Trying to Fall Asleep Last Night

I suddenly realized something that had never crossed my mind before. When I’m in bed under the dark sky, that darkness is only one point of a large shadowy band of earth. And all along that band, from North to South, people are sleeping together.

Of course, not everyone is sleeping. Someone is driving a truck through a rainstorm and fighting sleep. Someone else is awake and sweating after a nightmare. Somewhere a man is reading a book that he just can’t stop thinking about. A couple is having sex in a hotel room or maybe some doctors are operating on a drunk driver after an accident.

But most of us are closing our eyes together along that shadow. People across several countries and even more cultures all share those few hours of sleep. No matter how different their days are, they still sleep the same as anyone else. So, though I was restless waiting for my job placement in Japan, I closed my eyes and slept in bed in the shared darkness.

Wings

I am watching birds eat from the grass. There a maybe a dozen of them; some fly in while others leave. Now and then they fight, screeching and flapping their wings quickly. These birds’ feathers are dark brown and black. Their beaks are bright yellow, the color of plastic toys. They hop and sprint and only move with quick, jerking motions, like something under a strobe light. I watch them dig in the grass and dirt, but I cannot see what they are eating. Something else which I cannot see or hear makes them fly away. For a minute or two, I hope that they will come back. And they do, first two, then three more, then one stops in a tree.

Behind and above me, geese cry as they pass. A lone duck stands on a wet stretch of pavement, opening and closing its beak. But I am inside and do not hear its sounds.

Shaking Hands

Just now an older man came through the car wash with his pickup truck. His window was broken, so he had to open his door and get out to pay me. He seemed weak on his feet, and his hands shook so much he could barely unzip his pocketbook. But he smiled easily and talked like we were old friends. His words, like his hands, were clumsy, and I couldn’t understand them. I smiled in response, and he climbed back into his truck.

As I watched him drive into the wash, as I watch all customers, I realized that he wasn’t stopping. Our car wash pulls cars through, and they have to be stopped and in neutral at the entrance for this to work. I ran to catch the man before he drove too far, but as I entered the wash tunnel, he seemed to give the truck more gas. It sped forward between the the brushes and rammed into a large spinning brush which normally eases away on a hydraulic arm as a car passes through. It swung forward violently and then slipped to the side. I followed after the truck, running by the first set of hoses which were now spraying empty air, and stopped the driver just before he ran into two more spinning brushes.

His truck sat under wet hanging wraps. They weren’t yet moving because, as far as the wash’s mechanism knew, the man’s truck was still where it should be, a few feet behind us. He cracked his door as I walked up, and I shouted over the spraying hoses and whirring brushes, “You’re supposed to put it in neutral!” I stayed and watched to make sure the rollers which pull cars through the wash had reached his truck and would take it to the end of the tunnel.

Back in my booth where I wait for customers, I sat at my laptop to cruise the Internet. A short time later, I happened to looked up to see the man driving away. The vinyl cover over his truck’s bed had come open during his wash. It was crumpled and hanging over the side of the pickup’s bed. I wondered if the man realized it was there and whether or not it might blow off as he drove down the road. Somehow, all I could think of was his shaking hands.