DIG A HOLE IN THE MEADOW

Only with time do you realize how priceless innocence really is. Unfortunately, at that point you can only look back at it and try and revel in the fact that you once had that quality. That was a long time ago. Now you're that same kind of tragedy that war veterans are: injured, one-armed, miserable, and, at the same time, without any right to complain. After all, you've mowed down countless people with your machine gun. Why bother using the word "injustice" to your advantage?
My conscience was always vast and endless-- that's bad enough to begin with. But now it is something like a monstrous work of modern art. Truly horrifying, yet supposedly very meaningful. Vast and endlessly deep. It never fails to wrap its black arms around me, pulling me to strange, new depths. Its long finger is always pointing at me, no matter what I'm doing or how I try to pass the time. No matter where my thoughts wander, or what my fingers reach for-- my conscience obnoxiously keeps me company at all times. My conscience was a terrible phenomena, a premature Hell. And yet, I fed it all the time. Whenever I could. Apparently, the only way out for me was a hole in the meadow, where some murderer would finally lay me down.
Or so I thought. Apparently there is salvation around every corner.
"Where's that from?" a man I recently met asked, as he pointed to a black eye I had.
I shrugged my shoulders. "I probably slipped and hit my head against something."
He became morose, respectful-- slightly sympathetic-- like good people tend to do in the embarrassing misery of others.
"Are you sure about that?" he asked.
"I said I probably slipped. Who keeps track of these things?"
"'These things?'"
I could see that he was material for saving blind children in Africa, keeping bizarre species from extinction, and protesting against the ruthless killing of rainforests.
"Yeah, 'these things'," I said, indifferently.
Sympathy was revolting to me. I never knew what to do about it, and when someone threatened to give it to me, I usually ran away. In this case, I decided to stay-- mainly because we were sitting next to each other on a bus, and it would have been uncomfortable to find another seat where someone else would ask about my face.
"You're really not going to tell me anything?" he asked.
Outside we were passing a truck with caged chickens, looking distraught and pissed-off.
"Honey," I said, raising my eyebrows, "why should I tell you anything? Nothing could be as intriguing as the explanation your imagination is supplying you with right now."
He looked offended. "I'm not trying to be entertained."
"Why not? Stories are always the best part of anything," I answered. "Who cares about the rest?"
"What about pain?"
"Well, I've found pain an inconvenient thing to care about in this world. I'm sure you'd agree."
Silence moved in from stage left and buried us underneath its spell. Unsaid tragedies were weighing heavy on the stranger beside me. I felt sorry for him, as he did for me. Clearly, this was going nowhere pleasant. The whole mood was claustrophobic, and the goddamn chicken transport next to us wasn't exactly helping.
"Why's that depressing chicken truck still bedside us?" I finally said. "You'd think either the bus driver or the truck driver would speed up or slow down just a little."
He looked indifferent to my change of subject. "Yeah, I guess that's strange-- if you have the time to notice it."
"Do you think it's a sign of something?"
I had always been the kind of person who liked looking for signs in random events and objects. It gave me pleasure to think mysterious forces were at work.
"Do I think what is a sign?" he asked.
"The goddamn chicken truck."
"Why would that be a sign of something?"
"I don't know. Use your imagination."
He looked blank. "Nothing comes to mind. Sorry."
"Well, I have a theory that it clearly shows a dark future. Something bad is going to happen."
"Why?"
"Why?" I looked at him with an amused laugh. "You think those living-dead chickens are foretelling something jolly?"
"I just don't think chicken foretell anything."
"Well, these chickens do. You'll see."
We soon seemed to loose all interest in each other and became strangers once more. Simply two irritated people sitting next to each other on a bus, trying not to present bait for another conversation. But his interest really never waned. He couldn't keep his eyes off my face.
Eventually he asked me where I was going.
"Maybe home. Maybe I'm leaving home," I said.
He rolled his eyes.
"Don't do that," I said, letting my fingers crawl over his hand. "You know that's none of your business."
I met his eyes as they trailed from the bruised fingers that curled around his hand to my face.
When I smiled at him, it was unfortunately not with the cold sentiments that are usual for my lips. Maybe I liked him? It was hard to tell. I always fall in love with men suffering from definite traces of ugliness, and so I never believe that I actually liked them at the time.
This time too. I didn't know. I didn't think so. Maybe I just felt sorry for him; the way he felt sorry for me? He pushed the sleeve of my sweater back to examine the marks that crawled up to where the arm connects with the shoulder. Needless to say, I was annoyed.
"Alright, enough of that," I said, pulling my arm away. "I have to go-- this is my stop."
I put the palms of my hands on his cheeks and gave him as sweet a kiss as I could create under the circumstances-- just in case I did like him. Walking down the aisle of the bus, I thought for a moment that my knees would give way and I would fall unconscious to the floor. When I came to the front, I stopped, turned around and walked back to him. He looked at me with large eyes, dreading, and maybe hoping for something.
"Don't worry," I said, "I'm not back here to be weird in any unnecessary way. I just thought I'd give you this back."
I handed him back his wallet. He took it; his eyes even larger now. But he didn't say anything. He just put it back in the pocket of his coat.
"You're right about the truck," I said. "It's useless to blame a bunch of concentration camp chicken for bad luck. It wasn't mysterious forces or your bad karma that stole your money. It was me."
"Well," he began, trying to search for the right words, "thanks for changing your mind. I had $400 in there."
"Yeah, I know. See, that's another thing. I probably would have felt so bad, someone would have found me dangling from a rope in my bathroom tomorrow."
"Do you really think you should be stealing in your fragile condition?" he asked.
I laughed. "No. Probably not."
Of course, by the time that my moral breakthrough had come to an end, I had missed my stop. He tried once more to dig up my life story, but I told him it was no use. I wasn't in the mood for heavyweight drama or sentimentality. I wasn't in the mood for falling in love. Being redeemed was just about as much as I could handle on a single afternoon. I think he understood.
When the next stop came around, I jumped down the steps of the bus to the ground, and watched as it pulled off into the street again. I don't remember exactly if we exchanged any meaningful glances through the greasy glass of the bus windows. I'm sure the occasion called for it, but as I said, I've never acted according to sentimental etiquette.