Appeared in 34th Parallel Vol 114, Fall 2023

Ernie Spaghetti always parked at the same corner at the same time every weekday morning. Seven sixteen am.  As the transmission settled into park on one more Tuesday he let loose a soul deep sigh. He popped the top off his paper cup of coffee, poured in two packets of sugar, stirred the coffee with the same old flick of his wrist and blew the three long slow breaths that roiled the surface. But he did not sip it. Not yet. The cup went into a plastic holder mounted just where his right hand could reach it. There it would cool. Ernie patted the doughnut that lay warm in its wrapper on the passenger seat. He rolled down the window so he could fit the pole holding his American flag in the holder bolted to the driver’s door. A slow breeze stirred the flag. Always a good sign. The clouds overhead looked like they might clear off later. Some blue peered through from the South.

The first sip of coffee set his day in line. The nip of his teeth on the cardboard lip of the cup merged the taste of oily cheap sweetened milk diluted coffee with a touch of paper pulp.  He unwrapped his newspaper and laid the front page in his lap so it would catch the doughnut crumbs. He opened the living section and there was Nelly. The same picture for twenty years, the wise smile, the bobbed hair, the eyes that had seen everything, read everything and would always be kind. Nelly was his giver of answers, the calming presence of each day.

I love him but he won’t change. What will I do? Today’s question was a classic. A girl had found a boy who was quiet attentive and perfect, except he wanted to read play games of  read fantasy novels on Friday nights. He did not want to go to the clubs and see and be seen. How could the girl get him to change?  Ernie knew Nelly’s answer before his eyes read her first line. You can’t change him to suit you. You have to love the person you find. If you want to stay with him look closer, look for the person who attracted you.

Look closer. Ernie sighed just because he could. Nelly always had the answers. Though not for Ernie. He would never have the kind of life where somebody thinks about staying with you. Not since he took a boot in the head during a soldier’s fight. What a joke. Served two tours in the ‘nam and then transferred to the MP’s to play it safe. Sometimes he dreamed about the boot coming at his head. He would try to roll away, to reach for his helmet, but he would only wake up. He had violent spells, rages that moved though him like storms. Other times he had bursts of crying. When the violence was coming he smelled burnt coffee, the crying was like wet leaves on the sidewalk. The doctors helpfully told him things like that happened sometimes. He had learned to live with the spells. Keep to himself. Keep life simple. Help others. When it got too much to take he checked himself into the hospital. Last time was six months ago. This had been a good year. Predictability, that was the key.

Once he wrote to Nelly explaining his plight. How could he go on living? Why? What about the nights when the window called to him or he started counting his mood pills, figuring how many would take him from this world. She never answered his letter. But a month later he saw a letter from another veteran, one of the boys damaged in the new wars, who had similar worries. Try helping others, Sometimes it is best to accept what has happened and think of other people.  Ernie cut that one out of the paper and tucked it into his wallet.

Something smelled like burnt rubber or oil frying on the crankcase. That bore looking into. Ernie got out and walked around the car. It was a real car, a 1979 Thunderbird. He spent every Sunday tuning it up, making sure the engine could still thunder when the need arose. Lowering himself to the ground was a three step process, first kneeling then a half push up and finally he settled onto his belly to get a good look under the car. Nothing leaked there. Just a smell. He used the door handle to pull himself up. Back behind the wheel he studied the empty sidewalk in his rearview mirrors. None of his ladies were coming up the street yet. He should have brought his journal. He could have written something while he waited.

Sipping and waiting Ernie sat on his corner watching the flag flutter.  He had painted the words American Freedom on the driver’s door. Above the words he had stenciled an eagle leaning forward, its beak reaching for something. That was some years ago. The paint was chipping off the wings. He was going to get around to touching it up. On the trunk, where you could only see it from above the car, he had painted Put Me on TV! In letters two feet tall. It had been an impulse.

Each morning Ernie read through the newspaper starting with Nelly and finishing with the announcements for foreclosed houses being sold at auction. Sometime mid-morning his old ladies would arrive, dragging their shopping carts, and he would drive them around on their errands. They paid him Ten dollars, five dollars, whatever they could spare. He made his gas money and then some. With his Veteran’s Administration Pension and Disability check he did alright. He had a little apartment, a bed and a refrigerator. He tried not to talk back to his TV at night, but sometimes it was just so full of stupidity he had to say something. Most nights he got out his notebooks and worked on his great work.

Ernie Spaghetti had long devoted his life to understanding and explaining what had happened when the idea of America hit the rocks and sand of the west coast and went flooding backwards across the country in a wide invisible wave that everyone felt in their heart as a sense of loss, a dark fringe around the edge of each shiny dream. He wrote about people not believing in God, in themselves or in anything except whatever they might see or hear next. He waited for the truth to be revealed but feared that he was about to step from the light into a great darkness. He felt like he knew something and he wanted so much to share it. “This country has lost something, and we all know it and are afraid to name it.”

He tried to explain all this to his ladies and they nodded, most of them were mostly deaf and assumed he had said something entirely different. “Frost today,” Nadine might say when he finished his tirades. “I try jelly with that, makes it sweeter,” was Esther Goodson’s pat reply. “Just some aspirin, always works for me,” Colleta would venture. They had an almost perfect communication. He could say anything he wanted and the ladies were just glad for a cheap convenient ride, some predictability and friendship in their day.

How do I get my new boyfriend’s kids to respect me?

Stop being a drama queen, show yourself some respect.

Ernie was in the middle of Ask Nelly’s next letter when the passenger door opened and he heard laughing. Nelly really told it he was thinking as he looked up into his rear view mirror expecting to see Esther or Colletta making themselves at home, lining up their drug store and grocery lists. But the eyes in the rear view mirror were blue and young and more than a little bit crazy. Half a century in and out of the VA psych unit had taught Ernie to know crazy eyes. He turned his head and saw a boy with a mostly shaved head, just grown back to fuzz. No, not a boy, the kind of punk that would look the same until his teeth fell out and his skin leathered. A boy until thirty and an old man at thirty one. Ernie had been a cop, an army cop but a cop all the same. He knew the signs of a life lost and beyond all hope. The kid wore a white T shirt under a black jacket, not leather, but some kind of shiny stuff and jeans grimed with grease. He probably worked in a body shop when he remembered to show up.

“How much old timer?” The boy asked.  A girl sat next to him. She had red hair pulled back under the grey hood of an oversized sweatshirt. Her hands were buried in the sweatshirt’s pouch. She ventured an almost unnoticeable glance at Ernie revealing brown eyes that looked damn scared.

“Nothing for you. I only take my regulars.”

“Well, that’s the thing. We are regulars. Or sort of. This is Contadeen’s niece.”

“Colleta,” the girl said. Her voice was sweet and soft, almost a mumble. She did not look up.

“Where’s she today?” It was one of Colletta’s regular days. Tuesday and Thursday, always the same.

“She’s not feeling well.”

“Anything serious?”

The boy giggled.

“No. She just wanted to lay around for a while. Sort of a head thing.” The girl’s voice was more clear, but she was still keeping her eyes down. The boy was shifting in his seat, like he just could not get comfortable.

“Are you Marcie?”

“Yes.”  Marcie the niece was a feature of Colleta’s stories. The baby she gave up for adoption, the no good boyfriends. Ernie had shared her sadness over the lost potential of a sweet girl who once got a hundred percent on an essay about her favorite person in the world. Her dear aunt Colletta!

“I’m Ernie.”

“I know,” Marcie said softly.

“What’s the guy’s name?”

“I’m Adam.  And you’re talking to me.”

“Well Adam. I don’t give rides to people I don’t know. Especially not to guys who can’t decide if they’re dressing to dig a ditch or do a crime.”

“Not your choice old man.”

Ernie sized things up. The kid would not be able to reach him while he dropped to the seat and went for his club. But he looked pure punk. He had probably slipped some money out of Colletta’s hiding place while she was playing pinochle with Marcie. Now they were going to run the errands and he would scam off the change for his whack or his whunk or whatever they were smoking these days. Maybe if he got Marcie alone she would tell him what was what and they could come up with a plan. Nice young girls and these street chiselers. What was that all about? Too many people are looking for what they know they should never find. Ask Nelly always said it best. He watched them in the rearview mirror, hoping Marcie would say something or give him a sign. She just kept glancing at him then quickly looking down at her lap. She was afraid of something. Some one. Adam. That was no hard guess.

“So what’s up with the flag?” The kid asked.

“I’m an American.”

“So am I, but I don’t need no flag to prove it.”

“You sure?”

“About what?”

“About being an American?”

“What kind of question is that?’

Ernie heard it starting in the kid’s voice. The let’s have it out right here right and now impulse that these punks think makes them special. As if being angry because he never amounted to much was something to be proud about.

“The kind that I answer by saying the get hell out of my car. I’ll take the girl. We’ll get Colletta’s errands taken care of and you will sip some coffee and wait to beg her for some change. Maybe she’ll get you a candy bar.”

“You old bastard.”

Ernie felt the kid start forward a full second before he moved. It was an awareness he had, a way of knowing, maybe it came from his time trying to decide who was the dangerous one in some soldier’s bar, or maybe it had come when his head was bashed in, opening him up to some special energy. Who could say? Who cared? Ernie was down and up with his thick black policeman’s club while mister smoke pot with his breakfast toast was clawing at the air where Ernie’s head used to be. A full rap on the knuckles let the kid know what was really going on. He might have busted one of the kid’s fingers, hard to be sure.

“Shit man.”

“Here’s how it goes. You say sorry sir and get the hell out of my car.”  Ernie had his policeman’s club poked into the kid’s throat just enough to feel how far the Adam’s apple could give.

The kid mumbled something.

“You’re welcome. Now, out.”

Ernie was sure he saw a side look of gratitude on Marcie’s face as the punk slipped out of the car. He waited until the punk turned the corner and took down the flag. He left the flag folded on the seat next to him and handed the staff to Marcie to stow on the back seat.

“Now turn right,” Marcie said.

Ernie signaled, slowed and turned carefully, twisting the wheel so the car stayed smooth, the most careful right turn of his life. Pretty well done, he thought, all things being taken into account. The most important of those things being the pistol barrel Marcie had pushed into the rear of his head when they were only a block away from leaving Adam by the side of the road.

Never tell yourself you made the worst mistake of your life, Ernie thought, feeling how smooth the transmission shifted as he braked to pull up to the curb. As long as your life is still going there is still opportunity to outdo it.

He had thought having his head kicked in and his mind unleashed forever was the worst thing that ever had or could happen to him. But now his life was probably over. The chill creeping out from his belly to freeze his heart and his hands told him that.  How he wished just once more to finish his day in his bed, letting the ache of loneliness settle into his heart like an old friend come to tell him he had done enough, letting his crazy thoughts fly through his mind the way they always did when he stopped moving. Just one more night spent talking to his TV, posing questions to the night that no one could answer. Why go on? How can I go on? And on the worst nights one word only When? All that horror looked pretty good.

Nelly, the version of her he carried within himself, had always answered his most desperate questions. Just live one day and the day after that. Be kind. Be helpful. Eat right. Sometimes he had let himself indulge the fantasy that he would be rewarded, he would be on TV. Nothing national, just a local news feature, a feature on the odd old guy, a war vet, fought in the Tet offensive and helped his old ladies stay safe warm and comfortable even though he is on full disability.  A little feature, just a few minutes of filler and he would be famous forever. Or at least know that he got his turn. Everybody is supposed to get their turn. That’s how we know we count. Ernie had always been sure his day would come. The world would know he counted. He cared.

But when Marcie’s gun came out all those days filled with service and yearning followed by nights spent waiting not to be alone seemed like a vivid dream, a soft predictable life that was most likely gone forever. Ernie almost laughed.

“I’m back asshole.” Adam slipped into the back seat.  A blur in the rearview mirror told Ernie he was winding up with Ernie’s club. Marcie had been careful to make sure he tossed it onto the back seat.

“No. Not here.”  Marcie’s tone of command, cold and simple, the voice of someone who has taken everything into account, stirred the ice fingers running through Ernie. This was bad.

“Okay.” Adam poked Ernie between the shoulder blades with the club. “Soon old timer. Real soon.”

“Colletta?”  Ernie had to ask.

“Every time I ever went over there she told me she was ready for the Lord. ‘I’m ready to face his judgment and take my place,’ she always said. The old bat. ”

“Did you…”Marcie did not let him finish.

“Here’s the deal. We have this place by Mount Hood. You’re going to drive us there. We’ll leave you up there and when they find you. We’ll be a memory. Gone and gone again. Just drive us up there. We’ll leave you. That’s the deal. You decide right now because I don’t give a shit if you drive there or ride up there in the trunk.”

An hour, maybe an hour and a half. That’s how long I have to live, Ernie thought. When faced with an important decision, one that can change your life, always take the time to think things through.  Bargain for time. The passing of time meant things would happen. It meant things could change.

“Please. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll drive. We’ll just have a drive. You’ll be alright with me.”  Ernie was remembering something about Colletta. She was one of those people who lived through the bank holidays of the Depression. She hid most of her money in her apartment. The girl had a back pack. Shit. These kids are not crazy. They are evil. It would be a week before anybody wondered about Colletta. Would anyone connect Marcie to Adam to the house in the mountains? Not this time of year. Even if they left him alive he would soon be dead from thirst and cold, his body waiting until some relative opened the door, wondering about the smell, setting down a cooler or a bag of groceries to fiddle with the keys of the weekend place. Nobody went to weekend places this time of year. This was a plan and he was a cog in the middle. The best he could hope for was being left to die slowly.

“Damn right we’ll be fine.” It was Adam.  “My uncle keeps a sweet pick up in the garage up there. I helped him fix it up last summer. We were going to sell it but just decided to keep it in case it came in handy,” Adam’s laugh was a cackle rising up to a sneer, like all the world’s anger and stupidity was letting you know it was pleased with your misery.

“Shut up.” Marcie said. Adam’s laughter stopped like she had hit an off button.

“Okay then. Let’s get going.”

Ernie got a look at Marcie in the rearview mirror. She must have stashed the gun in pocket of the hoodie. He had not seen it, just felt the barrel in the back of his head.

Traffic was light on 84 East. That meant nobody was looking around in the cars that passed them or that Ernie passed. The other drivers were speeding or talking, all intent on the next turn in their lives. Ernie had the idea if he caught someone’s eye he could mouth 911, somehow communicate. Every car had a phone and he only needed one call to save his life. But no one looked at him. The sky had grayed over the morning’s hints of sunshine long forgotten.

“So what’s your name old timer?” Adam asked.

“Shut up.” Marcie barked him quiet. The sound of the tires swishing along the pavement filled the silence.

“He’s Ernie Spaghetti, the old ladies’ friend. Everybody knows Ernie. But nobody is going to miss him.”

Ernie’s last name was really Spagnoli, though only the staff at C-5, the VA psychiatric unit, knew or used his real name.

They reached exit seventeen far too quickly. Once some teenagers looked at him and he tried to mouth help nine one one but they only pointed at the eagle painted on the door and had a laugh. The traffic thinned out as he followed the road into the mountains. The car hugged the edges of cliffs that rose above the two hundred foot Doug Fir trees. Marcie told him where to turn, but that was all she said. He had to get her talking, somehow. He had read about this. He had to make her see him as a person.

“Why are you doing this? You don’t have to do this. Colletta would do anything for you. You should hear her talk about you. She thinks you have all the potential in the world. Why don’t we go back and talk to her. Work this out.”

“We won’t be going back there. That’s one sure thing.”

Ernie saw in the rearview mirror that Adam was looking at Marcie like she was sent here to make his world complete. His eyes wide open. His lips held the wondering line of an old lady listening to a preacher while his forehead stayed empty of the wrinkles that betrayed thought. That’s when Ernie knew he was a dead man and Adam was probably not going to make it to the next act. The calm in Marcie’s voice was relentless as the boot coming for his face. It sounded like the world’s pointless cruelty finding a voice. He smelled coffee and bit his lip so the pain would remind him where he was, what was happening. He had to think his way out of this. It was the only way.

So why don’t you just turn the situation around? It’s Ask Nelly’s best trick and she had a hundred ways to say it. Just make people look at themselves the way they are looking at others. “Why are you…?”

“Shut the fuck up old man. Not one fucking word.”  Marcie was sitting up, her eyes darting to the road, Ernie and Adam. Her pupils were black circles that blocked the color of her eyes. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. That meant something, Ernie was sure. Adam watched her, his mouth still open in awe. He had never imagined something this big or interesting happening to him. All Colletta’s money. They will disappear. Change their hair. Be together. The fool. Ernie thinks back to the moment he let Adam out of the car. He could have told them both to go. Marcie might have gone, come up with another plan. She might have been afraid of the mess and sound of discovery on the street. He lived that imagined moment as if time were something he could shift backwards and open into new possibilities. In this other world he would be wrapping up for the day and going for a burger, putting away this flag and wondering about the strange morning. Maybe driving by Colletta’s to see what is going on? Why she did not come today. Did she need anything? It’s not something he would normally do but today was unusual, what with that niece showing up.

“Here.” Marcie said and Ernie turned onto a winding gravel road that swirled around corners where the cliffs dropped off without a rail or a warning. Ernie hugged the left on these turns. The fear in his belly had locked him into doing whatever Marcie said. He came out of a turn and a mountain jay, blue as a crayon and bigger than a crow swooped away from the car and caught the air flowing up from the trees below.  Ernie smelled something like warm bread and felt a soft lazy warm feeling beyond hope. He understood that his mind was shutting down, his body sending out chemicals to help ease his passing. The mountain cabins were all on winding roads set back among the old growth Doug Firs. The season was past. A car a day might come along these roads. He was no more than ten minutes away. There will be a sign partly covered by moss. A trail drive that snaked out of sight. That’s when he thought of his flag. What could he do with the flag? It was the only loose element, the only thing not accounted for in Marcie’s plan.

“You won’t get away,” Ernie said.

“Shut up,” Adam said, swatting Ernie on the back of the head for emphasis.

“No. Let’s hear this,” Marcie’s voice was bemused.

“Something always goes wrong. You’ll be on the news. This kind of thing never works out.”

“Not if they can’t find us.”

“They find everybody. It’s how it works now.”

“You don’t know a thing about it old man.”

“Don’t I?  You can do it. You can save yourself. If not you’ll just be gone for good. You don’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that. Everybody should have one more chance until they get it right. We have to stop now, look around us, remember who we used to be, who we could be. If you stop now, if you let me go you’ll have a chance to be people again. I gave everything for this country and you can’t do this to me. I don’t deserve it.”

“You really are crazy. That’s what Colletta called you. Crazy Ernie that waits at the corner.”

Maybe she did, Ernie thought. But she always thanked me and we always stopped for tea. The image of a tea cup and saucer held in Colleta’s wavering hand fluttered into his mind and then gave way to an open eye seeing nothing and a bloody forehead. Colleta had laid on her floor, dying or dead, while these two laughed and stuffed money in the backpack.

Who was this girl? What had made her this way? What would Nelly say?

What did it matter? What’s what Nelly would say. Something had been broken in Marcie and she would go out and hurt and break until she was stopped. Ernie’s thoughts spun ahead. He could not save himself or Marcie or anyone else. We are all lost, he thought.   He felt the fire catch hold of his mind. The fierceness came on the way it always did, like a storm of heat burning away the fear in his guts. He was being torn in two. He had to do something. He rolled down his window.

“Hey!” Adam cried.

“I just need air. To keep driving.” Ernie’s voice was resigned. To these two he would be a victim waiting for a simple end.

“Whatever.” Marcie said.

As the energy coiled up through his body he saw people, imagined their faces; a gas station attendant, a hitchhiker, a mom and her son wandering by the side of the road. They were just people. They were out there in the world somewhere and these two were going to meet some of them. Then something magical happened for Ernie, as soon as he imagined these other people the last of the cold fear burnt off like August dew. The fire was all that was left.  He was just a guy driving a car. He could drive it anywhere.

“I’m sorry you were no one’s little girl.”

“What?” Marcie’s hand went deeper into the pouch of the sweatshirt, like she sensed something had changed, like she needed the comfort of her gun.

“I’m sorry for all of us.”

Ernie’s brain was on fire. He turned the wheel hard right as he floored the T Bird for the last time. He was braced against the force, but Marcie and Adam flew together against the door behind Ernie. He pulled the flag to him as the car raced across the road and into the air.

Ernie’s car flew off a mountain embankment far above a row of Doug fir trunks, each thick as the pillars that hold up a freeway. He held the flag to his chest with one arm, the bundle comforting him as he let the car take him from this world. Time was too fast and too slow all at once; in the mirror he saw the surprise on the faces of Marcie and Adam and beyond them the faces of all the lucky gas station attendants, travelers and sad souls who would never meet the two of them. As the car fell and fell he heard Nelly’s words. Sometimes you just have to think of other people and accept what is happening.

William K. Burke