Lewiston, Maine

(unfinished)

It's seven-thirty in the evening and it's already dark out, the cars have started honking their loud honks in impatience over the Androscoggin bridge that joins Lewiston and Auburn, the twin cities. This old man, Everett Libby, is in Auburn, sitting in one of the broken stools at Gritty's, under a pale buzzing yellow light. The bartender's one of those jerks who serve the ladies first and ignore all the good customers that've been coming there almost every day for years. Everett's a goddamn regular, an old-timer, but nobody cares, nobody gives him respect. He deserves a little respect, he thinks.  He's been working damn hard from sunlight to sundown at the Falcon Shoe in Lewiston and good Lord, it's the only factory left in that goddamn town, can't anyone give him a little respect? He and the other old boys, they're working all day in the dusty dark while all these youngsters sit on their rumps in those dust-colored cement-block buildings.

Office jobs. Christ.

Everything's digital nowadays; these're bad times. He sips on a beer and cringes because it's one of those cheap ones. He doesn't have much money because it's Thursday and all the men get paid on Fridays. Damn, he couldn't wait ‘til Friday, then he could buy the good stuff, but for now, this is alright. It'll get him feeling real nice anyhow. He's already got a good buzz on, he laughs all hoarse and loud.

            He's a-buzzin' like the buzzin' flies all over this here establishment. He's making a joke, see. He nods to the pretty broad at the other end of the bar, the one with too much paint on her face, and winks good-naturedly. She's not in the mood, he guesses, she rolls her eyes like broads often do and crosses her legs, turning away from him. She's a prude, anyhow.

            He sits there for a long time and makes a dinner out of peanuts and more cheap beer. When it's eleven, the giddy couples come in and dance all close and sloppy like fools. Everett's not a dancing man. Maybe when he was younger, when he was married to that crusty bitch Barbara, but now he's alone and he's got no good reason to dance. Well, he's not alone-alone, he doesn't feel alone, he's not lonely, he's just single, a bachelor, he's got no time for dates and besides, all the broads around this town wear too much perfume. These broads stink so bad they make his eyes water.

He's drunk now.

He picks a round crusty out of his eye and wipes it on his flannel sleeve. The songs in this bar used to be good, he says to his peanut dish, I can't stand this crap they're playing now. He scowls at the people filtering in, ordering beers and dancing with their wives and girlfriends and lovers and whatnot. A lady with dirt-colored hair sits next to him and orders a drink he doesn't recognize.

            He slurs to her, “What's that drink theyah you got?”

            “It's a sex on the beach,” says the lady with a gentle lightly lip-sticked smile.

            “Yeh wanna have sex on the beach,” he repeats, grinning all sloppy.

            “No,” she laughs politely, “That's the name of the drink.”

            Her smile could be one of the prettiest things Everett has seen in awhile. Her cheeks are pink from the cruel Auburn wind. He imagines her letting him touch her cheeks. Warm them. She might let him touch her shoulders and her hair. He would give her his coat, if she wanted. Maybe after awhile he'd walk her home and they'd hold hands because the wind's wicked sharp at this time of night, when all the lights from Lewiston make the sky look hazy and small. There'd be fog and it would be like the world was just for them. They'd be walking in a dream.

            The lady sips her drink and takes a look around the bar. Maybe she was meeting someone.

            “My name's Everett Wilfred Libby,” he says proudly, holding out his hand, “What's yehs?”

            “Susan,” she shakes it, but her handshake's weak. All the younger folk now don't shake hands like they should. They're supposed to be firm. Weak handshakes, weak people. Everett is a strong man.

            “Susan! You don't look like a Susan. You know who's named Susan? Yanno, school teachehs and whoeveh. I bet I had a teacheh named Susan. In fact, I reckon I did back in the high school times. Lewiston High. Susan, Susan, Susan,” he chuckles, “Yeh look more like a--” pausing. 

            She taps her fingernails on the bar. They're so long. 

            “A Sophia. Like Sophia Loren!”

            Her eyes stare blankly, lined in a thick black.

            “Ring a bell? Sophia Loren, eh? Yanno her. C'mon!”

            “No, I'm sorry, I don't.”

            “Ah, nevehmind!” Everett frowns, throwing up his hands.

            She makes this face like she feels bad for him or something--one of those faces. He hates that. But she's still pretty, so he smiles real big. She winces slightly at the sight of the gangly browns sticking out of gums.

            “I know what yeh lookin’ at, Sophia,” he points at her, “Yeh lookin’ at workin'-class teeth right heeyah.”

            Everett smiles even wider, chugs down another beer, and accidentally belches in Susan's general direction, which she doesn't seem to like.

            “Have a good night,” she says, turning away.

            “You too, Sophia!” he replies to the back of her dirt-colored hair, rubbing peanut salt between his fingers.

            She's gone. Everett messed it up again with his big mouth. He knew it. He always talks up a storm when he gets a little drink in him.

            The bar's crowded now and Everett wants to know what time it is.

            “Bahtendah!” he shouts to the mustached man behind the counter.

            The mustached man doesn't look up.

            “I said, bahtendah!”

            “Sir?” he says, all annoyed.

            “What time yah got?”

            “It's one-thirty, there's a clock right over your head,” and he points to the clock over Everett's head.

            “Oh.”

            Stupid Everett. Old fool. He sits back down and decides he'll stay for a few more songs, then he'll go home. Who knows, maybe the night'll get a little better. Maybe a pretty lady will see him sitting there and think his work boots are mighty fine. Women like working men. He looks lovingly at his boots. They like working men because they know they'll be taken care of.

            “I'll take care of all the pretty broads in the whole world,” Everett says to himself.

            The songs blend all together and Everett can't tell when they begin or end, or how many songs he's listened to already. Maybe hours have gone by, this old fool just drinking at the bar by himself.  It's a shame when a good buzz turns sad.

            “Bahtendah! What time ya got again theyah?” he shouts, shooting a little beer spit at the bartender's mustache.

            “It's three.”

            The bar closes in a half-hour. Everett shouts a noisy and wet goodbye to the bartender and stumbles a little when he walks out of Gritty's. The sign's not even lit up anymore. It doesn't make sense to him. He teeters around the corner to the Androscoggin bridge and grumbles at the sight of the factories across the way.

            “Goddamn Lewiston,” he mutters, stumbling across the bridge.

            The empty factories depress him. Lewiston's like a city made out of broken bricks that no one cares to pave back together. Sometimes when he wakes up, he thinks about all these sad things. He thinks about Barbara and her husband and their nice house in Auburn. He thinks about how he's old now. He thinks about how much time he's got. He thinks about Lewiston—how he's lived here his whole life. He thinks about the factories. Falcon Shoe's the only one left, and he's right proud that he works there. He smiles sadly, his teeth all gangly in decay, at the one unbroken sign among the lonely buildings slumped in despair.

            “I gotta get out of Lewiston,” says Everett in almost a whisper.

            This old man, dressed in flannel and weathered black boots that groan with age, floats back to his industrial desert like an old drunkard. Like a tired factory worker. Like a ghost.

_ _ _ _

            On the corner of Pine and Oak Street in foggy downtown Lewiston there is a paper girl struggling with her carrier bag who has not slept for two days. There are too many papers and her shoulders are only fifteen years old. Her feet are sore and knotted from carrying twenty pounds from the papers and two hundred and thirty pounds from her body. Though she hasn't delivered a single paper yet, already she wants to give up. She imagines throwing the papers into the windy fog and watching them dance the news all around the downtown. The arrest logs would stick to the windows of those whose names are in them. The personals would land on the doorsteps of the lonely. She sighs and turns to start her route when she hears an old voice beyond the fog.

            “Hellooooo, papeh girl!” shouts an old drunk, galloping toward her.

            She rolls her eyes and stops, because that's what you have to do with old drunk men at three-thirty in the morning or else they'll follow you and keep talking on, and on, and on, and on. He's out of breath from running and wheezes a thick air of beer and rot. 

            “Papeh girl!” he cackles merrily, “Yeh don't see young ladies like yehself often out heyah deliverin’ newspapehs.”

            “Yeah, well,” she says, “You don't often see anyone out here at this hour.”

            She hates old drunk men like this creep. Every other day some old drunk guy howls at her for no reason. She just wants to be left alone, for God's sake. It's three-thirty in the morning. Everyone's asleep except the bat-shit crazies and the drunkies and junkies. It's miserable.

            “Can I have a papeh?” asks the old man.

            “Go die,” spits the paper girl, she walks briskly away from the foul old stench of his flannel shirt. 

            The route for Pine, Oak, and Bartlett has fifty-four papers, which is a lot for most on-foot carriers. The paper girl's proud of how she handles such a large route and imagines the Sun Journal newspaper neckties all thinking she's a such trooper. What a hard worker, that paper girl.

            Though her apartment's one of those sad-looking ones on Pine Street, it's really the last place she'd want to have for a route. Or any of these streets in the downtown, really. They're all dumpy. And the geezers don't tip for shit; in fact, they're some of the most annoying, whiny complainers she'd ever met. The Sun Journal takes a dollar out of her paycheck for every complaint she gets that week. And some of the old Canadians downtown are really bitchy and complain too much over every little thing. One time, The Old Canadian Lady that lives on the left side of Bartlett sent a complaint that the paper girl hadn’t rubber-banded the Sunday paper tight enough.

            It was bullshit.

            Fuck Lewiston.

            This morning, The Old Canadian lady's sitting at her third-floor window again with her teacup, scowling at the paper girl. It's not even four yet, but she looks mad-pissed. Her frown wrinkles are especially visible this morning. She looks like an evil ventriloquist's dummy. She taps her wrinkled fingers on the wooden windowsill.

            The paper girl shouts to her, “If you unlock the front door, I can bring the paper to you, up to your floor!”

            The old woman says nothing. She smiles curtly and points to a plastic bag on the handle of the paint-chipped front door. Above the bag, there's a makeshift sign—a piece of notebook paper taped to the door with bold letters written in black marker.

            PUT THE PAPER IN THE BAG!!!

            So there the paper goes, into the bag, and the paper girl rolls her eyes and imagines putting The Old Canadian Lady in a headlock.

When she's done her paper route she always takes Canal Street to get back to her apartment because of the wonderful bread smell. It's from a struggling bakery on the corner of Canal and Birch. Sometimes the bread smell makes her feel just a little bit warmer in the bitter cold of the downtown. The air smells like biscuits and sugar and warmth and afternoon naps and hot chocolate and down feather blankets and everything good in the world. Next to the bakery is a shitty little corner store with a sign hanging above the windows that says FOO STAMPS ACCE TED and this morning, like most mornings, she goes inside and the chubby unshaven register-man nods to her and says, “Ayup, it's gonner be a cold one today.”

The paper girl doesn't like him.

            Her stomach growls in emptiness and then the anxiety comes. It must be filled. She must consume. Now, now, now, now. It's like this every morning. A deliciously gigantic bag of Cheddar Crunchies today. And a fizzling sugary-sweet Mountain Dew.

            “Nutritious breakfast!” chuckles the register-man, and she says nothing, just grabs the change and runs out the door.

            Behind her apartment is where she eats her breakfast and watches the sun rise. She wishes that there were prettier birds around here, the only things that chirp in the mornings are those big black-winged monsters that caw at each other abrasively, as if to say, fuck off, I don't care if you're having a good morning. Listen to my dreadful song, motherfucker.

            The paper girl opens the Mountain Dew and listens closely to the sound of the fizz when she unscrews the cap. SSSSSS. It's a wonderful sound. As is the sound of the jumbo Cheddar Crunchies bag opening in a rip. The tangy cheesy crunchy smell. The sound of the crisp cheddar curls between her teeth. It's so delicious. Apart from the air on Canal Street, it's the only thing that she looks forward to in the mornings, really. It's certainly not the birds, she'll tell you that. The paper girl likes filling her entire mouth with Cheddar Crunchies by the handful. As the sun rises the orange mass in the jumbo big descends, and it's six when she eats it all, drinks it all, burps a little, feels too full.

            How many calories did she just consume?

            650 per serving. How many servings? 3.

            The paper girl frowns.

            She’s disgusting.

She’s a pig.

A fucking pig.

She’s nasty.

No one will ever like her.

She’s a filthy, gross, fat pig.

The paper girl opens her mouth, lined in a flaky orange, and stuffs her middle and index finger as far down as she can. She gags and vomits a chunky orange-lime river of gloop on some pretty, dying flowers that the neighbors planted along the outside of the building. She feels much better.

            In the apartment, the paper girl sprawls herself out on her bedroom carpet and jiggles her massive belly. It's like touching a water bed. She stands up and looks at herself in front of the mirror by her dresser, bunching all the fat up in her hands. What would happen if she just cut it all off? One fell-swoop with a butcher knife or a machete or something. There'd be a lot of blood, sure, but then she would have to get surgery and maybe they'd even give her a tummy-tuck and then she'd be pretty and probably a lot happier. At school she'd tell everyone that some asshole gave her a good gutting one morning and she barely escaped. He was a murderer. He was a rapist. He was a child molester. She'd tell them she mustered all the strength she had within her to run away, leaving a zig-zagging trail of blood behind her. They'd think she was so tough and brave. The doctors would sew her up and she'd have a smokin' bod. Maybe the boys would like her. Like-like her. You know. Maybe they'd think she was pretty cute. Maybe everything would be better then.

            No.

            She guesses that wouldn't happen.

            They wouldn't give her a tummy-tuck, in fact, it would probably be in the newspaper, what she did, and the whole city would be laughing at her. Everyone laughing. Laughing at her. She'd never get a date. She'd be pathetic. She'd be alone for the rest of her life.

            If she cut her belly off she might even die. But, she thinks, that wouldn't be a terrible thing. She wants to die. She wants to die all the time. She wants to die right now, this very second. She imagines wearing a beautiful braided rope necklace, swinging softly from a tree. Or, how fun, a bubble bath with a sparkling silver blade to shave the skin off her bulbous arms, a bubbling blood bath for one. Or, better yet, a giggling skip off the roof of a tall building with windows so clean she can watch her hair ripple in the falling wind until she hugs the very ground in which she'll sleep forever.

            She sighs.

            The paper girl should probably take a shower today instead of killing herself.

            The floor of the bathroom is covered in a layer of dirty clothes because the hamper is still broken. She looks for a towel that doesn't smell like cat pee among the clothes and other towels that smell like cat pee (because the cat's in heat again and peed all over everything). The rod for the shower curtain is held up by brick-colored duct tape and the happy birds on the shower curtain are ripped in two, held together by a hair clip.

            The paper girl thinks. She doesn't know if she should actually shower because it wouldn't just be showering. It would be such a miserable process. She would have to take her clothes off, and then put them on the floor, and feel guilty about putting them on the floor but there's no other place to put them. And then the temperature of the water has to be just right, and sometimes when other people in the apartment building flush the toilet the water gets all burning-hot and it's always borderline-terrifying when it happens. And then if she actually took a shower she would have to dry her hair with the blow dryer because if she doesn't her hair looks like utter shit. Really, it does. It gets all frizzy and she already started the day off feeling shitty and it was hard enough to simply get out of her bed this morning and deliver those fucking papers to all those fucking assholes and fucking fuck, she just doesn't wanna stress about it.

            So, she doesn't shower.

            Instead, in her bedroom, the paper girl undresses and applies Teen Spirit to her armpits, the skin under her boobs, the bottom of her feet, and that place between her thighs and crotch. Now she won't smell bad and she doesn't have to shower. Success.

            Her mother smokes a couple cigarettes before driving her to school. She's feeling saggy and droopy-eyed because she woke up two times that night to have a cigarette. When the paper girl asks her mother where her clown shoes are, her mother shrugs and says, “On the moon,” in a cloud of smoke.

            “I found them!” says the paper girl. Her arms are buried in a tidy pile of papers and empty cereal boxes and Ramen wrappers. The clown shoes are red and they give her three much-needed inches of height. She adores them. Her mother drops her off at school and gives her the Peace sign as she drives away with a cigarette in between her yellowed teeth.

            In science class her partner is the smelly boy again. His name is Donnie and he's Canadian just like everyone else. He's nice enough. He just smells like shit.

            They're learning about genetics today. Certain traits are dominant and others are recessive, like hair and eye color. Darker hair and eyes are dominant traits. Lighter hair and eyes are recessive.

            “I have a widow's peak,” Donnie tells the paper girl.

            “Yeah, big deal,” she replies.

            “It's a dominant trait,” he smiles at her.

            “Yeah, I know.”

_ _ _ _

            Donnie doesn't really get this girl—Isobel, he thinks. She's not like, super mean, but she's not nice even though he tries real hard to be nice to her. She would be kinda pretty if she smiled more instead of glaring all the time with those big black eyes of hers. Well, she's fat, so she wouldn't be totally pretty, but she'd definitely be prettier, he might even ask her out or something. He wouldn't be her boyfriend or nothin' 'cause she's too fat, but he'd definitely take her out to like a movie or something like that. It's mostly his friends—the reason why he wouldn't be her boyfriend. He'd really never hear the end of it if he started going with a fat girl. Especially a fat girl that just wears black all the time. Donnie looks at what she's wearing. Her whole outfit is black except for her shoes, which look very much like clown shoes. They're bright red.

            “Are those clown shoes?” he asks Isobel.

            “Yeah,” she mumbles, biting her nails.

            “I mean, I like 'em, but why are you wearing clown shoes?”

            “Because.”

            “Because why?”

            “Because I'm a walking joke,” she says meanly into his eyes.

            He doesn't say anything. She looks scary now. She looks angry. He's sorry he asked.

            “What,” she says bluntly, “Aren't I funny?”

            Donnie isn't sure if the right answer is yes or no.

            So he says, “I like them.”

            Isobel's quiet for a moment and she turns to him. Her eyes look sore with guilt.

            She says, “I have these clown shoes because I want to work in a circus.”

            “You do?” Donnie likes this.

            “I mean, yeah, I'd like to chill with the lions and shit. It's silly. I'd like to make people laugh and, you know, travel. I really just wanna get out of Lewiston.”

            “What's wrong with Lewiston?”

            “Are you kidding me?” she barks.

            Donnie doesn't answer. He's intimidated again.

            “Lewiston's a shit hole. I'd rather die than stay here my whole life.”

            Donnie probably won't ask her on a date. It seems like she wouldn't wanna go anyway. When the bell rings, she's quick out the classroom like The Flash. He decides he's gonna skip last period and go over to Ryan's house 'cause they're supposed to check out what's up on College Avenue. He said they've got some real nice houses with a fuck-load of cash and he bets a lot of jewelry and other shit, too.

            The inside of Ryan's house smells like cat pee, but he doesn't say this to Ryan. He probably knows anyway. Ryan looks bad-ass today 'cause he looks pissed, wearing a Tool shirt with the sleeves cut off, a cig hanging out of his mouth. And he's also got a mohawk. One time Donnie tried getting a mohawk but his hair is kinda curly and it just looked really bad and all his friends made fun of him.

            “We're hitting College Ave,” says Ryan.

            Donnie says he knows.

            There's an eighth of weed and a purple bong on the table and Ryan tells Donnie to pack a bowl and take the green hit, so he does, lighting the green and coughing out big clouds of smoke. 

            “You gonna live?”

            “Yeah,” Donnie wheezes, his eyes all red, “I just, I've got asthma. You know.”

            They smoke for a while and then smoke more when the other boys come over. Donnie's legs feel all funny, like two crazy jelly fish.

            Silly legs!

He sees his lungs with little frowning mouths, breathing out the grey tendrils and wishing Donnie wasn't so mean to them by smoking so much. 

“Noooooooo, Donnie!” cry the little mouths, “Please don’t hurt us!”

Donnie giggles and thinks his lungs are so silly.

            The guys've been talking for awhile but Donnie hasn't been listening, so he feels kinda numb when they all get up to leave, but he walks along with them anyway. They scatter like little mice before Donnie can ask them what's going on.

            “Hm.”

            The world exists in a wavering haze, but Donnie sees a white-paneled house that looks wicked rich so he tries to play it cool. There's no car in the garage. No one's home. There's an open gate to the back yard, which he wanders into slowly. He looks into the windows and doesn’t see anyone, so he tries opening the screen door and it’s unlocked. What luck! Donnie is feeling off—a little scared but it’s just the weed making him all paranoid for nothing. He knows it. The cupboards in the kitchen remind him of his mother's old house in Auburn. He doesn't see her anymore since she left him alone on the Androscoggin bridge. It was an accident though. She got in a lot of trouble. It's been  eight years and he still dreams about her all the time.

            Last night she read his palm, like she often did in his dreams, and painted his forehead with a red kiss. He told her that he missed her, he really, really missed her, and she said nothing, she just blinked. Her eyes were wild, the black pupils dilating bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller to the rhythm of his pulse. He saw his tears in her black eyes.

            She said, “My little Donnie. My poor little boy,” stroking his hair, “Don'tcha know? Death follows you, don'tcha know? My little baby boy.”

            He wakes up all sad and sweaty, his eyes red like they are now, in this wicked rich house. It's nice, the house. It’s, what’s that word, like cute or something. Quaint. The curtains have little happy birds on them and the table cloth is matching. Donnie wishes that this was his house. It smells like baked ham and mashed potatoes and yams and cranberry sauce and milk and steamed carrots and spaghetti with meat sauce.

            Donnie is so hungry.

            He walks all dopey to the wicked rich refrigerator and the inside is beautiful. So much food. Donnie's refrigerator at home has maybe a couple beer cans, and bologna, and fast food ketchup packets. His stomach groans at all this fullness. His dirty hands caress the clear plastic of a deli bag, succulent roast beef, a reddish brown with bits of black on the edges. Juicy. Tender. Awesome. Donnie is just gonna make a sandwich real quick. No big deal. It's all good. He just needs this sandwich. White bread in the open bread box on the brown-tiled counter in the kitchen. So clean. Yellow mustard on the top shelf of the swinging refrigerator door. And that roast beef. That awesome roast beef. It just looks so delicious and awesome. He's feeling really nice, all floaty. Those red eyes are gently closed as he spreads the mustard on a slice of soft white bread.

            The kitchen is peaceful. That's what Donnie feels: peace. The walls are painted a forgiving yellow, and the front door's got an old creak as it opens to a wide-eyed woman with hair the color of shoe polish, curled like smoke tendrils and behind her, a man in blue who looks very, very angry. 

_ _ _ _ _

            He's making a sandwich. He's robbing the place and he's getting caught while making a goddamn sandwich. Hilarious. The poor kid's face flushes into pale terror. He doesn't even try to run. He's fucked, this kid. It's unbelievable.

            The police officer's wife shouts, “Oh my god!” and stumbles backwards into the chest of his uniform. She can't believe it either. The officer thuds into the kitchen and the poor kid's red eyes read the name on his badge: Officer Dupont. That's right, kid. He must not be too bright.

            “Are you serious, boy?” Dupont finger-pokes him in the chest with his index.

            The kid's speechless. It's pathetic. Dupont isn't on for a half-hour, so he's gotta call it in and some of his buddies'll take care of it. Fucking ridiculous, this kid. The officer sits at the kitchen table with him and watches him try not to cry. It's pitiful.

            “You can't be robbin' people's houses and think yer gonna just get away with it,” he says.

            The kid is silent. He's looking down at his hands. They're dirty as all hell.

            “Yer gonna be in big trouble, tryin' to rob a cop's house,” he smiles, “What'd you think you were doin', eh?”

            He's silent.

            “Eh? What'd you think?,” Dupont pokes him again, “Eh?”

            “I don't know,” the kid says finally. He whimpers. He whimpers now and he whimpers when Dupont's buddies get him in the car to drive him to the station.

            “What an idiot,” he says to his wife. She's watching one of those talk shows. The ones for women.

            “That poor boy,” she says softly.

            “That poor retard, you mean,” Dupont laughs, “Comin' in a cop's house and just takin' his fine-ass time robbin' the place. Oh, what am I gonna do? I think I'm hungry. I'll just make a sandwich!”

            The wife says nothing. This is how it's been going lately. He'll make a joke and she'll say nothing. Sometimes she'll frown. He'll hug her and she'll hug back weakly. He'll kiss her still lips. Lately she sleeps turned away from him.

            Last week he said to her, “I don't know what to do. But I'll do anything.”

            She responded softly with a sigh.

            “What's wrong?”

            “I don't know,” she said, staring at her wrinkling legs.

            “Are you going to leave me?”

            He wanted to cry. He really did.

            “I can't leave you,” she said sadly, “I won't.”

            The tea kettle had started screaming and she seemed to float to the kitchen, her slippers lightly brushing the tiles on the floor, like every step meant nothing. All of her movements now were characterized by a sort of apathy that Dupont could not understand.

            When she returned she looked into his old blue eyes and held his hardened hands. Her mouth against his ear, she whispered, “I feel like a ghost.”

            Dupont kisses her lifeless lips and grabs his jangling keys from the coffee table.

            “Bye,” he says shortly.

            She just nods like she does.

            Officer Fortier picks him up in the squad car and says, “We got a situation on the bridge.”

            “Oh yeah?” he warms his hands on the car heater.

            “Some old fuckah's gonna jump off. I say, let'im do it,” so he says, turning the wheel toward Main Street, the Androscoggin bridge in the distance.

            They sit right quiet until Fortier parks next to the other flashing cars. An old man is standing on top of the bridge rails in the waving blue and red lights. He's scraggly, maybe late sixties, early seventies. His hair's greasy and thin, barely there, the color of billowing factory smoke.

            And he's drunk.

            “I'm tellin' yeh, leave me alone!” he bellows, “Can't you just gimme a little respect? Yeh can't stop me, so leave me alone!”

            Officers are scattered everywhere, some with megaphones, some with frowns, some with clenched fists, some with rolling eyes, and some with sadness.

_ _ _ _ _

            Right now, see this: a young punk washes the dirt off his hands with tears the color of the Androscoggin river, it flows like the vomit of a paper girl wearing clown shoes in the bathroom stall of her high school, the one attended by a wrinkling rich woman on College Avenue who has fallen out of love with her husband, a police officer who stands in front of an old man crying alcohol on the bridge between Lewiston and elsewhere. This old man doesn't jump off the bridge. He doesn't leap. He doesn't catapult. He simply walks off. The current will bring him to the other side of the bridge, his body will wash up on the rocks and the happy birds will fly away. The old man floats, like a ghost, down the river, out of Lewiston, and soon everyone will follow.