Stranger Will by Caleb J. Ross Page A

under the hood the way his father ’s lumbering Ford Courier did, a sound- track to William’s youth. Mrs. Rose drums against the steering wheel like F. Lowson would against his own dashboard during the drives they often took to destinations William remembers now only by smell. Mildewed pond water. Blackened wood bonfires in flowered pastures. Salt and copper prison cells.
    Everything William had forgotten about his own father comes back.
    Tiny William Lowson stretched his right eye open with masking tape. The strips frame his eyeball. He wants to see the world how his father sees it.
    A teacher expresses concern to his father over the phone, but his father insists in her overreaction.
    “Won’t you talk with me about it?” the teacher says. “We are talking,” F. Lowson says.
    “I mean in person.” “No.”
    F. Lowson lays the phone on the counter and turns to Tiny William, his own gaze limping in a gesture of unwanted confrontation. “That was Mrs. Blank,” he exhales. “Empty your pockets.”
    Tiny William guts his jeans, skins them down to the lint. His father surveys the emptied contents, warns the boy of lying, and demands that he empty his mouth as well. Tiny William opens and offers a tiny ball of salivated beige tape upon his tongue.
    “You know not to keep things from me. I was punished for hiding things, once,” he points to his own right eye, shorn of its eyelid.
    “I know a lot of fathers without kids, they will be so happy to know you,” Mrs. Rose says and turns her attention to the consol buttons. She is busy with knobs near the radio dial when red and blue lights suddenly appear and approach from behind. William peeks over his shoulder and sinks into his seat. “Relax,” Mrs. Rose says.
    William sits straight. He rips a thick nail from his thumb and considers it with his tongue before spitting it to the floor.
    The police car swerves around them and continues beyond the horizon.
    “So many ways exist…” Mrs. Rose clears her throat, beings again. “So many ways exist to feel about any given situation. To dwindle down the options, to force a structure on emotional reaction is to believe in a single end. So many worlds exist. So many minds are at work this very moment making difficult decisions, enduring the pain, and living the results. About this situation, about your daughter under mud, you will choose to recognize the enduring good. You will choose to build your world in accordance only to that which we both know is truth: we drift, but not toward anything.”
    William shakes his head. Slowly, contemplating, until finally he manages words. “I didn’t want to kill her.”
    “But you did.” Mrs. Rose hits the dashboard three times before the radio fades in. The speakers emit more static than music. More noise than message.
    “I didn’t have to kill my child,” William says. “And Julie.” “True. But you are still moving, and how else could you truly realize the possibility of moving beyond? A new life is just a new
    death, William. You of all people should know this. You make a living by cleaning up exactly what I am talking about.”
    The rain slows to rinse; Mrs. Rose stops her windshield wipers. William watches the drops stretch up the glass and disappear above his head.
    He opens his mouth to disagree. He takes in a lung full of air and molds it to mean something angry, something Mrs. Rose will hear and understand as a truth deeper than her own, but as he opens, Mrs. Rose interrupts and tells him to remember his own father. “You were born because your parents believed in something that doesn’t exist. They believed in the end,” she says. “Perfection.”
    F. Lowson was a small man, much smaller than would be necessary to detain an escaping convict, much less control a group of them, but he speaks of his position as a prison security guard with great conviction. Though he’d come home each night, tired and weary, his right eye dried to dusty rubber, he managed