He woke up hacking up a lung just like every other morning. He groped for his cigarettes and snaked one from the pack before he even had his glasses on.
Hack hack hack. He lit a match, lit the cigarette, and sucked in a healthy lungful.
"Aw, Christ," he said, sitting up, feeling dizzy. He found his glasses and slapped them on. 50 pounds overweight, high cholesterol, smoking to beat the band, his doctor warned him his arteries wouldn't be able to take much more.
"Jerry, you've got to start exercising, quit smoking, eat right," He'd stopped going to the doctor. He just woke up so damn tired every morning, tired in every way. Tired of himself, tired of life, of his life.
He boiled water, dumped some instant coffee into a mug, some sugar, cream. Stirred.
He stared out the apartment window at the crystal clear autumn day and thought about how his life had veered so far off track. Lit another cigarette, downed the rest of the coffee, ran a hand over the sandpaper stubble on his cheek.
He was 35, unmarried, undating. He had no career to speak of. He was assistant teacher at a preschool. The apartment he lived in was little better than a tenement.
He pulled on his suit, a brown suit that was growing shiny and threadbare, he sure as hell didn't have the dough for a new one.
He lit another cigarette, stuffed himself into his little beater, paint chipping, tie rods ready to blow. Pitched the butt into the weeds.
Shiny suit, crappy apartment, crappy car, crappy job. He didn't have the energy to do any better, he didn't care.
At the little school house Miss Jean was waiting for him. The kids ran and yelled, fell and cried.
"I thought we'd go on a class picnic," she said, as kids ran past.
"Picnic?"
"Yes, up on Jay Mountain,"
"By that old church?" he said. He didn't know why but that church gave him a weird feeling. It had been built and run by a strange off shoot of the Baptists about 10 years ago then they up and moved to San Fransisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara. Somewhere hot and Spanish sounding in California. If he recalled correctly that off shoot was more of a cult than anything else.
"Sure, I guess,"
So they packed up all the kids and bundled them into their little fall jackets and he wiped noses and washed sticky little hands and wondered why. They'll just get sticky again.
The church loomed on the top of Jay Mountain as it always did, creepy and ominous. White slatted boards rotting in the warm Oklahoma sun.
"Children, stay out of the church," despite his feelings of creep out, that church was a fire hazard, a tinderbox that would go up like a Roman candle.
The kids didn't listen, just ran and yelled and hit and cried.
Miss Jean was on the other side so they could have as wide a view as possible of the kids. Surrounding the parameters.
Jerry looked at the sky, began to see swirls in the soft blue, felt himself drifting up and sinking down…and the thought that had been dogging him slipped inside the tender meat of his brain. 'End it, Jerry. Why don't you just end it? What's the point, Jerry? What's the point?'
What was the point? He'd lost any such point to his life, if he'd ever had one. Just going day to day, breath to breath. Things were devoid of mentors, role models, heroes. He had no one to look up to, he had lost himself somehow along the way.
He found himself thinking of cook outs, bon fire parties, and he looked quick at the church. Did he smell smoke?
