See Rock City

“If those little fuckers don’t shut up, I’m gonna get em kicked out,” he spoke through the popcorn in his mouth.
+++++His statement was so brash I wasn’t sure what to say. Only a moment ago everything was fine. We sat down in the movie theater, popcorn and slushies in hand, talking about the new P.T. Andersen film. Now he wanted to kick out a couple kids for no reason. “It’s like half an hour before the movie even starts,” I groaned.
+++++“Look at them. You think they’re old enough to see an R-rated movie?” He crunched popcorn ravenously. Ever since John quit smoking he ate everything that way. “Those little fuckers snuck in here.”
+++++I looked down at their heads and wondered how he could be so angry at them. Two boys and a girl. Their feet up on the chairs in front of them, tossing popcorn into each other’s mouths. They weren’t even loud. “Look, before you get an usher, let me talk to them.”
+++++John shrugged at my suggestion, almost as if he didn’t care. Strange he seemed to care so much when he was calling them little fuckers. I looked him over, my best friend. When he was their age he was a delinquent himself. Completely unable to follow the rules, even if they were his own rules. Never could bear to see the point in homework. He dropped out at seventeen because he and his counselor agreed school never would be his strong suit. I wondered how many movies John had snuck into during his day.

Nowadays John’s temper got the best of him. Being in restaurants, movies, malls with him was jarring. Anger radiated from him. He was even worse in the car. I watched him tailgate an old man on Saint Charles Avenue for ten blocks, honking his horn all the way. Inches from the guy’s bumper, I braced myself for impact and tried to look away. We were stuck in the right lane behind the old man, forced to go five miles less than John wanted to. We finally took a right on Louisiana Avenue leaving the old man to putter towards the Quarter. I thought I was going to die from the embarrassment. People eyed me in the passenger seat, wondering if I was perhaps in labor.
+++++He never did anything like this before. In fact, before I moved to New York he was the picture of calm. After every breakup, he’d minimize the loss I felt. He’d say, “Who gives a shit about some hipster in tiny pants? Let’s go see Silent Hill.” He was wonderful at getting my mind off things. Even when my brother became delusional, he mused, “Maybe he’s just trying to be different.” Other people made wide, frightened eyes and shook their heads because they couldn’t think of anything helpful to say. When the diagnosis was schizophrenia, John avoided talking about it. Instead, he took me to my favorite restaurant and read to me from Our Dumb Century over big plates of Mongolian beef. He taught me that sometimes you have to separate yourself from the really heavy things in life or you’ll never make it.
+++++The way his car lurched and swayed felt out of control. “What if they tap their brakes? What if you rear-end them?”
+++++“In this hunk of junk? Why not?” His 1992 Taurus was a piece of trash. He had to water it whenever he parked, his trunk filled with brimming jugs. An eyesore as well, it was filled with junk. A broken umbrella, garbage he never bothered to throw away, tennis balls that went over the fence at the country club. A pack-rat’s car. It still smelled vaguely of American Spirits.
+++++A woman on Magazine Street pulled over to let him go around her. She got out of her car urgently staring at us. The fallen look on her face when she realized we weren’t on fire, his car wasn’t filled with killer bees, there was no emergency here. She gave us the finger and John shouted past my face, “Fuck you, too, lady!”
+++++I slumped down in the passenger seat. The smell of old cigarette smoke and the rot in the grain elevators on the river made my stomach sour.

Things weren’t great for John, I knew. How old is too old to still be making coffee for a living? All his coworkers were nearly a decade younger. He worked nights and weekends. Willingly. He said he had nothing better to do. Renting a house from his parents, he lived there with his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s two kids. But John spent all his time cooped up in his room with his cat. His brother accidently let the cat out of the house every month. Each time John was destroyed by the idea that Cleo may never come home.

“I’m all for it. Stupid people shouldn’t be having kids,” he changed lanes without looking, without signal.
+++++A Louisiana state representative recently tried to pass a law that would provide $1,000 to any woman in the lowest income bracket if she got sterilized.
+++++“What?” I tried to stay calm, “The guy’s like Hitler!”
+++++“Stupid begets stupid.”
+++++The ignorance of this statement rattled around in my brain before it landed on INSULTED. “So, you think every woman on welfare is willfully stupid and shouldn’t be allowed to procreate because her children will inevitably be stupid?” I was incensed. Part of me knew he was missing something. That he could never agree with LaBruzzo’s proposition if he was thinking clearly. “That’s not even taking responsibility for the public schools that failed these women in the first place. Why not fix the schools if he wants to stop generational welfare? And why women? Why can’t guys get vasectomies to stop the babies?”
+++++His face started to knit. I believed he was seeing the whole picture. “It’s voluntary. He’s not making them get sterilized.”
+++++He still didn’t get it, and I swam in rage. “Fuck, John! You can’t offer state funded incentives to stop people from having babies! It’s just one more way we’re trying to fuck the poor. And of course around here poverty is 100 percent black. You don’t stop poverty by sterilizing people, by wiping them out. You stop poverty by giving a shit about other people, by giving them a chance.” My heart raced. I was immediately embarrassed by the tirade. “Fuck,” I whispered, shaking my head.
+++++“One more way that we fuck the poor? You’re not part of this. You’re a New Yorker now,” he snickered. He was subtly changing the subject, and I know that means he’s seen my point. John’s not the type of guy to admit defeat in discussion. I love him for that.
+++++“I absentee vote.”
+++++“What for?”
+++++“What for what? I absentee vote, in order to vote from afar,” I gestured my arm to the north.
+++++“What difference does it make here?”
+++++He was all too right. Tossing a blue ballot into a box in Louisiana does feel like throwing it into a black hole. That’s when I missed New York, but I didn’t tell him so.

I met John when I was a freshman in college. He was the barista at my nightly haunt. He remembered what I drank after only a few visits, iced mocha with lots of half and half, the color of my skin. I sat on the patio to do my homework, an avid Turkish Gold smoker then, and John would come out every hour, too.
+++++The first time we talked, he eyed the window into the shop incessantly. If someone was waiting to order a drink, he’d put down the cigarette and go inside. But he’d also eye them from the parking lot, muttering things. “You’re coming in here, aren’t you? You insidious tramp. Just when I lit my cigarette. Goddamit.” Sometimes they were just parking to go to the store next door. “Oh, nevermind. May the Lord bless you and keep you, my good woman.” He hated people that came in with kids. It was the type of shop filled with studious students and kids always seemed noisier than usual. “There you are with your little demon spawn. Kid’s going to throw all the straws around again and you’re just going to sit there while I put them back in the basket.”
+++++There wasn’t much we had in common other than sarcasm, but that was all we needed. We smoked interminably and avoided any subjects of anything essential. He kept my mind off serious things. When I was bored with schoolwork, he’d even let me play with things in the shop. One day, on a particularly slow night, he cling-wrapped me to the underside of the pastry-table. I spent the rest of the night scaring people after they order, when I yelled “Arrrrg!” It was simply heaven.
+++++We used to see movies at Canal Place every week. It was the only theatre in the French Quarter. Above it was hotel called The Wyndam. Entirely unaffordable, we used to go to the lobby after a film let out and make fun of the scenic views. “Who wants a view of the West Bank?”
+++++“There’s a boat. You can see boats on the river.”
+++++“That’s a tugboat. Fuck tugboats.”
+++++“Good point.”
+++++“I think you can see the GNO on the other side.”
+++++“The ugliest bridge in the world? Hooray.”
+++++There was a bar in the lobby that made reasonably priced Sapphire and tonic. It also had lovely leather club chairs that made me feel like I was in one of Oscar Wilde’s boy’s clubs. The bathrooms across the hall were fancy. They had towels everywhere. Little dishes of different soaps. And, my favorite, wall to wall mirrors. There were two long mirrors facing each other, and looking in one you’d see the other, and the other, and the other, for infinity. I spent all summer trying to taking a good picture of it.
+++++Leaving we’d go to the parking garage and spend half an hour looking over the ledge. Six stories up, it made John woozy. I’d spot people we knew drinking on the street and shout down to them, but they’d never figure out where I was. John would look over the edge, get dizzy, then look over again. “Vertigo.”
+++++“I don’t think it’s vertigo, if you kinda like it.”
+++++“Who said I like it?”
+++++“Then why do you keep looking over the edge?”
+++++“It didn’t stop Jimmy Stewart.”

I left New Orleans two years ago to attend graduate school, and John never visited me in New York. I was beginning to realize he had a fear of flying. That’s why I decided to drive back to Brooklyn, and John agreed to come with me. I figured once I got him there, he’d have to get over flying if he ever wanted to get home again. He thought this was a novel idea, a good way to test his fear. “That should do it,” he said.
+++++Across seven states in two days, a night spent half-way in Tennessee. But seeing this new side of him, the high-strung candidate for anger management class, made me doubt my undertakings. I was unwilling to let him drive, not even on a stretch of highway in Mississippi at 10 o’clock in the morning. He was in charge of music (the car itself was in charge of navigation).
+++++The ride was tense from the start. He drank soda constantly and thus we had to stop so he could pee every hour. Every time he emerged from a gas station he had the entire snack section in tow. The car was slowly becoming a wrapper receptacle.
+++++John took to making swift declarations of like and dislike every time a song would come on the radio. And he couldn’t be swayed from his first impression. His head was a closed book. No matter how many times I tried to convince him that classical music could be relaxing, he’d insist on classic rock immediately. “But they just play the same songs they always played for the last three decades.”
+++++“This is ‘The Song Remains the Same.’ This is like the only Zeppelin song I like!”
+++++“Yes, and I’ve heard it eleven million times.”
+++++He put on his mix CD. Again. I started to argue, “How come Phil Collins makes it onto the mix, but we have to change the station whenever The Cars come on?”
+++++“Because this is ‘Don’t Lose My Number.’ And The Cars suck.”
+++++I shook my head, but I kind of liked the song. “You’re a quandary,” I told him.
+++++Just outside of Chattanooga, when the terrain becomes suspiciously hilly, signs appear repeatedly. Water falls, caves, tall mountains where you can see multiple states at a time from the top. We didn’t have time for roadside attractions; it’s 22 hours from New Orleans to New York.
+++++“Ruby Falls again! Come on! Visit Rock City!” he insisted, half-kidding.
+++++“We don’t even know what it is. What is it? Rocks?”
+++++“The Georgia visitor center said you can see seven states from the top of it.” We stopped at nearly every visitor center. John wanted to see if they gave out free Coca-Cola like they do in Louisiana.
+++++“We don’t have time to climb a mountain. It’s six more hours to Morristown.”
+++++“Waterfalls? Huh? Ever see a real waterfall?” he pretended to be excited.
+++++I thought for a minute. “I don’t remember.” Truly, I didn’t care.

Ten minutes away from Chattanooga, a red eighteen-wheeler that had been speeding erratically since Mississippi merged into the left lane quickly cutting off traffic and causing a blue sedan to go swerving onto the shoulder. I gripped the wheel. Heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t so good at driving anymore, and I’m definitely not used to driving so far. “Which one was the exit to Rock City?” I asked.
+++++“These really aren’t the shoes for this,” he panted. It was a hike up the steps to the waterfall, and I knew it was going to be hard for him.
+++++“They’re tennis shoes.”
+++++“Yeah, but they’re more like skate shoes.”
+++++I rolled my eyes, but he couldn’t see. “Take the lane if you have to.”
+++++“That’s for handicapped people.”
+++++I shrugged. We could hear the water ahead of us. To our left people took pictures. A man squeezed himself between two rocks, pinned himself between them. He laughed while his son took pictures. There was a sign in front of the rocks that read Fat Man’s Squeeze. John made fun of the more touristy tourists, but then he remembered that this was his idea.
+++++At the top, a bridge of rock crossed over a slate blue waterfall. People milled about with cameras shouting over the sound of rushing water. It’s called Lover’s Leap, but without the guided tour we would never know why. There were flags at the top, assembled along the ledge. “Tacky,” he observed.
+++++“You know, if I had ever seen mountains before, this wouldn’t be that great.” I sat down on a rock to shake the dirt out of my shoes.
+++++John was covered in sweat, and he unstuck his shirt from his wet belly. “I’m surprised you agreed to come. You’re not really the outdoorsy type.”
+++++“Well, I gotta do something different.” The altitude bugged me. In fact, the last time I was up so high, I was probably in an air plane. I tugged at my ears to relieve the pain.
+++++A kid nearby leaned far over the edge of the rock bannister and his mother shouted to him nervously. The display unsettled John and he sighed, “See, stupid people, stupid kids.”
+++++I almost asked him how he knew that they were stupid, but instead I changed the subject. “Well, this is a change of pace from Brooklyn. Tomorrow, we’ll be in the opposite of this very spot.”
+++++“I can’t wait.” I don’t know if he said that because he liked New York City or because he hated Appalachia. “We gonna drive around or use the subway?”
+++++“Subway.”
+++++“Do I get those little coin things?”
+++++“Subway tokens? Yeah. When we go, just ask the ticket booth for coins.”
+++++“Ticket booth?”
+++++“I’m just fucking with you. We have little swipey cards for that. Two bucks a ride.”
+++++“Jesus, two bucks?”
+++++A man came by to ask us if we would like to join the tour, but we shook our heads politely.
+++++“I started doing this thing. When I’m in the subway,” I worked the shoe back on. “People move in crowds from train to train, on the train, off the train. If you watch people, you all move like this big ocean. All your shoulders move up and down like you’re flowing together. I noticed that and now I like to imagine that we’re all going somewhere together,” I tried to work out the image clearly into words but he interrupted.
+++++“That sounds paranoid.”
+++++“No, it’s like when a football team takes the field. You know, when they all come out and break through that banner? I imagine we’re all heading for the banner.”
+++++“Wait, are you running or walking?”
+++++“You’re missing the point.”
+++++“Do people run in the subway? That seems dangerous. I mean, you could fall on the track, right?”
+++++“I’m just saying, it’s easy to get lonely. Even when you’re surrounded by people. But you can’t take it out on people, you just have to improvise.”
+++++Still breathing heavily he looked out on the view, a hazy scape of leafless trees and rolling hills that became higher and higher rolling north. “I bet it’s prettier in the summer,” he said.
+++++“We gotta get going,” I brushed the dust off my jeans and watch the wind take it away. “Still got three hours til the hotel.”
+++++“Think they got free Coke in Tennessee?”

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Sarah Rae is a New Orleanian now living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Battered Suitcase, Big Muddy, White Whale Review, Dew on the Kudzu, and others. Details can be found on her website sarahrae.net. She is also the fiction editor for Prick of the Spindle quarterly. She received her MFA in creative writing from CCNY and is now pursuing an MA in psychology at The New School for Social Research.