Prone
Engineer remembered the letter.
It had come three days before, right on top of the mail Irene had brought in that morning.
He remembered feeling a sense of impending doom, even as he slit the thick envelope open with his trusty letter-opener.
He read through the letter over and over again, a cold sweat forming on his furrowed brow as he scanned the contents repeatedly without thinking.
He knew it wasn't a joke- a glossy 4x4 had been FedEx-ed to him just the day before. It was a candid shot taken in the kitchen, a close-up of Sarah, his youngest daughter, standing on a chair to stir the stew bubbling away on the stove and Irene chopping up onions while singing to herself.
The Engineer knew what was at stake.
He had picked up the phone with trembling hands and dialed a number, a lump in his throat forming as he wondered what to say to his boss at work.
He still remembered the number- it was six-six-three-four-two-zero.
He recalled the sickening feeling coiling in his guts as he gathered a change of clothes and some personal effects, stowing them away in his battered backpack.
In fact, he felt it right now.
God, what a horrible feeling it was- sitting in his stomach like a heavy mixture of steak sandwiches and beer.
He remembered everything, come to think of it.
Even the Polaroid camera he gripped in his hand as he took a picture of Irene and Sarah in the doorway, smiling at him.
"Three, two, one, cheese!" he had said.
Irene fixed bacon sandwiches for his lunch at work, smiling cheerily all the while as he huffed away at the Polaroid so the ink would dry faster.
He didn't want the photo to smudge.
He had kissed Irene goodbye and gave Sarah a bear hug.
Then he climbed into his beat-up truck and drove to the airport.
He didn't have to pay for his plane ticket. There was one in the thick white envelope, the one Irene had left beside his plate at breakfast. He showed his boarding pass to the flight attendant, who nodded and ushered him to his seat next to the window.
She had smiled and wished him a good flight.
She was pretty.
Pretty, just like his eldest daughter, far away in Washington taking a degree in biotechnology.
At some point in time, the Engineer had dozed off, only to be awoken unpleasantly some hours later by a young man in a hoodie and black baseball cleats, who was prodding him none too gently in his rather pudgy side.
He had stared bleary-eyed at the young man, who introduced himself as Scout.
He thought that the boy's Bostonian accent was rather odious, and clearer than the pimple on his nose.
"Nice ta meet ya, Engineer," the boy had exclaimed, holding his gauze-wrapped hand out to shake.
Engineer.
That's what the boy had called him.
It was his new name, after all.
The boy Scout shoved his hand under Engineer's nose, obviously impatient.
Engineer shook.