Sinister: bread and death and trucks

[baker,baker]

a few days ago, i went to school unprepared.

i was running late -- too late to take the train to school and
besides, it was cold and rainy.  so i drove all the way
downtown.  stupidly, i had put on my green converse sneakers
that morning, and there were puddles everywhere.  all through
class my feet were wet  and i could feel my toes wrinkling up
just like i was taking a bath.  class dragged itself out and
eventually ended, and i went back out and got my feet even
wetter and colder and jumped into my car to battle my way
through rush hour on the stevenson expressway.  i yanked off my
shoes and even my socks and blasted the heat down onto my feet
and the socks and shoes, hoping they'd dry by the time i got
home.

the car warmed up fast -- too fast, but my bare feet were
feeling so nice on the pedals, with the warmth blowing on them
like there was a fireplace...  so i cracked open the windows and
left the heat on.  the cool, damp air went around my ears and
the heater hitting the wet socks smelled like someone ironing. 
i was listening to belle and sebastian, feeling cozy in the
trickling-slow-traffic, when the strangest thing happened.

see, on interstate 55, between lake shore drive (downtown) and
96th avenue (home), there's a sewage treatment plant, a bunch of
factories, trainyards, and other stinky places.  but right at
the end of that trip, there are the Holsum and Wonder Bread
bakeries.  somehow, the wind shifted just right -- the entire
ride home, the air was thick with the smell of fresh bread.  the
oncoming, northbound traffic was moving much faster than me,
buzzing softly.  in the corners of my windshield were salt
crystals, like the ones your eyelashes get when you've been
crying for far too long, and then  "the chalet lines" came on
the tape deck.  and then i was torn to pieces.

i guess it was the leftover bits of stress from my day.
stress over my wet feet and the broken traffic lights ...  and
other things too.  things like the bakery smells, the warm air,
the sound of traffic slicing through the puddles of oil and
rainwater ... the peaceful giant daffodil street lamps coming on
overhead, glowing orange in the dusk ... stuart singing sadly
over piano and strings ...

suddenly i got really emotional.  i started thinking about this
story that's been on the news lately, about this fellow who took
over his father's crematorium when he was ill...  and they had a
bunch of technical problems, and the man didn't know how to take
care of them, so -- in a pinch -- he started taking the bodies
and pretending to burn them, giving out urns filled with ashes
of wood, dumping the bodies on a remote piece of family property
out near dekalb or kankakee or something.  child-sized coffins. 
cadavers  lying sprawled in their sunday best, gazing at the
stars.  some half-buried.

i wonder if that man's okay.  i think he was denied bail -- the
courts were worried for his own safety from the families of the
"victims."  (can you call them victims if they're dead?)  i
mean, he was probably just a heartless, money-grubbing bastard. 
but i keep picturing this scared kid getting flustered and upset
and confused over his machines not working -- overwhelmed at
first by his feelings of inadequacy -- wishing he'd paid more
attention before his father had gotten ill -- terrified of
disappointing the family -- and in a panic, taking that first
body out to the woods, sobbing; conflicted and completely alone.
 the sleepless nights, the growing cycle of horridness and fear.
 maybe it became an addiction, throwing these bodies into the
woods.  wishing he could trade places with the dead. 
loneliness, despair, sorrow.  

i was nearly in tears.  my mind drifted down archer avenue, as
willow springs and the forests give way to justice and its late
nite mom-n-pop diners. bethania cemetery and then resurrection
mary.  the pale mausoleum, somber, with her high square columns
framing a gloomy corinthian face.  the corn products factory
across the street, making the air foul and the slow decline of
the speed limit as archer passes into summit, with her burrito
joints and carnecerias under the rumble of midway and the
freightyards.


later that night, i got into a huge fight with my best friend,
about politics.  all of a sudden, he just started telling me all
sorts of things he doesn't like about me.  it turned into this
long catalogue of faults and problems...  and i could feel all
the tears i'd held in from the day start welling up again in my
eyes.  he saw them, and he stopped, and he looked at me, scared,
like he'd broken something fragile, and i was overcome with the
strangest feeling: that he looked exactly like the boy from my
daydreams about the crematorium.  the look on his face was just
what i'd been picturing, and suddenly i was a dead body in the
woods, staring at the sky, oblivious to the cold or the
darkness, without any fear of animals or nakedness or silence.

it was like i died.

you know what they say about your life flashing before your
eyes?  well maybe when you really die, that's what happens.  all
i know is that for me, at that moment, i was filled to
overflowing with one particular memory.

i was on a cramped overnight bus, going from poland to holland. 
the bus was dark -- it was two o'clock in the morning, we were
someplace in germany, and there was an accident on the highway
-- not 200 yards in front of the bus, an oil tanker tipped over
and exploded.

i was the only english speaker on the bus.  i sat there
exhausted, my legs cramping up, listening to the man snoring
next to me.  the confused murmurs in polish of the passengers,
the glow of the fire in front of us, the sirens of the german
fire trucks -- i felt so alone, so thrilled and terrified, even
in my sleepiness and my discomfort.  the pale green fluorescent
lighting on the bus had made everyone's skin look sick -- like a
race of humans from the future, people who had never seen the
sun -- and the strangeness of the german sirens might have been
spaceships, or laser guns.  i was listening to radiohead's
amnesiac on my minidisc player, an album i'd acquired months
before its actual release, and pull pulk revolving doors had
just come on.  the moon was low and gibbous, almost full.

there were so many secrets -- i was so alone on that bus in the
darkness ...  scared and sleepy, sore, feeling absolutely
pregnant with beauty and otherworldliness.  time seemed to stop.
 the ambulances and fire trucks couldn't get around the concrete
barrier on the highway median, and they'd gone past us, probably
several miles behind to find a gap to drive through.  their
screaming faded, and the fire kept blazing.  gradually the
sirens returned from behind us, forcing their way through the
thickness of the stopped traffic.  no one could move.

it was hours before the fire could be put out, and the wreckage
cleared from the road.  it seems a lifetime ago, though it was
less than a year -- and while i started bawling in front of my
friend, the thing in my brain was the driver of that overturned
truck, who died that night, in a giant fireball.  the thing in
my brain was the cremator lying quietly awake in his dark jail
cell.  my tears were for the giant mausoleum, the great rows of
cemetaries, the burrito houses and the bread factories.  all the
dying and the commerce it was for.  the corn products.  the
endless rain.  the smell of cinnamon on the highway.

 
love,
baker,baker












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