Written in an exhausting series of explanations set off by an accident involving a coyote on the highway, Austin Tucker’s “The Increasingly Unfortunate Circumstances Which Have Led Me To Wave You Off The Highway” is one of our two winners for this year’s Featured Flash Contest. Tucker’s narrator is, he says, “in a sad state,” and with each moment that passes in the story, it becomes clear that this description is not quite sufficient for the situation he’s found himself in. Congratulations to Austin for being chosen as a winner this year. Be sure to check back Friday for our interview with the winner and stay tuned for our second winner next week.
I’m in a sad state. Not the national kind, the sorry kind, like when a dog has some disease that makes everyone go oh no, he’s not doing so hot is he, and the dog spends a lot of time on the couch not moving, but you’re not sure if it’s just a phase or maybe he hasn’t gone on enough walks lately or maybe he’s eaten something he shouldn’t, like dogs do. So, I’m in a sad state, like I said, like a dog, and I think it all started when I was driving down the 51 and hit that coyote. It dashed across the highway in front of the car like it’d been waiting for the perfect moment. And I wanted to stop and see if it was okay, but I didn’t stop because it was dark and nobody stops for a coyote, and nobody can stop, not when they’re still thirty minutes away from the call center they work at, and they keep getting curt emails from their boss Preston about lateness, who once described them as both a failure and full of heart, which I thought was pretty obvious because like how could I not be? Isn’t everyone?
So, I was already worried about being late, and then the dread crept in. The dread of going in and putting on a headset for the billionth time and listening to dialer after dialer click into landline after landline, and the dread of the dark desert and the highway collapsing together into a long, low ridge of tail lights and traffic underneath the treble of a barely-working car radio, you know that dread, the dread that you have to go forward into something until you can’t anymore or else you can’t have anything. And that kept me on the gas despite the coyote even though I felt like I really should stop and see if it was okay, even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t, because I kind of like coyotes and the way they look like dogs with a serious problem, and how they always seem to mean something is about to happen, so to leave that behind, it felt all wrong. But then a few miles later the car started making a grinding noise and the air conditioner started kicking back fumes that smelled like tar and burning hair and I knew some part of the coyote had gotten sucked in from the bottom somehow and unfortunately for me, my father did not teach me car-to-engine coyote corpse maintenance, though he did teach me a thing or two about coyotes, namely, that they’ll always find a way to make your day worse if they get in your yard, which in this case is happening in a sort of metaphorical way.
So in a panic I went to call my girlfriend, but she’s been on her feet working clopens the last few weeks and was completely conked out next to the dog (who’s been sick on the couch with we-don’t-even-know-what); and honestly, it was for the best she couldn’t answer because I’m already worried that the vet visit—god forbid another car repair—would put me over my credit limit, which the nice lady from customer service described as a lose-lose scenario—two losers, both me—and I don’t know how to break that to her yet, not with the baby on the way. That’s a whole other problem because we’re already getting calls 24/7 from credit companies, the landlord, the loan servicers, my mom, all these people are always calling us asking about payments, marriage, how hot the dog is doing, which is not so hot, and all I can really tell them is about the state that I’m in, a sad one, a sorry one, and so that’s why I waved you down after I hit that coyote, and now you can probably see that things are really in a spiral of circumstance. It’s a carpet-down-a-staircase sort of scenario.
Which is why I’m glad you stopped because you have a face like Good Morning America, like you could tell me the news of the day while shaking my hand and kissing my baby, which remember is on the way, and buddy, let me tell you. When we only eat food she steals from the restaurant, when the dog can’t stop moaning, when the time between bad omens, or whatever they are, seems to shrink and shrink: what else could there be? There’s something clumsy and painful about the world. Sometimes when I leave my shift, I feel like I’m just watching the day happen over and over again. Sometimes I look back on my life and there’s an empty re-construction site where my head should be, and I imagine pulling the blinds of my mind down forever.
But there’s something about the way you listen that feels like a painting in a museum or fast traffic. I’m worried nobody wants me to go where they go, except I have to, and then when I get there someone large like a bouncer will wave me off like it was a big misunderstanding. Do you ever wonder if there’s an ellipsis, out of time, where we can have a minute to ourselves?
You raise a hand palm-up like, what?, a small, unknowing island.
I say, I hope you know at least the first thing about cars, if not about coyotes.
Austin Tucker’s poetry has appeared in Zocalo, Pleiades, and Frontier, and his fiction was shortlisted for the Halifax Ranch Prize and American Short Fiction‘s Shorter Fiction Contest. He is the co-editor for Quarter After Eight and is currently pursuing his PhD at Ohio University.