Pickup Truck #5
- Pickup Truck #5
All the trees in Illinois are frayednerve endings and it is fifteendegrees. You will hide insideyour body until your coat stops
shivering. The heater, in this truck,has not worked since I bought it.I will tell you how we need to gohome. We will stop holding hands
so I can go faster on stick shift.You will tell me I care too much.I will beg to stay inside our housefor so long the neighbors forget
we are home. You will move out,always hating the idea of my truck.I will realize I could get comfortableinside a bed full of boxes and glass.
As we drive and the years breakapart, I will tell you the same storiesabout vacant parking lots and partiesthat never actually happened,
where the acne-covered quarterbacksmeasured marksmanship by breakingstreetlamps. Every basketball hoopin town is still missing a net. You will
reassure me we had it good enough.When I begin to cry about growing upin a trailer park, you will backhandthe blood out of my teeth. [End Page 49]
John McCarthy’s work has appeared in The Pinch, Oyez Review, Salamander, Jabberwock Review, Midwestern Gothic, SPECS, Digital Americana, and The Conium Review, among others. He lives in Springfield, Illinois, where he is the assistant editor of Quiddity International Literary Journal and Public-Radio Program.
