Terminal Read Online Free PDF Page A

college that way. I drove to York and talked to the recruiters, and ended up deciding on the Marines, but two piss tests that showed positive for marijuana later, I was back on the street looking for a job.
    When I was young, I’d always sworn that I would never be like my father, that I wouldn’t be a slave to that dirty foundry all of my life. Even if my old man hadn’t been a total fuck-up, the foundry would still have screwed up our lives. Growing up, John’s dad had been really cool, and the foundry still affected their family. His dad had worked seven days a week shift work, and was never home, not even on Christmas Day. He busted his ass for his family, a family that he never got to spend time with, and died of a heart attack three years ago, seven years away from retirement.
    I wasn’t going to go out like that. I promised myself that I wouldn’t. I’d move, go to York or Harrisburg or maybe even Baltimore, and find a real job. Just leave this town and never look back. But Michelle was there, and so was John, and so was everything else I knew. Like most people, I ended up staying. I guess I never really had a choice. I wonder if anybody in this town ever does.
    I wonder now if things would have turned out the way they did had I left. The bank robbery and what happened with Benjy and the others. But I guess it doesn’t matter. If I had to do it all over again, I’d stay, even knowing what I know now. Michelle was worth it. She and T. J. were worth everything. They were the only two things that mattered.
    After getting turned down by the Marines, I started out bagging groceries, but that didn’t last long. Eventually, like it or not, I got a job at the foundry, because it was either that or work part-time at the bowling alley or one of the convenience stores or fast-food joints— or collect unemployment. Michelle and I moved in together, living in a tiny second-floor apartment over the hardware store. Six months later, we got married. Her parents lent us the money for a down payment on the trailer and John and Sherm helped us move in. We bought a big-screen TV we couldn’t afford, Michelle got a job at the Minit-Mart, I picked up some extra shifts at the foundry, T. J. came along, we got deeper in debt, the trailer depreciated in value like all trailers do, and everything was right with the world.
    Then I got cancer. End of story. Fade to black . . .
    I wondered what Michelle’s life would have been like if we hadn’t hooked up. Would she have gone to New York and become an editor for some big publishing house? Or maybe moved to Philadelphia and opened some bookstore-coffeehouse-type thing? She loved to read, and I know she would have been good at something like that. Instead, she’d settled for T. J. and me; picked this run-down trailer over a fancy apartment looking out over Times Square. She’d chosen us and she’d chosen this town, and I loved her for it.
    I heard her in the bedroom, reading. She was just getting to the good part.
    “And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack! From outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.”
    You need to think of T. J. and me. What would we do if you got really sick?
    Heard the tree fall . . .
    The pain came barreling back then, crashing through my head so fast that I almost screamed. My stomach churned. I lurched into the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before the convulsions began. I turned on the exhaust fan so that Michelle wouldn’t hear me, and collapsed in front of the toilet.
    I was choking. I couldn’t breathe, and my vision blurred. This wasn’t like before. Something pink and black and solid rushed up from inside me and splashed into the bowl, leaving a trail in the water.
    What the fuck?
    I’d just thrown up a piece of myself.
    I knelt in front of the toilet for a very long time and just stared at the debris.
    I’d never been more scared in all my life than I was at that