Old 37

art by Alex Farber

by Jon Vickers

Awakened by the phone
at 4 a.m.,
that hour when darkness
is deepest and most honest.
This can’t be good…

“Dad, I need help.”

A million thoughts ignite,
lightning bolts,
cold needles,
dragging you from sleep
into full and fearful life.
“Are you okay?”
“Where are you?”

Clothes on, shoes tied,
a quick kiss on Jenn’s forehead,
a note left behind:
It’s Frank. I’ll be back.

The streets are empty,
mercifully so.
Two miles outside town
a lone figure walks toward my headlights.
Frank, folded into himself
like a shadow that’s lost its source.
He gets in.

“Are you okay?”
  “Yeah.”
  “I’ve been drinking.”

The mind starts its cruel gallop.
“And your car?”
  “Wrecked.”
“Anyone else?”
  “No. Just me… and my car.”
Another quiet thank-you
to whatever listens at that hour.

Problem-solving,
my ungentle companion
in these middle chapters of life,
settles into the passenger seat.

I know the law.
I know what comes next
no matter which road we take.

I drop him at his apartment,
a one-bedroom dungeon of a den,
“home”—I guess,
where he melts into the dark
and disappears.

Then back to Old 37 I go,
to face the aftermath.
The car lies broken
at the roadside,
a crumpled confession in metal.
No other vehicle.
No one harmed.
Another private prayer.

But the night has a second casualty:
the traffic-light control box
on the corner of Walnut and Old 37,
dead, wires severed,
the intersection blind.
If not for that,
I might’ve let the whole mess
sleep until morning,
a normal, working-man’s morning,
seven or eight a.m.,
sunlight and coffee
softening the truth.

I call the station. No answer.
So I dial 9-1-1,
reluctance thick in my throat.
I report the accident,
the location,
and when asked,
say the driver is my son,
though I’m not sure
where he is now.

The truth begins to blur.
I hand it over in fragments,
careful with the edges.
I tell the officers
he called me,
said it was only him,
no one else there,
no one hurt,
and where to find the car.

I don’t remember
every untruth braided with truth,
every silence I used
in place of detail.
I only know
that leaving the scene
was wrong,
but less wrong, perhaps,
than a cell door closing
on a fragile young mind
already fraying at the seams.

And in the back of my thoughts,
Springsteen’s Highway Patrolman whispers:
“A man turns his back on his family,
well, he just ain’t no good.”

So there I stood,
under the officers’ flashlights,
performing my clumsy love,
my rough-edged loyalty,
for an audience of two at the late show,
on stage, for one night only
at Old 37.

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