Lucy Cotter sits hunched over on the ground. Streams of blood from split knuckles running to her fingertips, her eyes stare out of focus as each drop falls to the dust. Lucy’s heart pumps life through veins, through knuckles, down her fingers and to the earth. Her heart reaches out to beat upon the ground, to break the agonizing still, but as the silence comes from within, the sound that breaks it cannot flow from the same heart. The world will have to call Lucy back.
“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try your call again,” speaks a recorded voice through the hanging receiver.
One bloody hand slips to the ground, steadying Lucy as she stands. Hanging the receiver on its cradle, for a moment she holds it down, looking at the red flowers where her fist met the side of the payphone. Strange flowers, one beside another, drying under the sun.
Lucy’s disappointed, she freaked out and tried to punch the phone off the wall. Disappointed she freaked out, and disappointed the phone broke nothing but her skin.
Knots of tension twist around Lucy’s heart. That burst of rage on the phone was only the beginning. Lucy doesn’t understand herself enough to know what shape real darkness will take after exhausted rage retreats enough to give her mind time to construct malice. One thing’s for certain, next time she won’t hurt something she doesn’t care about like her knuckles or a pay phone, next time it’ll be personal.
Straightening her back Lucy turns to the left, to her truck, a huge, pearl-white semi-truck, clouds of caustic smoke rising from the engine. All Lucy has, all she is, dead beside the road, drops of oil falling from the broken engine to the dust.
Sounds of gravel beneath her black canvas shoes mingle with the imperfect silence of air moving so slowly it’s not wind. Lucy hears herself crossing the open space toward the truck as decades cross her mind. Memories with the color of faded photographs, snapshots of America from every coast and mountain and road. Sunrise and set, day after day after month after year through the windshield of that truck.
Older memories follow, so faded they seem as black and white shadows, a life before highways and cargo and trucks. Memories and emotions Lucy can’t shut out. Years and years and still she can’t shut them out.
Lucy’s face goes tight, dark eyebrows heavy over deep wrinkles crowding around her eyes. Olive under black denim, her skin is awake and crawling with the fowl sense of her own shape. Lucy’s body feels ugly, her heart feels ugly, and her face feels ugliest of all.
Airbrush letters, CD in red blazed across the pearl door of the enormous truck. Steps, tanks, pipes of chrome, all tarnished for want of attention Lucy never gave. It’s a beautiful machine, people always said so, she never cared.
Up the steps, into the cab then back into the sleeper, Lucy shoves her life into an old army backpack. Pain rises in her throat, welling up until her neck aches and those dark eyes glisten, but she won’t cry, she knows she won’t cry, Lucy never cries.
Out of the cab, up between the truck and trailer, there’s a little red Honda motorcycle strapped to the back of the sleeper. Lucy moves in a vacant rush, the bike is down, backpack tied to the seat. Lucy puts on her sunglasses and turns to mount the bike but stops.
The little red Honda is in front of her, beyond it the road leads into a long, brown valley, rising to a distant ridge of naked rock. Everything in front of her is waiting, but she’s stuck in that spot, that fraction of earth where the past and the future separate.
Reaching behind she sets her bloody hand on the truck. Though facing away Lucy still knows where her hand lays on the fender. She knows its body better than her own.
Practical people are confused by sentimental feelings, especially when attached to metal. There’s no reason to touch it, no reason to stand there confused about the moment, no reason to say goodbye. Still, she will, but what does a practical woman say to a dead horse?
The words escape dry from Lucy’s throat, “I’m sorry.” She mounts the bike, kicks the engine awake, and rides away.
Late morning air ripples through Lucy’s black denim jacket, through the short black crop of her hair, across black sunglasses and the tightening grip of her jaw.
The Honda’s engine buzzes with a dense, high pitch, Lucy’s riding too fast for the little bike, but she doesn’t hear. The ribbon of highway beneath her winds up through growing hills into the beginning of mountains, but Lucy doesn’t see. Lines of light and shadow falling from clouds above, warmth of sun and cool of shade passing over, but she doesn’t feel.
A world internal, it’s nothing new to a life lived alone. Searching somewhere inside for things searching can only confuse. Things searching only makes impossible to find. What Lucy needs is simple, a distraction to fill her brain so darkness can’t fit. Ideas whirl through her head but each time she grabs one it becomes the truck until avoiding the truck is the truck and she forgets she was trying not to think about it.
Lucy will never see the truck again. How will she remember it? Images scatter across her mind, bleeding fingers on the door handle, the backpack under the bed, straps of the little Honda. A messy collage and most are fog because Lucy’s eyes went out of focus to avoid it all. If only she had the courage to turn around, look at it one last time, a full, long, parting view to hold in her memory.
Of course, that didn’t happen. Lucy screwed it up. Screwed up life, screwed up truck, screwed up everything. Why? She knows why, because she can’t do anything right, least of all the simplest things, like keeping a schedule, saving money, and repairing her really expensive truck. It only took Lucy two years to ruin it. To take security and occupation and livelihood and meaning, take it all and shit on it.
Lucy feels her hands tight on the motorcycle grips. So tight her split knuckles crack open and bleed again. Tension up her arms, through the shoulders, down the back, across hips and legs, she’s even gripping the Honda with her thighs. This is it, darkness.
Hate, complete, absolute, for everything, mixing and burning into purified malice. Mankind, Earth, stars and the expanse of the universe, Lucy has rage enough to destroy them all, but they are safe, because Lucy will share with none of them. Her heart created this venom with the love hate has for itself. Selfishly she will keep it all, stabbing over and over again with the weapons of her weakness until hysterical agony flows from her chest.
With each thrust of the knife evil grows in Lucy’s body, winding out along the most aggressive lines of her form. Tendon and muscle rigid with energy, feet like claws, fingers like teeth, teeth like nails.
Lucy’s mind is a single point swirling with colors of liquid iron as hatred consumes and creates itself in molten hysteria. Searching viciously, scouring every memory, hating everything found. Hating herself with such conviction and authority Lucy could command the mountains around her to swerve onto the road.
Or simply flick the little Honda into an oncoming car. To feel the bike fold in half, to feel her body in the air, to feel her bloody fingertips slip along the smooth metal hood as her eyes meet those of the driver. To feel the instant of crushing liberation. To feel that last heartbeat, to take that last breath, to see her eyes closing the last time. Then to feel nothing.
More than anything Lucy hates herself for never doing it. Whether through cowardice or stupidity or any of the knives thrust in her chest to describe her inaction, she never did it. So it is always there, creeping in her mind, offering Lucy the most powerful choice, but never the strength to make it. Unless this is the time courage makes her good enough to go. With that thought burning skin cools to a winter crisp as her whole body becomes light with the joy of release. Yes, now she has the power.
Lucy swerves off the road and throws the Honda on the ground. She shakes her head to clear the fantasy. Doesn’t work. Closing her eyes Lucy shakes her head until her teeth buzz, shakes it so hard she falls on the ground.
The world swirls as Lucy staggers to her feet. It’s still there, she can’t make it go away, so she has to get away from the motorcycle.
Up into the wilderness, Lucy floats over the earth. Her movements loose, like trembling, the same meaning but precise. Hands and arms seem to dance, light, fast, in a moment ready to move any direction. Lucy’s body is now only the shape around that power. That brilliant light of strength.
The choice is already made, she’s ready, the courage sooths her body with radiating joy, but something in her heart is still darkness, and something in that stopped her from using the bike, and something in that darkness is a coward.
Covered in dust, panting from the climb, Lucy comes to a wall of stone. Reaching out from that dark coward inside Lucy grabs the wall for leverage and slams her forehead into the rock. The force of the blow knocks her a few steps back.
It didn’t work, she’s till glowing. Reaching out again from the darkness the coward inside gets a running start this time slams her forehead into the wall so hard she crumbles to her knees.
Sparks of light shoot across her eyes, then blindness. Lucy’s breath comes a smooth mechanical rhythm. Slowly light opens in the dark, growing until the blurry shape of her hands appear. A needle point of sound grows deeper in pitch until the soft hum of the world again fills her ears. Lucy blinks to focus her eyes. She almost knocked herself out, maybe “almost” isn’t the right word.
Trying to stand she falls back on the ground. Crawling Lucy crosses the sand. Tan dust covers her hands, filling the cracks in her knuckles and covering the black denim of her jeans.
Finding a ledge over a valley Lucy sits on the edge. Noon sun throws soft light on gray earth, crossed with shadows from clouds above. On the far side of the valley a long ridge grated with sediment lines leans to the east and deep gutters run from top to bottom, cut by wind and forgotten rain. Colors of amber and gold line shadows in crevices curling with the winding of dry rivers.
Touching her forehead above the right eyebrow Lucy feels a one-inch gash where the rock opened her skin. A stream of blood runs beside the nose and over her lip. Blood from her forehead mixes with the blood from her knuckles.
Self-destruction, but it doesn’t interest Lucy much. That last blow to the head cleared her mind. Emotion seems distant now, something inside is peaceful. Not peaceful, vacant.
A cloud passes the sun, drifting line of shadow to light across Lucy’s hand, across the marks of blood on her fingers. Lucy watches the shadow cross her legs, then drop between her knees, down the cliff, eighty feet to mounds of broken rock.
The shadow wanders off over the valley, Lucy’s eyes hold the rocks below, lying in warm sun, beckoning. Only a nudge to slip over the edge, falling in golden light to sudden silence.
A good spot, this would be a real good spot to let go. Alone, surrounded by color and warm light. Alone in this valley, as she is in life. Alone, because all she ever had is gone. The truck is dead, why not Lucy?
A drop of blood falls from her lip, gliding along the cliff wall. Lucy watches it, feeling herself fly, if only that one drop.
Funny that wasn’t a tear, only her wounds weep. Funny, too, the hate, the anger, the glorious self-destruction, is gone, and all Lucy had to do was beat her brain against a mountain.
Looking again at the blood on her fingers, Lucy whispers, “It worked.” Then, with a hard, soft, heartless laugh, she repeats, “It worked.”
Lucy feels stronger. Delirious with hate, she found a way out, a way to control herself. Maybe it wasn’t the best way, maybe it wasn’t even a good way, but it worked.
Another cloud passes and sunlight warms the blood on Lucy’s hand. Lucy’s way, that’s an amusing thought. Lucy’s way to calm down was beating her head against a rock. Her way to take care of a truck worth more than a house was to blow the engine. Violence, stupidity and neglect, that’s Lucy Cotter’s way.
Her thoughts return to the Honda and the weight of its little body as she hurled it to the ground. The gas probably leaked out, but maybe not all of it.
Knees trembling Lucy stands on the edge of the cliff. The valley looks different standing. Vast open land in burning color, decorated with walls of light hurried along by the edge of cloud shadows.
The valley feels different because Lucy’s not in it anymore. Legs are no longer hanging over the void, her heart no longer lingers among the rocks below. Standing on the edge, there at the brink, it’s different now, because she’ll soon turn to leave. Lucy’s life will not end here.
Lucy feels the wind and sun on her skin, smells the earth beneath her feet and dried in her wounds. The moment soaks into her body, into her veins. Then she turns and starts back down the mountain.
Lucy’s own footprints lead her back to the road, she wouldn’t remember the way without them. Tall evergreens surround her, smaller ones here and there. Some low, scraggly bushes grow from broken rock and sandy earth.
If she walked before through this kind of nature Lucy can’t remember doing it. Smells are everywhere, fragrant dust hanging in the air mixed with the luxurious bitter-sweet perfume of evergreens. Lucy begins to notice the muted colors and subtle smells and her mind is just about to wander away from herself when she sees the cop.