Things is been slipping since he saw that star night of his incarceration. So says Terry with the black rung eyes. We’re inclined to believe him, sipping bag wine not far from where we combined our funds to purchase it. That star, he says, not all unlike the usual, being blue and all and up there, but crazy extended. Star’s points was visible. That’s what he’s looking at, cheek to the roof of the squad car, the star’s points, perfectly decagonal and fixed, like a sticker. He helped himself to wine, working the bladder, beads of it up on his lips. A perfect star, but all stretched out. I wadn’t even on nothing. Birds come and go from the package store sign, rent and cracked from a recent storm, hollow inside, except for the birds. Look like crows. It’s easier to think of a cartoon star than what it actually was. He drew one in the dirt with the toe of his boot. Wadn’t as big as this. Crosstalk: Terry’s credibility. We don’t spare him this; he’s been to jail. And was the cops’ lights on during the arrest? Consensus: experience said yes. Sirens’d be strange, but lights—crucial to an arrest’s atmosphere. Strobing red and blue’s about important as the cuffs is, terms of encouraging near-term penitence, obedience. A possible factor, optical, to be considered. Someone said chromatic aberration. Nobody knew what that was. I say to the cops, I say look, look, but they’re laughing at me. Birds at a rate roughly concordant with cars entering and exiting the parking lot, a relationship there. I said look, and they won’t look. As if they might see it and forget what I done. Like, y’know, a solar eclipse. Can’t arrest nobody in a solar eclipse. Wouldn’t be right. There’s bigger things. S’unconscionable. I was in a bank, once, in a eclipse. Bank of America. And they’s dispensing branded paper glasses to view it with. I thought, Terry, rob this place. Rob it blind while everybody’s out there looking at the sun. Couldn’t do it. Bad faith. I took them glasses, stood shoulder to shoulder with all them. Bank manager, teller, security guard. Lady in line with her kid in a stroller. Glasses on the little baby. Then they denied me a loan. Loan for my business. Spurious. I was thinking right, at that time, that each of us’d remember the moment, the people there. That teller, she got the same story ‘cept it’s changed around. Security guard, manager, guy with a failing paint business, all lined up as equals, transfigured in the face of natural wonderment, the sun getting swallered up, shadows of leaves of them median saplings scattered with light, fingernails of light, like clippings. Maybe the baby don’t remember. Artifacts. Digital artifacting. This my life. I’m getting apprehended. I see a perfect star. Not a glimmer to it. Just put there. Cops’d deny me that. Cops say my sulking ‘round the Walmart parking lot amounts to criminal activity. I’m sad! My business failed. I los’ my wife. Damn took the dog. Sure, I got a record. Don’t we all? And there are sober nods of
recognition, spurt of wine from the bag. To me it’s a sign, sign ‘at says Lord God’s looking out fer you, and I’m craning my neck to see it out the back window as they’re taking me away. Terry’s Adam’s apple’s scruff-specked, bobbing as he demonstrates. Y’all. That crow have a hat on?
Don Television is an American writer. Read more: donatello.vision
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