Stuck

by Amy Holman

Crash was a fact of Dexter Pin’s life, it was its total. Total: to demolish so badly that the cost of repairs exceeds the market value of the vehicle. Vehicle doesn’t even fit the description of what he was looking at. At 8:00 in the morning, on a day when Sacramento was expected to reach 105, Bill Swersky had brought him a piece of crumpled metal, like a giant had pulled it off his dinner and fisted it. It was silver, and no longer wheeled or tired. Tired of the effort not to imagine the impact, tired of his bosses sending him young, impressionable guys to log the wrecks, and tired of the city parking the massive Mac trucks at the entrance, Dexter put himself each day in one of the vacation postcards he’d received from adventurous friends through the years, postcards he’d taped in rows at the base of one of the two big windows in his office: water skiers at Elephant Butte Lake, a red pagoda in green water in front of purple mountains, a field of red stripe tulips that went on forever.

Forever, Trudy had agreed to, at the altar, but there she was in a field of tulips in Holland, or else he imagined that figure was her. Her honesty was more faithful than her promise. “Promise me you’ll get a job at a medical office handling insurance referrals,” she’d said, “or — but not Life, not anything else that says death, blood, decapitate, wrecks.” Wrecks were his job, and working for the city meant he only had three and half years before he could retire, in his fifties, with a pension that he’d use for travel to places where he didn’t need to drive, cities where cars were not used, like Venice. Venice, Italy, not the debauched Venice down in Los Angeles that was next to the worst driving situation in the state.

“State your name, for the record,” and he did, in divorce court. Court was the word his mother’s family used when they asked about his love life: are you courting anyone? Anyone would be too hard to find, he knows, because Trudy is hard to find, re-find. Refined girl, the one of his dreams, ’til death do us part. “Part of the guy’s still in there, Pin,” Swersky says as he signs the paperwork and hands it over. Over and over, wreck after wreck, days on end, and the end of every day, Dexter is on the verge of his undoing, a dozen years working in this division of the DMV, the giant trucks the city parks at the lot testing whether he’ll join the oncoming traffic each night and reach his home.

Home is a condo that he can rent to someone else when he retires. Retires, grand total, reincarnation: Dexter hears his job in so much speech. Speech! Speech—forks on champagne glasses—and he said a bunch of words that brought tears to Trudy’s eyes. Eyes the color of hatchets, his father said when Trudy left Dexter before they’d started a family.

Family is his sister’s kids, whose father left when they were small, ball games, dances, learning to drive. Drive assertively, he told them, not too fast or slow. Slow was how he drove through the big truck blind every weeknight, to avoid getting smashed. Smashed is what the driver of the silver Fiat was, both buzzing at top speed without headlights on—no, he’s paddling a canoe in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, in a lake filled with puffy clouds and a single loon. Loon, Trudy would’ve called him, as she called him any bird he ever mentioned, as if birds were the weirdest thing to notice, so funny. Funny, it’s already 5:06 p.m., and he’s stepping gingerly into the busy road, waving his arms, holding up one hand to the cars and ushering young Topher Escher, in his used Ford Fusion, safely between the barriers.

Barriers to dating include trust issues, and unresolved trauma. Trauma is working on collisions every day to adjust. Adjust your expectations, make your claim, negotiate, and know when to stop. Stop, stop, he held up both hands now, his shoes stuck to the newly paved road in the plus 100 heat wave. Wave, he heard Trudy calling just before the crash.

Amy Holman is a poet, literary consultant, editor, and artist living with her cat Artemis, in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of six poetry books, including the collections Captive (Saddle Road Press, 2023) and Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and the prizewinning chapbook Wait for Me, I'm Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Over the years, her short short fiction has been in Club Plum, Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse, and Shade.

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