Catching Air

Judging

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash

I was going 98 miles an hour down Scharwin, up that hill before Banksdale, where your car gets airborne when the road levels.

That’s all I was trying to do. Catch some air.

I had the week off. 

Couldn’t sleep, though that’s all I wanted to do on my week off.

Decided to go get a breakfast sandwich to go from Lyla’s. Might as well see if I can get air on the Scharwin Hill. You mighta thought the same thing.

Lotsa people do it.

They sentenced me by video.

In the sentencing they talked about a lot of shit I could have did.

Hit a kid near Krazy Twist Ice Cream and Nachos, killed the postal worker whose mail truck I hit.

Fortunately for me none of that shit happened because Krazy Twist wasn’t even open yet, it was 9:41 in the morning. And the postal worker was on the MacKinnon’s porch, delivering chickens.

I didn’t get sentenced to jail because I’m paralyzed from the neck down. I don’t pose a risk to no one, I’d just be a burden on the state.

I’m in the Erma Danforth Memorial Convalescent Center, room 219. 

I ain’t convalescing, whatever that is. 

I’m settin’ here typing by blowing in a tube.

I didn’t know you could type by blowing in a tube. But ya can.

I didn’t know the postal service delivers live chickens, but they do. You can look it up.

Or you can just read the transcript of my sentencing hearing, where the judge hollered at me for doing 63 miles an hour over the speed limit, and for killing the 24 baby chicks the postal worker hadn’t got out of the truck yet.

Made it seem like he was doing me a favor by not making me go to jail.

Shit.

He was doing the state a favor. 

And he cared more about them damn chickens than he cared about me.

I typed – blew– a letter to Connie Vudrow, the postal worker I coulda killed, apologizing for traumatizing her– the police report said she vomited and stuff. 

I invited her to visit me in room 219, so I could apologize in person and she could tell me what it was like to deliver chickens.

Because I’m never gonna deliver nothing.

I’m never gonna move again.

I’m gonna sit here and remember speeding up Scharwin, past the closed Krazy Twist, but spit instead of chocolate sprinkles, I don’t remember catching air.

***