Philip James Shaw
Tommy died on the same stretch of old highway one sixty-six Kenny died on. Same stretch Todd’s sister Kim died on. Everyone took that shortcut into the back end of Caney south of the zoo to look for where the fuel workers and truck drivers hid in the forests of sugar maple, river birch, and white oak, eating Sonic and trading sex and drugs. Kenny hadn’t even turned sixteen yet when he’d wrapped around the power pole and made most of rural routes three through sixteen go dark. When power was out without a storm, it’d been because of another accident right there. Kenny’d been driving his mom’s Chevelle since he was twelve, so it wasn’t because he didn’t know how to drive and Todd’s sister, Kim died when her boyfriend Cody went end over into a gulley that’d been carved back when Hafer’s Run ran so high in the flood of 1977 it went all the way over the one sixty-six. That night Kim was thrown from Cody’s truck, but after rolling over it come to land on her and her ghost visited me that same night wearing the same dress she’d died in. She was eight years older than Todd or me, and I’d never seen her wear a dress until then. She stood at the end of my bed smiling. Cody survived but moved out of the county, and then Tommy went on to die right there, too, same spot where the old highway becomes county road fourteen twenty-five and the Montgomery twenty-three hundred comes shooting down from north right there at the turn. It was the Saturday night after Tommy got his driver’s license. Rolled his new-to-him big block Ford blasted on crank and that green whiskey made from hay clippings and some honey in the still we made with his dad back when we were seven. Tommy’s dad was a junkman and he taught us how to weld back then, told us that the robot we were building was going to be used to make syrup. When we turned eight, he gave us both some.
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Philip James Shaw, born in 1970, lives in Port Townsend, Washington. More about his work can be found at: philipjamesshaw.com