American Routine
WQKS AM Drive time Commuter’s Car Radio Station: Coming to you live from SkyCam Eye in the Sky--Expect long delays today
between Highway 37 and County Road 25. It’s a real mess down there—entire road
is blocked at the Crosstown Junction. Find alternate routes, if you want to
save a WHOLE LOTTA aggravation. Looks like a school bus may be involved . . .
Let’s hope all the kids got off safely. Back to you-
Ready for Work
Bob gets up at 5:55 a.m. after five
reminders from the alarm. His head hurts. He hates getting up, although he’s been awake since 1:47 a. m.,
according to the faint blue light of his INDIGLO watch, insomnia his longest, most steadfast nighttime
companion. His two kittens are asleep at the foot of his bed. They're his new companions. When they're not fighting with each other, they're attacking his toes, sometimes drawing blood.
A British voice on an NPR station
describes the latest killing in Syria and a bombing in Turkey. Her voice is
pleasant enough. She’s professional, detached, slightly sly. As she talks
authoritatively, Bob’s mind wanders to the next-door neighbor—about whether he
may be plotting against Bob, considering Second
Amendment solutions, a term in vogue in an American political season. A few days back, the
neighbor received a citation; Bob’s complained
too many times about his dog to the local police department. (The dog, the now
popular pitbull, once charged him like an Aleppo militant while he was mowing a
clearly defined border between the two yards.) Bob wonders whether a $100
citation would push the blue collar, unstably employed neighbor into an act of
extremism.
It’s still dark outside. The fan
next to Bob’s bed is whirring and oscillating; it’s supposed to screen
distracting noises to help him sleep, although he still heard the neighbor’s
car start before 5:00 a.m. and his dog’s earlier barking around midnight. Bob wonders how well versed his neighbor is in
plotting a car bombing; Bob’s bedroom window is only feet from the neighbor’s
driveway, separated by a flimsy peek-a-boo fence. He imagines that a small car filled with C-4 and propane cannisters could create a reasonably large mural of his blood and bits of brain and bone
splattered, Jackson Pollock style, against his bedroom wall. He thinks about his kittens, how a bomb would mingle their little furry bits with his, fusing their DNA; a larger bomb could reduce Bob to a
vaporized memory. Bob wants to suffocate himself under his pillows, to grasp a
few more fleeting moments of freedom against the chains of responsibility. He
wonders who will take care of his kittens if they somehow survive--the nine lives thing and all.
Bob’s been awake for hours. He does however slip back into the land of nod for a few minutes at a time. He
awoke from a dream-filled sleep at 3:47 a.m.—he remembers the time because he religiously
checks his watch. Bob remembers only parts of the dreams: In the latest one, he
was returning from work only to find his garage had been emptied, the doors
left open, and his kittens nowhere to be found. In other dreams, people are
trying to shoot him or he’s trying to outrun tornadoes. Sometimes his dreams
morph into nightmares. This morning, Bob confronts a man, holding his severed head like a basketball at his side. He's wearing Bob's favorite T-shirt, now splattered with blood and hot dog mustard. Bob has never cared for mustard. He'll eat hot dogs to be polite. The head of the man looks despondent, hopeless.
On the previous Monday morning he
awoke at 2:15 a.m. and never returned to sleep. His body, tense and stricken,
tells him to be ever vigilant. Its inner voice cannot be ignored. Routine. This
morning, now Tuesday, he gets out of bed, feeling somewhat more rested. The
dread, well, that’s a sticky partner who gives him a break on Friday and
Saturday nights. Sometimes, though, the dread stays with him, like an unwanted
tagalong, sweating, as if after a long jog.
Bob almost thought long job. It’s been 17 years; he wonders how
long the remaining three years will linger until his twenty-year pension. 2021—that’s
his goal. To survive his neighbor. His pitbull. His potential Improvised
Explosive Device. Bob hopes to avoid
ending up disfigured or incarcerated or lodged in a wood chipper . . . And his
job, he never wanted it, but applied for it out of a lack of better options,
then accepted the job offer, and grew through complacency and hopelessness to
accept it. He also hopes, before wholesale layoffs or arbitrary firings, his
job will survive long enough to allow him to cross the threshold of minimal
pension security.
In the kitchen, Bob switches on
the coffee maker with just enough water for half a cup. That’s all he can
handle—just enough caffeine to sharpen his thinking without sending shudders
down his spine. His breakfast consists of six or seven sugar slathered wheat
biscuits drenched in milk. Blueberry this time. Sometimes, strawberry. Or
vanilla. It doesn’t matter. Bob pushes down his pills with the milk and
biscuits; they mix into an artificially flavored, pharmaceutically fortified
wad of morning routine. Now awake, his kittens climb up his t-shirt and jump on the kitchen table. Bob’s already thinking about the commute ahead. His
stomach gurgles.
Commute
Twilight dimly lights the
neighborhood. Feeling the chill of an approaching autumn, Bob scans the front
yard, the taller shrubs; he listens to the blue jays, surveys the neighbors,
their cars, their TVs flashing early-morning cartoons from their living room windows.
It has become something of a self-protective habit to assess his surroundings,
to listen for possible changes in the birds’ or squirrels’ chatter. Bob feeds
them every day, spending a fortune every year on sunflower seeds,
peanuts, and suet blocks. At first it was just a harmless hobby. Now he thinks
the routine, and its early warning system the blue jays and gray squirrels and
even the chickadees provide, is well worth the expense. Their self-protective
surveillance and Bob’s well-being create a symbiotic relationship.
Then, it happens, the explosion
of a villainous, unchecked exhaust system violating the morning calm. Besides Bob’s
neighbor on the north with the pitbull and a festering vendetta, across the
street to the west lives a felon, shaven head, body tattooed--a Harley rider, a
noise terrorist, a catalyst for jangled nerves. His hog often scares Bob’s kittens into a retreat under the sofa. He revs it, incessantly, as if flipping the
neighborhood an early-morning bird, then explodes up the street. Bob listens to
the shifting of gears as the cycle merges with traffic on the main highway. The
felon is heading back to the County lock-up, where he spends his working days,
his productive years, behind bars. Bob wonders how the felon will ever collect
Social Security, whether such a possibility is a moot point. Bob wonders
whether the homegrown felon ever thinks about him.
Before leaving, Bob double-checks
the door lock, then takes a long, uneasy breath. He’s considering installing
surveillance cameras for when he or the critters aren’t around.
As he drives up the street, he
notices the neighbor to the south has violated the territorial integrity of his
yard. He mowed his yard yesterday, bullying his way two or three feet beyond his
property line. What’s more, he blew his loose grass clippings into Bob’s yard,
like a beach bully kicking sand, extending his own territory at the expense of
diminishing and vandalizing Bob’s yard. Is this a challenge? Is this a red line
by a blue collar Putin? How should Bob
respond? The neighborhood to the south, clearly economically disadvantaged, seems
to be exerting his dominance—a bulky, unshaven brute who drives a flatbed
truck, which, at some point in the near future, could accidentally lose control, knocking over the power pole separating their yards. The pole then crushes Bob’s
car and the high-voltage currents send him to a horror-movie-like-death—which is
even worse than getting sand kicked into his face. Bob plays out these
scenarios routinely; maybe his mind is infected by all the nightly media images,
if not in the movies then on CNN, his imaginings just a tiny cell of a growing
national neurosis—Paris, Nice, Orlando, Istanbul, San Bernadino, etc., etc.,
etc.
His imaginings, he also assumes,
mean his breakfast concoction has failed to adjust the chemical levels coursing
through his limbic system. He should probably make a U-turn and call in sick.
Instead, he takes the usual
route, heading east, the sky still clotting the rising sun. Usually, the rising
sun challenges him to forfeit his daily commute, its light burning stringy webs
of red lines in his eyes, its glare sometimes erasing the highway ahead. Every
weekday, the beautiful burning ball of billions of hydrogen bombs welcomes him
to pull the covers back over his head, to soak in the sweaty comfort of his
unwashed sheets—if only.
He’s in a convoy of commuters, all
in a rush crowding him. He thinks about the kittens—from a rescue shelter, undocumented
aliens, perhaps little terrorists in-training. Who knows their lineage? They
like to attack his hands, feet, neck; he’s covered in shrapnel wounds from their
razor-like canines and claw attacks. Will they assimilate? Will they take on his
peace-loving, bare-foot-at-home lifestyle? A car honks because Bob won’t risk pulling
out into speeding traffic; the car continues to make his point by tailgating Bob,
mile after mile after mile. His shoulders and neck stiffen; his blood pressure surges,
overriding the effects of his meds. This day is not off to a good start, but
it’s also routine. Routine. From the night before—having a drink that turns
into two drinks. Mixing alcohol with diphenhydramine, swimming in its own alcohol.
The grogginess will last until about two in the afternoon; it’s replaced by a
slow dying off of hundreds if not thousands of neurons. Bob can feel himself
grow duller. Routine.
Workday
At work, thoughts about returning home to his kittens consume Bob. At lunchtime he wanders the
halls. Coworkers have conspicuously avoided sitting with him in the break room.
They’ve concluded that he may well be among the others. Single women look away or giggle to each other; married
women treat him like a eunuch. Men just grunt, openly speculating about whether
he is a eunuch. It’s easier than to view Bob as a threat.
To while away the hours until he
can exit the building, walk across the parking lot, get into his car, sigh a
long sigh of relief, and repeat the commute home, he keeps a little notepad on
his desk and periodically records notations in it, a sort of countdown, with a
variety of different numbers on it. His countdown has four columns: first, a
column to indicate the current time; then a column with hash marks to indicate
the number of hours left in his day. To make his measurements more interesting,
Bob then translates the hash marks into numerical representations of the
remaining hours. Finally, in the fourth column, he translates the hours into
minutes. When the final column is down to two digits, he feels his spirits
lift; when it’s down to one digit, he’s giddy—the suicide bombing of another
day of corporate drudgery. Occasionally, he adorns the numbers with little sketches of kittens. Bob repeats this ritual every day, out of sight of
other employees who might question his focus and allegiance to his job.
It's unlikely Bob will ever be promoted.
Home from Work
On his way home, Bob is tranquil,
expectant. Bob sets the cruise control and starts to unwind, surrounded by
cornfields drying like crackling paper, curled like unread reports. He’s
thinking about his kittens. Bob wonders whether they will come to life from their
slumber and meet him at the door. They usually do. He counts on that. It’s
become a routine. Bob’s thinking about the yard that needs mowing, and he’s
thinking he likes to cut grass. It shows that he’s accomplished something.
Yardwork gives him a greater sense of accomplishment than his nearly twenty
years on the job—yet Bob’s also anxious about whether his neighbor in his sweaty
neon t-shirt will surveil him as he re-establishes the boundary line with his
riding lawnmower. Another border war in the making.
He listens to the radio, NPR, already
well into a discussion about a student’s anxiety. The moderator probes the
subject, clinically. Some days,
according to the student’s parents, they have to put a red sign in the window.
It’s a signal to the bus driver, and it means he’s too anxiety-ridden to leave
his bedroom and face the world. Bob listens intently, hoping to hear solutions
to the poor boy’s problems.
The commute would be relaxing if
it weren’t for the MACK truck edging closer, nearly tailgating. It’s been
following him for miles, at first maybe 15 seconds behind him, then maybe 5.
The truck is now just a second or two behind Bob, menacing. Up ahead, Bob sees a mini van parked at the
end of a driveway off to the right. It must be waiting, he thinks. Two golden
retrievers dance and spin near the parked van. As he watches the dogs, a bus
pulls out in front of Bob from a side street and stops almost immediately, its
flashers on, its STOP arm extended. Bob brakes hard. A little girl dives off
the bus and hugs the dogs.
The MACK truck fills Bob’s
rearview mirror. It encroaches, crowding the mirror, the MACK emblem growing,
growing—its air powered horn blaring like a thousand angry
pitbulls, smoke pouring from its seized tires. Bob grips his steering wheel;
the face of the MACK driver comes into view, a stogie stumbling down his
Al-Baghdadi face. He’s waving his arms and cursing. Momentum carries his gravel
load over his hood, crashing down like a breaker against molded metal and
asphalt. Bob closes his eyes, his hands clenching the steering wheel. His kittens are bounding for him as he enters the living room, their backs arched, ready
for battle, already lunging for the newspaper dangling from his hand. One
pounces on his loose shoelace. When he discovers he hasn’t been crushed or
buried in gravel or burned alive in a fiery crash, Bob opens his eyes and
exhales.
When Bob gets home, he treats his kittens to an extra-large can of beef and gravy, food that he’s been saving for
himself, along with a baked potato from his own garden. As the kittens eat, Bob
cleans their litter pan. Routine. Every day. Then he sits down and watches the
news. The multi-vehicle accident leads. Bob watches intently as the Sky
Cam Eye in the Sky video footage shows a mess of cars in the ditch and
the MACK truck rolled over, its contents sprayed across the roadway. Bob’s car
is at rest behind the bus. Neither is damaged. The reporter notes no one in the
ditch was seriously injured, students had already been unloaded from the school
bus, and MACK Al-Baghdadi was cited for speeding in a school zone. Bob switches the channel to CNN screaming "Breaking New!" in the background: More dead, more wounded, more bombs, more ghastly images--repeated on a loop.
Bob turns off the TV and plays
with his kittens. They bite his hands, a little too hard. It’s the best part of Bob’s day . . . He looks at his watch--only twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes until it all begins again, his routine, an American routine.
