hard, the thing broke like glass." The voice is a lousy resupination of a white man pretending to be a black man.

The voice rings of familiarity. Austin turns to look. A man is sitting in the seat across from his, the man is dressed in a white chef coat and black slacks, he has on a rimless cap and leather boots bloused around his legs, he has a wild looking mustache, uncombed, untrimmed for some time, his skin lightly red. It takes a few moments for Austin's mind to age the face up, but he comes to remember "Rob. Or is it Corry, I recall you asking me to use both at some point."

Rob thoughts his arms out nearly lunching the book he was holding in the air "It is you, Brother! Come here and give me so love." Austin calms quickly in the presences of a friendly face. "Back from the fucking dead, it looks like. Where have you been… for like ever?"

Austin slides over to sit with his friend "everywhere. Sea to shining sea. Most recently New Finland." Austin thinks hard, his eyes rolling side to side as it dawns on him that if Rob is here the rest of his friends might still be around too. "Joe and Randi. Are they still in town?"

Rob has become a fast-talking wisecracker, he speaks with dramatic hand movements, waving a gesturing as he talks, unlike Austin who keeps his arms tight to his body defensively as he engages "Randi left town right after you bro. Joe, he bought your uncles house."

"you still in the apartment on Aquila?"

"Flag and Cedar." Rob swiftly explains.

A memory strikes as Austin recalls the geography of his hometown "The original post office is at that interception; the switch station was part of the same structure. That place was our hang out for a whole summer after Randi showed us the spot."

"that's right, I bought that shit. $30,000 cash money. You remember that?" Rob playfully punches Austin.

"I think I remember a good deal of things. Problem is I seem to be having trouble what was real from what we made up." Austin looks away from rob a moment adjusting his glasses "Rob, do you recall the Monday after I told you my Dad's friend Wally died?"

Rob tips his head up for a moment trying to remember "Was that the day we knocked down the door to the maintenance room and jacked the roof keys."

Austin nods along laughing, he points with a giggle, his spirit momentarily revitalized "and not a single key worked so you went back down and grabbed an icepick and hammer than we hammered the lock of the thing…"

The two pick up at the end of each other's stories "how the hell did they even get a chain lock on the other side of the door? Did they have a pixy slide under the door, lock it then crawl back in?"

Austin looks to the book Rob is holding, it is his book, his first one 'Espyhxia.' "What is that you have there," Austin asks as if he didn't already know.

Rob holds up the book rolling it from side to side as if he didn't remember he was holding it "Well, you know. I was running a background check on myself a week or two ago, wanted to know if my name has come up in any court I didn't know about. Shit should have guessed when we were in 5th grade I would be doing time by sixteen, and I came on something, my name was in a book that was being looked at by the Film Actors Guild. Turns out someone was telling my life story and forgot to ask me if it was cool by me. So, I called up Author House Publishing told them to mail me a copy before I start busting knees. Turns out it was you." Rob points at the cover "you mind?" Rob hands Austin the book.

Austin smiles and pulls out a pin from his caller, he knows what Rob wants "Yeah, I got this." He opens to the inner cover page and signs and dates the book for his childhood friend. "what are you doing these days?"

"Got married in September, trying to knock up my girl, I work at the butcher's shop your old man likes. You, ever stop running?"

Austin looks up as he is writing a letter to Rob on the back page "1998 settled down for a time in St. Croix Wisconsin, finished High school with a 3.5gpa, 2000 I was awarded my Associates of philosophy. Doing mostly day labor in the meantime. Sounds like you may have been in prison around then, What did you do?"

"lots of shit. What I got caught doing was stupid, I was at a bar and an off the clock cop should up with his dog, dog freaked and mulled my ass. The white coats found chemical burns on my clothes, told the judge I was cooking skunk. Next thing I know I was downtown."

"you were in a bar drinking at sixteen?"

Rob nods "bro, you knew I was drinking back when we were together, you and I jacked a case together, we split it down the middle…"

"that was the only time I ever drank." Austin goes on.

Rob slaps Austin "I am going to get you so hammered."

"Bad idea, medicated, GAD." Austin explains "where is Ben? you two were tight."

"you really haven't talked to anyone in ten years. Ben went to Phoenix, became a 'Greaser.' Where are you off to know?" Rob ask as Austin hands him back his book.

"Texas and Louisiana. I am going to stay with Phil so long as I am in town. Anyway, did I get all the details right?" he asks about his book

"No." Rob smiles and points "I gotta transfer lines. Swing on into the stomping ground if you got time." Rob pulls the request stop cord. He gets off the bus and waves as Austin vanishes, the bus taking a right turn onto a side street to get around the nearby construction.

Austin thinks to himself 'Randi is gone, Ben left, so much has changed.' Austin looks out the window as he tries to remember the area as it was. 'the greenway, it was a footpath that ran along the railroad, connected the two towns. None of us ever tried walking the distance. The hardware store on Wizeta street was as far as any of us ever walked. Then there was the nature center, we would cut across that to avoid Lake Victoria when coming home from school in the fall.' The rhythm of the bus shacking becomes hypnotic as the ride goes on.