Krammer Abrahams

the other side of the day

The horse was gone in the morning. Boots Walking in America vaguely remembered waking in the middle of the night to trade the horse to an escaped convict for three crumbs of cheesecake. When he woke he found only a single crumb of watermelon granola. He had eaten the other two crumbs in his sleep and this third crumb had digested itself into a more suitable breakfast.

The sun had not yet risen, but already a hum of multiple chainsaws were at work up the road. Boots Walking in America spent the rest of the morning walking towards these chainsaws, but when he figured he had reached the location where the chainsaws had worked they had already given up on the day and gone home. All that was left in their place were a pile of freshly cut logs on the bank of a river. Boots Walking in America didn’t know what else to do so he lit each one of the limbs on fire and then set it into the river to float away and burn.

A man delivering milk in a canoe offered to ferry Boots Walking in America across the river. As the man paddled he looked at the bare feet of Boots Walking in America and then at the new boots hanging from his shoulder. The delivery man asked Boots Walking in America why he wasn’t wearing his boots. He shrugged, took one of the boots, dipped it into the river, and drank from the boot. When they reached the other side, the delivery man gave Boots Walking in America a bottle of milk for his bare feet. Boots Walking in America thanked the man and poured it on his feet as the man paddled back up the river. On the other side of the river there didn’t seem to be anything except crows. Boots Walking in America laid down and tried to count all the crows. He counted to a little less than ten thousand before he fell asleep. When he woke up the crows in the fields had been replaced by a circus. Boots Walking in America didn’t care for tents and circus things so he avoided it all except the image of a child dropping his ice cream cone from the top of the Ferris wheel.

He followed the road until he came to a town. The only building in the town was a laundry mat. Boots Walking in America could not remember the last time he had worn a clean shirt or a clean body. There was no one else in the town. Boots Walking in America felt secure in his loneliness so he removed all his clothes and put them in one machine. He put himself in another machine. When the two machines were done Boots Walking in America got dressed. He didn’t bother drying himself or the clothes and he left the town.

There was a car in the ditch. Its motor was still running. The car was empty. Boots Walking in America kept walking. He got excited at the possibility of catching up with the person who had left their car in the ditch but the only living object he found as he walked on was a family of mice sharing a greasy piece of styrofoam for dinner.

The sound of a radio played from up the road. At first Boots Walking in America thought it was an outdoor concert and he became half-excited, half-uncomfortable at the thought of people, but as he got closer he could hear the static of the frequencies. The day had already closed its eyes. For a few miles it was only the road, Boots Walking in America, and the radio drifting through the night. About the time when Boots Walking in America was ready to give up he found the shed where the radio was playing. The shed had a cot and a small table where the radio rested. He sat down on the cot and thought about turning the radio off, but he didn’t want to upset whoever had left it on so instead he just lay down on the cot and waited for someone to come wake him up.