laughter of the volunteers irritated me to no end. After everyone left
to go to the dining hall for dinner I decided to take belongings and
make my escape under the cover of darkness. Jake Rippy, fugitive
from the truth.
For hours I dragged myself down the lonely stretch of road. Cars
stopped to offer me rides, but I waved them on. I didn’t know where
I was going. All I knew was that it was a warm evening and that I was
walking. Fate had begun to play its game with my life, so I figured I
would wait and see where the ball landed next. In staring at the full
moon it occurred to me whether Charly could see it too. It might be
something else we could share, besides a death sentence. I realized
that it was daytime in America, so I sent a message to her via the man
in the moon, informing her of her fate. It was a little note that read
briefly: “Don’t make any plans for ten years from now, we’ve got
reservations for dinner in purgatory. Wear your best hospital gown.”
Cars passed me filled with happy families and young couples. I
hated them. I hated all of them. If I could have, I might have killed
them all. Why should they be allowed to live when I was condemned
to die? Why should I be so extraordinarily unlucky? I was just
beginning to float, too. I was just beginning to feel what it was like to
be free from worry and anxiety, and as I came close to the warmth,
my waxen wings melted and I began to tumble. I could feel myself
falling. It was the same sensation one gets from a roller coaster, but
without the pleasant exhilaration: a violent constriction rising in the
throat as the stomach tries to make its great escape through the
mouth. A few seconds of perceived annihilation—this is the great
attraction of a roller coaster ride. A perception which seemed to lose
its luster when extended over a period of hours. There was no telling
what if would feel like over a period of ten years.
Things started to look kind of familiar. In looking around I
recognized a gas station where we had stopped to urinate and buy
more alcohol just before arriving at the beach the night of Yippee’s
going away party. I went in and purchased six candy bars and a bottle
of rum. The clerk said that I looked terrible and asked if I was all
right. I answered that I was OK, but it was pretty obvious that I had
been crying. I wasn’t embarrassed. All I cared about was getting my
candy bars and my rum and getting down to the beach where I could
sit a while and rest. It was amazing how important those candy bars
and that rum were to me at that moment. Kind of like a last request
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
60
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