Cape Disappointment Read Free

country.”
    “Hero?”
    “That's right, hon. In the bombing.”
    “Did anyone die?”
    “Four people. Harborview saved two by the skin of their teeth. You lucky to be alive your ownself. You have a serious concussion. Made the national news. I saw your boss on Jim Lehrer. Some real heroics that night. And you were right at the center of it.”
    Heroics? What was she talking about? Was I a hero? The only thing I remembered was the bomb's destruction around me. I'd been nailed to a wall, as I recalled.
    “Tell you what. Now that you're beginning to make sense, I'll send doctor in to take a look.”
    “Sure.”
    “You're healing up real fine everywhere else. Just that head injury they were worried about.”
    “Did I …” She'd already finished whatever she was doing under the blankets and was wheeling a cart out of the room. “I have any visitors?”
    “Oh, honey, you been having a whole bundle of visitors. I don't think anybody's out there just now, but they been in and out all week.”
    The room is overflowing with flowers. I smell lilies, roses, and oleander. “Was one of my visitors … a redhead?”
    “She been here a number of times.”
    “Was she just here?”
    “Oh, no, honey. She hasn't been here in a while.”
    “Is she pretty?”
    “All the men around here seem to think so. Don't ask me why. If I was a man, I'd be chasing the sister with the great big ol' booty.” She slaps her behind and laughs uproariously.
    “What's her name?”
    “I haven't been introduced, but you know they wouldn't be letting her in unless you two were kin or something.”
    As the nurse exits, I think of another question and blurt out, “Where's my wife?” The nurse is already out of earshot and she doesn't reply. There are so many things that need clearing up. What I need is for somebody to sit beside me and tell me why I feel this need to be out of bed and walking the streets. I have a sense that there are things out there that only I can fix. I wish I knew what they were.

IT WAS A MILD, sunny, autumn afternoon, a day that ordinarily would have pleased me to no end, yet I was in a particularly foul mood and had been for some time. I'd fallen into the tropical hurricane of bad moods so it was really no surprise when I went berserk.
    Have you ever done it?
    I'm talking about when you go stark raving mad, the kind of blind rage that doesn't do anybody any good, the kind that if it lasted for more than a few minutes, would put you in the loony bin or prison.
    You know what I'm talking about. You're on a two-lane highway with tons of oncoming traffic; the speed limit is sixty, which you're doing, when some dunderhead looms up from a side road, gives you a careless glance, sees that he has no chance of avoiding a collision if he pulls out, but pulls out anyway and begins to accelerate with agonizing slowness, as if he wants you to hit him. You are forced to slam on your brakes to keep from rear-ending him and killing yourself; your tires squeal and your vehicle slews out into oncoming traffic and you escape death by inches, while he cruises blithely on as if it never happened. You curse and shout and honk, and if you could somehow get him to pull over and step out of his vehicle … well, you're not quite sure what would happen, but it wouldn't be pretty. The newspapers call it “road rage,” but it can occur anywhere. Educated people like to think they're immune to momentary insanity, but in reality few really are.
    The last time I went berserk, I was driving Kathy's car through the U-district, coasting down Brooklyn Avenue past a grocery store only blocks from our house. I'd shopped at that store for eons, so what happened was particularly appalling because the people who worked there would no longer remember me as the genial man who always had a pleasant smile and a comment he thought was witty but usually wasn't, but as the maniac who terrorized the staff and customers in a freakish encounter none of them could explain