Linda Oatman High
A Miniature Forever
Every day is its own little lifetime, a miniature forever in which anything is possible. This is what Joe Morgan is thinking at 4:30 on a Wednesday winter’s morning, during the two-hour commute to his construction job in a company truck the color of old blood. The radio plays, but crackling soft with static, like a slight snore in the night. Joe’s breath is a cloud. Exhausts puff like wood smoke. The roads are empty except for tractor trailers and construction trucks. The rest of the world hasn’t yet begun business. The white-collar workers snooze on Martha Stewart sheets from Kmart, dreaming of their next vacations. The rich don’t need to dream.
Joe thinks about how the dark of morning is kinder than the dark of night. People are at peace. They feel free to die. Crime ceases. Humanity is gentler. You hear about the WaWa being robbed at 10, or 12, or 2. Never 4:30. At this wispy space between day and night, all people want is a cup of coffee. Large. Please. Cream. Sugar. To go. Thank you. Words are at a minimum. Talk is sparse.
Joe goes into the same WaWa every day, at the same time. He always buys the same thing: coffee and a cheese danish and the newspaper. The weary girls who work behind the counter, having been enslaved there since Joe’s bedtime, are not cordial. They frown, and sigh, and roll their bleary eyes. Their mascara is smeared, the black eyeliner thick. There’s not much eye contact. Smiles are scarce.
"Cold day, huh?" says the WaWa girl today. That’s more than usual.
Joe’s coffee steams. He stuffs the danish in his pocket and tucks the newspaper under his arm, clomping in steel-toed workboots to the truck. A fading and hazy moon hides dim in the paling sky. Joe, who’s a poet when he’s not a construction worker, gazes up. He muses on how the moon is really nothing but a ball of rocks and dirt, a collection of dust rolling fruitlessly in space. Joe is planning a new poem, one about the moon. This one will sell to The New Yorker, he’s sure. After all, he published a poem with them once before. It was twenty years ago.
Joe’s forty. His wife of twenty years informed him that she wanted a divorce because he was a disappointment and a dreamer. She needed more. The last straw was when Joe turned down the promotion, so that he had more time and energy for poetry. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She told Joe this in the Walk-Through Heart during their son’s field trip to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Joe had forgone college for marriage. He’s a disappointment, to his parents and his wife and his son and even his own sorry self at times.
Joe’s world is this: sleep, awaken, drive, WaWa, work, drive, eat, write, shower, sleep. A spinning circle of world that never leaves the earth where construction workers work.
But anything is possible before the sun comes up. Everything will be okay. Every day has a chance for change. All construction workers will get a raise, and eight hours will race on the face of all clocks. WaWa girls will smile. He’ll publish a poem. He’ll stop dying daily over the disappointment of being a disappointment.
Joe’s a hard worker. The labor is like praying. He’s too tired for worry by sunset, and he knows that he’ll get up tomorrow and do it again.
Joe climbs into the truck and blinks his eyes. Once, twice, three times, but the spots of a headache are still there. Spinning circles, like the crazy evolution of Joe’s world. The spots never stop. Joe has learned to live with the pain. It does no good to complain. He just swallows an aspirin, which is good for his heart but does nothing for his head. Joe drinks his coffee and eats the danish as he drives. It’s the same as every other day, until the deer leaps into the headlights.
Joe slams on the brakes, but it’s too late. A thud and a crash, and Joe’s heart hammers hard. He whips the wheel to the side of the road, quivering. The deer is hurt, but not dead. It looks up at him and screams. Joe falls to his knees and weeps. He weeps and the deer screams, and they rail together against the injustice of the world.
Then, Joe is crying alone. The deer has died. There’s blood on his truck, and on Joe’s hands. Joe pulls an old blanket from the back of his truck and covers the deer, carefully tucking the fabric around its legs. The eyes are still open.
Trembling, Joe gets back in the truck. He has only a mile to go, and then he’ll stop at the usual place. Joe stops every day at this place: a tiny cemetery of ancient graves, encompassed by a wrought-iron fence. Joe knows the names on the graves by heart. He parks beside the stone of Homer Jones: Father, Brother, Husband, Son, 1805 to 1881. Homer’s family surrounds him. Joe envies Homer, who was obviously not a disappointment.
Joe carries his journal with him each day. He writes a few lines by the cemetery. But on this day, Joe decides not to write. He decides instead to bury the journal.
The journal is yellow -- the color of hope and sunshine and Joe’s first car. Joe bought the soft leather journal twenty years ago, with some of the money from the poem he sold to The New Yorker. For half of his life, Joe has recorded his hopes and dreams in this little yellow notebook. But it’s worth nothing. It’s crap. Maybe if Joe buries his crazy dreams, his wife will decide to stay. She’ll be proud. He’ll take that promotion he’s been offered. Joe will no longer be a disappointment to anybody, except himself.
Joe pulls a shovel from the truck. He takes the journal and walks to the edge of the cemetery. The dirt is cold, but not frozen. Joe digs a hole. He throws the journal into the hole and covers it with earth.
Joe looks for a moment at the broken ground. Then, he walks away. It’s time to go to work. Joe doesn’t look back.
Joe tells his wife about burying the journal. He doesn’t tell her about the deer.
"This won’t fix everything," she says.
Joe knows: nothing fixes everything.
Joe goes to work each day. He labors. Every day is the same. Hours turn into days turn into weeks turn into months. His wife is still with him, and so are the headaches. Joe took the promotion. He now works in the office, and wears a white shirt and a yellow hard-hat. Joe still writes poems, on scraps of company paper in stolen moments throughout the work day. He types up the poetry and sends it out to magazines. They reject it. Joe tries again. Then, one day, an envelope arrives in the mailbox. It’s from The New Yorker.
The magazine is publishing one of Joe’s poems. It’s a poem titled "A Miniature Forever," with a moon and a dying deer and the tombstone of Homer Jones and a WaWa girl who only knows three words. The poem holds Joe’s whole soul from that winter’s day.
Joe holds the envelope close, not wanting it to blow away. He folds it carefully and tucks it in his pocket.
He tells no one about the poem.
Joe writes until finally he’s completed a book: 48 poems, polished. He hopes to sell the collection to a small press in New York City.
One Monday, Joe gets out of bed at the usual time. He calls in sick. Then Joe climbs into the company truck. He drives to the WaWa and buys a coffee and a danish and the newspaper.
It’s 4:30 a.m., when more people die than at any other time. They feel at peace. Joe understands this.
Joe clomps in his boots through the parking lot. His manuscript waits on the truck seat. The publishers wait in New York City. Joe waits for his life to change, but it never does. Maybe, though, today is the day. Anything is possible, at this time of the morning.
Joe starts the truck. He’s heading for New York. He puts on his yellow hard-hat, because that’s who Joe is.
©2002 by Linda Oatman High
