The Life Of Howard

Dev Hathaway Dev Hathaway has published poems and reviews in Shenandoah, Quarterly West, the Hollins Critic, and elsewhere. He is currently enrolled in theM.F.A. program at the University of Alabama and is the poetry editor of The Black Warrior Review. "The Life ofHoward," is his first published story. The Life Of Howard "Henshaw said the transplant team apparently did not bring a container, so a styrofoam cooler was bought from Smoky Mountain Market to carry the heart back to Madison." The Knoxville News Sentinel ONE WAY TO see it. Flashing before his eyes. A dark night. Rain finally slacking off a little. The snap of lightning stiU on the radio, his favorite talk show. Puddles rip by in the fog. A spray of bullets. Howard slides the defrost to full blast. You're on the air with Ask Al, go ahead. He fingers the last cigarette from his pocket. Feels for heat along the dash vent. Nothing yet. Yeah, what's your question? Pushes the lighter button, switches hands with the cigarette, and tries using his coat sleeve on the windshield—his last gesture in this life, waving slowly like a salvage diver, Take me up. Like a drowning man, he sees the bridge abutment. Something like that. Or say a kid on a motorcycle, prom night, on his brother's Harley, a bull too big forhim to handle, and the pickup just ahead slowing for a turnout, with no faillights. Or the treasurer of the school board, alone in his trophy room, rubbing oil on his prize revolver. Anyone. And suddenly. Miles away, farther than the thunder and Hello you're on the air, patiently sits the other, his skin pale under the hospital entrance light. Though the air is cold, his breath barely makes a puff. He gets wheeled in up the emergency ramp, a nurse writing something down walking alongside the woman that is with him, who glances back at the ambulance, startled. You see how it starts to come together. There, the slam/latch of ambulance doors. Here, the yellow and black striped abutment—and just like that, severance, liftoff, a loose ball in the endzone, Howard's heart leaps in his throat and is up for grabs. In disgust, his old high school coach throws down his clipboard in a puddle. A groan goes up as purple jerseys jump wildly around the pile up, pointing the other way. While a cheer fills the block house at Mission Control. That's a 10-4, Houston, we have separation. Maybe there's someone back here, in the front seat of the squad car, sobbing, to fill out the necessary papers. The rain picking up again. 262 ¦ The Missouri Review Dev Hathaway Maybe there's not, the deceased being Howard, thrown from his car according to plan, and no need. Really beating down hard now. CB static over the police band. And a siren throbbing away in the night, trading red lights with the wrecker. Roger, we read first stage breakaway. But can Howard, ourhero, possibly tell? And yettherehe goes, sped off as by Presidential escort, in the limelight in his darkest hour. And the wild boy pulls safe and loud into his girl's front yard, the bike almost skidding out from under him on the wet grass. The proud Howard clicks the felt-lined box closed on his antique Smith & Wesson, over and over. And like the unemployed lottery winner, Howard the third string tailback recovers his own fumble, somehow, for everyone. In one voice the crowd roars, and one voice proclaims him dead on the scene. They turn wonderfully silent. The rain blows down in thin curtains in front of the stadium floodlights. The rescue van, for so long idle behind the stacks of high hurdles, turns out and glides noiselessly up the green and brown field, tracking the ghost of each chalk line. Oh he loves it. Howard loves all of it. It's as good as his favorite reruns. LikeMidnight Cowboy, where Dustin Hoffman bends along some wintry street in the Bronx, his raggedy old coat riding him piggyback. Dustin Hoffman coughing it up in his fist as he climbs the...