I push my way through the door of the bank and step out onto the sidewalk. Across the street, the sun hangs motionless over a brick building. A beam of light slants down, warming my face. In the center of the street, two boys walk side by side talking and gesturing to each other with ice cream bars covered in pale pink and white sprinkles. It’s a beautiful spring morning.

Everything is working out today. Just like I planned. 

Not like last night with the train. My left knee still hurts from that. Yesterday’s attempt failed. Today is different. It’s going well. 

I will succeed this time.

A woman in a red and white checkered dress and a sun hat guides a stroller through the shade of the tall linden tree to my right. The sky above is a bright blue. A perfect morning. I don’t have to do anything else now. All I need to do is stand here and wait for them to come kill me.

Late Evening. The Night Before.

I kneel on the rocks between the railroad ties and press my face to the rail. 

The smooth metal cools my cheek. The sharp quartz gravel digs into my knees. The warm night air smells like creosote and steel.

A night flying bird calls out from above, invisible in the darkness. Off in the distance, a train whistle sounds, lingering over Memphis for a moment, then fades away into the quiet dark. I shift my knees on the broken rocks and wait for the train. I’m alone out here with my head on the rail. Beyond the railroad tracks, across an empty lot, a faded word clings to the side of a brick building: “Spaghetti.” A few moths circle the dim lights in the parking lot.

Through the metal of the rail, I can hear the distant sounds of a train. Box cars rumbling, brakes squealing. They sound sharp and distinct. I lift my head. It’s quiet. I press my ear back against the rail and the sound returns, clear and metallic. I’ve seen this same scene in a cowboy movie–a dusty rider kneeling down to listen for the train. In the movies, the cowboy doesn’t keep his head pressed against the rail waiting for the wheels to smash his skull open. Waiting to sleep forever without dreams. I inhale and grip the rail tightly. Tonight, I’ll be done.

The train blows its whistle as it reaches the corner where the tracks curve away from the Mississippi.

Its headlights illuminate the trees. I hold my breath. 

The back door to the spaghetti place swings open with a bang. A mix of laughter and men’s and women’s voices spill out into the parking lot. I sit up and watch them from the dark. They’re at ease with each other as they walk to their cars. Friends. How do people do that? 

If someone moves too quickly near me, I flinch like I’m about to get hit. 

I can’t look anyone in the eyes.

I have no idea how friendship works, don’t know what to say to people to get them to like me. 

Everyone is so much better at everything than I am. 

I’m not able to do the things normal people do easily.

 I’m not smart enough to go to college. 

 I have no idea how to make friends. 

 I can’t talk to women without freezing up.

How is all that so easy and natural for everyone else? I’m not right. I’ll never be right. I just want out. 

I refuse to endure years and years more of this. If this is what life is like, I don’t want it.

The train sounds its horn as it creeps around the corner. It’s moving just faster than walking speed. 

Lazily rolling down the track, bell clanging, lights filling the trees and track with brightness. The train moves so slowly it could stop as soon as they saw me. This is not going to work. 

Fuck.

I just want to crawl into a hole and disappear. I stand up and hurry off down Tennessee street to the loading dock where I’ve been sleeping.

—

I wake up sometime before dawn and step quietly over the guy who’s been sharing the loading dock with me– Josh. He’s curled up under a blanket on top a piece of cardboard, head resting on his rolled-up coat. 

In the dark, I can just make out the shapes of the giant cockroaches that scatter as I lean over into the thistles and vomit. It tastes thin and bitter in my mouth. 

I spent two days riding in an empty boxcar as it rolled through dry wheat fields before reaching Memphis. When it finally stopped, I was so thirsty I gulped handfuls of water right from the Mississippi. I’ve been sick since then. I wipe the bile from my lips with the back of my arm and lay down on my cardboard bed. The sky brightens faintly, framed by the kudzu vines that shroud the loading dock.

Josh snores. I finally fall asleep.

In the morning Josh and I find a bench under a tree in Army Park. We sit. Being homeless means giant cockroaches and no showers. And vomiting. But it also means whole days with nothing to do. 

No dishes to wash. 

No bed to set. 

No shopping to do. 

 No friends coming by to visit.

Just a whole day to sit in the shade and eat peanuts. 

The groundskeeper gave us each a brown paper bag of them, raw and unshelled, to feed the squirrels: free park peanuts. We lounge in the shade, crack open the shells, and eat. We take our time while we watch big puffy clouds slide across the blue sky. 

Josh throws a few peanuts to the squirrels. They are a glossy black, and sit around our bench in a semicircle nibbling their treats. We’re like two little girls having a tea party with their dolls. Except we are two smelly, sun-burnt, homeless guys. One old, one young. Josh looks like he’s in his forties, I’m nineteen.

I ask Josh for directions to the department store. He points down Front Street and launches into a monologue.

 “You see that big brick building with the faded painting on the side? Take a right there and go two or three more streets until you see a big oak tree; it’s left down that street.”

“Josh, what street do I turn on? Can you just tell me the street name?”

“I don’t go by names… just go up that one by the fire truck.”

I get it now. Josh can’t read. If I was going to stay around longer, I could help him learn. We would have plenty of time. Nothing but.

“See you later, Josh,” I lie to him as I walk away. 

At the department store I spend the last of my aluminum can money on a black plastic toy gun. 

It looks enough like the real thing. The clerk looks up at me with a nervous half smile, like he knows something is wrong.

Outside, it’s hard to walk up the street. I have to concentrate to pull each foot off the sidewalk and put it back down again. My stomach is a knot. The scar on my left wrist hurts. That attempt didn’t work. I sliced it open in a bathtub in Scranton. I sank into the warmth, watching the red jets shoot out across the water in rhythm with my heart, until I drifted into blackness.

The tub was a cold mess of congealed gore when I woke up. There was so much blood that the police told me they thought I had murdered someone. Then there was the time with the propane and the garbage bag. I’m definitely dumber after that one. Doesn’t matter now. All the failed attempts. This time, someone else will do it for me. 

I step into the lobby of a bank. Grey carpet. Brass flip calendar that reads TUES 12 MAY. My leg shakes, spasms. I will it to stop and walk over to the table with the neatly stacked deposit slips. I grab the pen next to the calendar and write my note. As insurance that I won’t change my mind, I smear some blue ink on my thumb and press it to the other side of the paper.

I hand the slip to the teller. She stiffens, looks up from the note with wide, frightened eyes. Damn it. I don’t want to scare anyone.

“I..uh… just need to show this to my manager…” she starts to turn away. 

“No.” I gesture to my waist where I have the plastic gun tucked, just covered by my gray shirt.

“Give me all the twenties.”

She takes out the whole stack and starts counting. She gently pulls and places them one at a time neatly in a new stack. She’s stalling.

“Just pass them over.”

She pushes the bills across the marble counter, looking down at her feet the whole time. I pick them up, shove them deep in my pocket. Now I’m outside, the door closing behind me. The sky remains a deep shade of blue.

My plan was to set my feet here on the sidewalk and wait. To listen to the blood pound in my ears and let my thumb tap each finger one by one, the way it does when I’m nervous. Breathe for a moment until a black and white squad car roared down the street and screeched to a stop in front of the bank. A sergeant in a light blue uniform would slam the passenger door, bark something at me. I would pull the toy gun from my waistband. Slowly raise it, aim at the cop. It would be over. I’d get to sleep. 

The lady in the sun dress pushes her stroller into the sunlight. The trees are perfectly still. There are no sirens. No alarms. Just people, living. As if everything is OK.

I take in the scene for an instant, then turn and walk down the alley to the dumpster behind the bank. I pull off my dirty ball-cap and take off my once white, now dusty, gray short sleeve shirt. I toss them into the dumpster and walk back up to the street. The robber left the bank wearing a gray shirt and a gray hat. I’m bareheaded, wearing a black wife-beater and walking the other direction. I don’t fit the description anymore. 

I hear the siren of a police car howl in the distance ahead. The long wail is getting louder and closer. I’m out in the open on the sidewalk. I know I can’t pass for one of these normal people. I must stick out. A tall gangly kid, trying too hard to walk like a regular person. 

Here it is. The cop car floats towards me in slow motion, siren screeching, blue and red lights spinning, engine revving as it drives towards me. Run! My legs want to bolt, sprint away. No. I force myself to look ahead, pick one foot up, put it down. Pick the other foot up. Put it down. Look normal. Breathe. Keep walking. Slowly.

The police car hurtles by me, flying over the paving stones. The warm air stirred up by the car brushes past my neck in slow motion. I will my eyes to look straight ahead while I watch the “MEMPHIS POLICE” logo on the patrol car door float slowly through my peripheral vision. It touches down, rumbles past me. Time flows at its usual pace again.

Fading away behind me, the siren gets quieter, farther, fainter. A distant chirp of tires, then quiet.

I walk another block. Breathing hard, I turn down Court Street. I cut through a park and stop to cool off in the shade of a magnolia. I pat the pocket of my jeans. Feel the lump of twenty dollar bills inside.

I walk on through the warm spring air, putting distance between me and the police.

It’s still early in the day.