Hayden Buhler

A Book for Remembering

I slammed on the brakes and the 1964 Plymouth came to a screeching halt. The summer night was clear and warm and in the sudden stillness the desert around me seemed to stretch on endlessly. Tears were still streaming from my face. I could feel them burning on my flushed cheeks, eroding away my skin and dripping freely from my chin onto my shirt but I didn't care. I hardly even noticed them to be honest because in that moment when I should have been feeling distraught and heart broken I felt nothing and that was somehow worse. I looked over at the duffle bag that sat innocently on the passenger side seat, the duffle bag that was filled to the brim with cash, the duffle bag that occupied a space that would never be filled with my son ever again. At the thought of my son, my sweet round faced son who would never sit in that seat, never eat cheese pizza in that seat, never listen to Blink 182 and try to sing like Tom DeLonge ever again. These thoughts seemed to scream over and over again in my mind and perhaps it was the stillness of the desert night that so contrasted the heaving sea of anguish that radiated throughout my entire being or perhaps it was seeing the bag that had replaced my own flesh and blood in the passenger seat but the numbness inside of me shattered. I began to scream and beat my hands against the steering wheel of the old Plymouth. I could hear myself screaming to God asking him over and over again to forgive me for getting my precious boy mixed up in all this. I knew that he would not.