Trials of Socrates

E-mail

To: marla.jenkins@csm.com

From: Frank Flounder

Date: January 12, 2011

Subject: Trials of Socrates

Greetings from the Catskills!

I've been driving all night.  I have been told that this is where Rip van Winkle fell asleep for twenty years, and I can see why — there is something a tad hypnotic about this place, a wilderness upon wilderness, such that one can easily imagine having been here ten thousand years ago, sailing north in a wooden ship decorated with the fresh bones of mastodons.

At about five o'clock in the morning there appeared a most magnificent fog, such that by daybreak my car was nothing but two pricks of light in a vast, gray down. Then, when the fog lifted, I found myself in a most splendid arcade of red and yellow, a storm of bright, smashing leaves that would, now and again, float gently towards the ground, so that the ground was as if raked over with so many embers, and as I drove the embers caught the wake of my fully-loaded sport utility vehicle and fluttered behind me like the last sparks of an evening fire.

Marla, I take you at your word that I do not pay you enough to afford a car. Perhaps it is for the best – to be so tethered to a single place, to watch dim shadows cast upon the concrete, to know nothing of a fog rolling over an empty parkway at dawn. Is it such a difficult question, whether to be a dissatisfied Socrates or a satisfied pig?  The pigs look rather happy to me.

It was not long before I reached a settlement that looked like it had been burned out from the inside so that all that was left were the gray skeletons of some forgotten ruin. Soon I came upon a convenience store — a slanted shack, really, set a small distance back from the road. In the parking lot, an old pickup truck lay rotting in the weeds, and the trees leaned over it as if angling to dismember its corpse.

I pulled into the parking lot. I hadn't slept in over 24 hours – not since the encounter with my ex-lover – and I was in desperate in need of bitter swill.

Inside the convenience store it smelled of stale hot dogs and funky coffee. There were animal heads hanging from the walls and bones suspended from the ceiling like childrens' mobiles.  I began tallying the health code violations but soon lost count: there are no health code violations on the frontier. The hardy stock of white men whose ancestors came here stinking of smallpox do not suffer such luxuries. Dear Marla, the land of Rip Van Winkle is a hypnotic place indeed.

The cashier was an ancient man whose skin hung upon his bones like wet newspaper after a long rain. He was a man who had undoubtedly seen his fair share of hurricanes, the tattoo on his forearm suggested he'd seen action in Vietnam, and so surely his memories piled up like yellow photographs in the ether, the arc of an everyman's life, and surely these memories fed the boiler beneath his skin, so that that one day, long ago, they ruptured the nest of veins buried beneath his sallow cheeks. Yes, here was a man who'd been through The Shit and lived. I shot him a knowing glance as I rummaged through an open box of Slim Jims.

I opted for a coffee and a copy of the New York Post. Thus armed with the proper dosage of caffeine and schadenfreude, I approached the cashier without the slightest clue as to what I was going to do with my life. Behind him I spied a shiny roll of scratch and win lottery tickets, and though I have never believed in luck, I decided to try mine in a strange convenience store rotting somewhere along the frontier.

"I'll take one of those," I said, pointing to the lottery tickets. The cashier tore one off and gave it to me.

I pulled out a nickel and began to scratch.

"Not too busy in here," I said.

"Nope," said the cashier. I noticed that he was looking at me with one eye while the other was looking at something beneath the register. I have read somewhere that chameleons can do this, but I had never before met a member of our species possessed of such talent.

"You sell a lot of these things?" I said, referring to the lottery ticket.

The cashier pulled out a tin of tobacco and stuffed a wad beneath his lip.

"I suppose," said the cashier. He pulled out a bottle from behind the counter. It was half-filled with tobacco juice. "Pretty much our best seller."

I continued to scratch but I was not looking at the lottery ticket. As I said, luck has never interested me much, but I am interested in people, and the cashier had my full attention. I leaned in so that I could speak to him in confidence.

"I don't play the lottery much," I said.

"No shit," said the cashier.

"In fact, this is my first time." I winked, whereupon the cashier refocused his other eye upon some unseen object beneath the register.

I glanced down at my ticket. I'd left my glasses in the car and so was unable to divine my fortune. I slid the ticket across the counter.

"Can you tell me if I won anything?"

The cashier picked up the card and whistled. "Son of a bitch," he said, "you just won fifty dollars." He sniffed and opened the register.

While the cashier was counting my money I glanced around the store. Everything seemed to be coated in a fine layer of dust, as if someone had gathered these things in final preparation for the apocalypse.

"Business a bit slow?" I said.

"Pakis done moved in down the road," said the cashier.

Ah," I said, "the people of the subcontinent."

"Yup."

"Their gift for convenience store management truly knows no bounds."

"Fuckin' A."

"Listen," I said, leaning in closer still, "I'm thinking about getting away for a while."

The cashier stopped counting and re-trained his chameleon eye upon my unshaven and slightly rumpled figure. I caught my reflection in a security mirror and noted that my hair was sticking up in places.

"I was thinking about heading out into the woods," I said, "you know, like Thoreau?"

The cashier picked up his bottle and spit. "Go on," he said.

"I'm going to need some supplies," I said. "I don't need much, just the essentials. Maybe a spear or something. Do you sell those?"

The cashier's eye narrowed.

"We don't got no spears," he said.

"I'm having a nervous breakdown," I said.

"Okay."

"Do you sell bug spray?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," I said, "I'll take some of that."

The cashier reached behind him and pulled out a bottle of bug spray. "On the house," he said.

"Thanks," I said. "Hey, you can keep the money. I won't need it."

"No," said the cashier, "I suppose you won't."

I took a deep breath and caught the strong scent of nitrogen-preserved meats. To my left was a glass display case with several glistening hot dogs spinning on rollers. I excused myself, removed one of the hot dogs and returned to the counter.

"You mind if I get one of these for the road?" I said.

"Not at all," said the cashier.

"Alright," I said, "well I guess I'll be going."

"Okay," said the cashier.

I was halfway out the door when he called after me.

"Wait!" he said, "I just thought of something."

"Yes?"

"Lot of wild animals in them woods."

"Yes."

"Bears and shit. You'll need something for that, I think."

"Such as?" I said.

The cashier reached beneath the counter and pulled out a silver revolver. He placed it onto the countertop.

"You're gonna need a gun," he said.