TOM WHALEN
THE RIDE
M ysituation was perilous. Two Bonnevilles sped head-on toward me. I
froze and saw the people on the sidewalk, like upright insects, freeze
also. What could I do? An unwillingness to respond overwhelmed me. I
waited for the end. Then a bulldozer came steaming out of a dark alley, scooped the
Pontiacs up against a brick wall, and squashed them until their squealing drivers
popped, slashed and bleeding, out of the windows. Their heads were loosely hinged
and flapped madly against their shoulders. A silver Coronet ripped off my front
fender and I maneuvered the sliding car away from a telephone pole only to send a
blind man and German shepherd, who had been frantically trying to cross the
street, smack into line with a Mack truck. Car horns drowned out the thud. An armored car's guards were firing randomly into the downtown traffic. Bullets flew
around like excited electrons causing the pedestrians to do likewise and opened up
gaping holes in the sides of windows and heads. A priest ran robeless and naked
into the street. I got him waist high throwing him into a Coca Cola neon sign that
poured electric liquid twenty-four hours a day into an equally electric throat. Emergency hospitals were being set up on the corners and blood donors were grabbed
from the running crowd. Cameras, black rectangular brains atop each light pole,
made 360 degree turns clicking at each degree. Click, click, click, click, click, click,
click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, etc. News flashed against
a tall building's flat side. "Debris fall offensive at misplaced conference seen last
our logistic baked out chill of senate seated multi-million K-49's slung over symbol
world-winded government corporation confrontation enlargement." I tried to see
(or not see) this in light of Husserl's transcendental phenomenological reduction
but a cabdriver side-swiped me up onto the sidewalk where it was rougher going
due to the number of prone bodies on the ground that bubbled and juiced all sorts
and shapes and colors of body organs on the pavement. A gold fingernail file slit a
traffic cop's throat. I followed a stop sign that seemed to know its way around the
city. A red figure was using a fog machine on some frantic housewives clamoring
for his attention. The stop sign led me to a dead end where purple flies hovered
over a twenty car rotting pile-up. Salvation Army nurses were passing out loaves of
bread that refused to multiply. Fish gushed up from the stinking gutters along with
the sewage and spread a yellow liquid onto the pavement. I backed up and got back
onto the avenue. Police were blow-torching traffic light poles and shouting, "Geronimo!" when they fell. (The Traffic Coordinator was rumored to be on vacation.)
161
