Gavel That Built Civilization

The hot rubber chirped, desperately clutching at the asphalt, as the little blue Nissan ground through a hard left turn at 43 MPH. Swinging into place, the wheels straightened, and the vehicle’s carcass melted comfortably into the motherly lap of the shocks. Like quicksilver, the gear shaft was hammered into third, the gas pedal pinned to the furry earth of carpet. The pistons feverishly churned inside their tiny worlds of slimy steel and captured chaos, fueling the hard pull of the front tires. Mastering the land, these tires meshed into the sweltering river of black road; momentarily they became one-both being creamy with heat.

The plastic RPM needle swam to four, five, drowned to two… caught, and leapt to three, four-the little rice burner was now tinkling down the road at 56…60…63-the gear shaft slid into neutral, releasing a whizzing circle of biting steel teeth. The car skimmed across a straight crop of road, roaring pass a posted speed limit that read 25 in plain black numbers, set against a background of china-white. Quaint, two and three bedroom homes and sagebrush stained fields flew by. Bright paint-jobs, gravel and bark landscapes, infant trees, and oil-stained driveways blended into a never-ending blur of rainbow-colored, unregistered vision.

The driver swayed in the placenta of the car with blasts of sound rocking his entire mass forward and back, up and down, all over. It seemed he didn’t have control over his own body-that the sound was welded to his brainstem and flooded its electrical wiring, its wavelengths of ordered thought. It seemed the wavelengths of sound had replaced the wavelengths of thought. But nothing was replaced; sound enhanced thought. The music erupted out of two, huge, wooden house speakers, which lay on their sides, consuming the entire back seat. Their explosions shook everything in the cab, blistered through the aluminum skeleton, rung the tires.

The air pulsed to the irregular beat of music like a giant offbeat heart, and was moist and tangible and impregnated with odors of spiced meat, tomato sauce, melted cheese, juicy with warmth vegetables, and a sweetness that couldn’t quite be labeled. These aromas wafted through and all over everything, burrowing and nesting deep into the fabric of the seats, the vinyl covering the roof, the clothing that hung loosely over the driver’s skin-and into the actual skin itself.

The uncovered portions of skin showed smooth and sprayed with a downy fur, marking its youth for what it was: teeming, full of vigor, and in swelling bloom. But he had none of the softness stamped into the fiber of most youth, least of all his hands. The knuckles were covered with slashing mounds of fleshy purple, which bubbled up and over the otherwise level complexion. The palms were calloused and horny and scratchy to the touch. The skin here was dead, or so it appeared. It was a piss-yellow, swirled with the dry gray of cement, and splotched with the deep purple of grape juice. Some areas were glossy like plastic, especially the little balls right below the fingers. Here, the skin appeared and felt more dead than anywhere; and, like death, the balls were almost completely colorless.

Blank.

White with nothingness.

Not white, like some people are coined white, real white. White like the background of the posted speed limit. China-White. White that sticks out; white that grabs the eye; white that absorbs all color around it and regurgitates it, making it fiercer than it could ever be alone. The hands were not soft. The little white balls of dead skin made the palms appear fierce.