This gloss-black tinted-window pickup truck beside you at the light is so lifted you’d need a ladder to get into it, its extra-large tailpipe pouting like an all-caps argument on the internet, a prissy Instagram star masquerading as a workhorse American’s-American with a 24-oz ribeye for an engine, with all the bumper stickers that tell you Well yeah of course this truck is going to cut you off and send you swerving swearing sweating, so you grip the steering wheel grit your teeth grind the gas pedal, chase it down, skrrrrtch-ing up alongside it at the next red light, and your wife holds onto the dash with an outstretched arm looking out of place in her fancy black dress and fancy black heels in a yellowed shitbox Ford Fiesta and she says in that slow, pronounced way that tells you she is not happy It is bad enough to have to attend the funeral but I would prefer to not also become a part of said funeral, but she knows she should know she has to know that this truck looks just like His truck, festooned in all that Fuck! You!, the truck that never worked an honest day in its life, never took us to the mall or picked us up from school or swung through McDonald’s as a surprise, each part of it more expensive than a whole summer’s worth of baseball or new shoes or Transformers, letting Him escape from a family that just wanted normal family stuff, never answering admitting apologizing, and as your little car rattles and coughs and wheezes in the shadow of this ginormity, you stare at a space somewhere between it and the red light to keep them both in your periphery, ready, waiting for green, thinking He won’t get away with it, not this time
Timothy C Goodwin has work included in Gone Lawn, Vestal Review, Bottle Rocket, Flash Frog, HAD, and elsewhere. Best Small Fictions 2025. (@)timothycgoodwin(.com)