Owen
Owen Rivers sighed and looked down at the odometer; he had reset the counter before he left, and the miles hadn't quite reached six hundred yet. They would soon. In less than a hundred miles, he'd be nine hours away from the one-story house in West Virginia and standing outside of the new apartment building. Far from the mines. Further from his parents.
For the third time in the past fifteen minutes, he switched to the other NPR, this one's broadcast ahead of the previous, and with a frown, he tried to piece together a minute's worth of conversation concerning how the bacteria in the stomach can affect the will to survive. The topic was more than complex without his Jeep's bad reception interfering, and he would have tried to find a rock station, but the South was landlocked by country music with the only hopes of modernity found in the bland genre of hip-hop. It wasn't so much that he disliked hip-hop--some of the music was fun and uplifting in that bust-a-move-and-flair-tail way--the lyrics were simply lacking. The drabness of talk radio made it easy to forget the front right and back left blown speakers.
When the station's reception fell, right as the scientist began explaining the testing procedures, Owen turned the radio off and tried to balance steering with fighting the knob to roll the window down. He needed air just like he needed distance. The lurching feeling in his stomach grew, but this time it brought a wave of nausea to mix with the tension and apprehension of leaving his future in the mines behind. He tried to forget them. The shift of smiles to regular looks of disapproval from his father. But trying to forget only strengthened the twisting-gut feeling that he was making a mistake.
He wondered how long it had been since he'd last eaten.
The back road, ensconced by a latticework of limbs and leaves that seemed to smother the headlights, bent around a hill and reminded Owen of the windy roads outside of his hometown: rugged, eroded, and blank. The only signs of use were the occasional skid marks or dirt picked up from the ditch and shoulder (probably by someone unfamiliar with the road). He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before checking the odometer again: still under a hundred. He thought about turning the radio back on, but inevitably there would be more static; instead, he pushed the padding back onto the door handle and leaned against it to hold it in place. He splayed his ears and felt the wind brush against the fur on his left ear: a trick to stay awake and keep his mind on the road. Somewhere between the hill and here, a one-lane bridge, he had drifted back into the mines.
He had hated the ear protection that he had been forced to wear: while he understood that his chances of permanent aural damage were increased without the ear gloves, he disliked how they both encased and penetrated his ears while forcing them to be erect. The coal dust always managed to find its way inside them, sometimes causing unscratchable itch in protection zones where the safety equipment was required. Designed to fit over most muzzles and protect the eyes, with their clunky, boxed structure, the masks weren't much better. The foxes and otters and dogs and even Big Jack Bobcat all shared the same mask as if they were issued by their unionized army rather than being the cheapest option the mine's administration could find within national regulations. The masks were supposed to be washed daily, filters changed weekly, but the air always felt constricted and some sweaty residue was always on them. When he had mentioned this to his father, he got a stern look. "You get used to it, Owen, you're not paid to complain, you're paid to mine," or, "Take it off or deal the fuck with it. Work." He worked, crestfallen: wasn't the point of the union to ensure worker safety? But that was how things were done in the mining town. Money before health, work ethic before happiness. Behind the masks, it was all the same: a stoic, impersonal face. Expressionless. It made it easy to hide the tears.
He worked the second shift: lunch at noon, and then he was in the mine by two. He operated the weigh station, a simple job. "A woman's job," according to his father, "If a woman's place was in the mine." He appreciated the duties, though. Despite the harassment from his father, despite the monotony of staring at a number readout and keeping a log of the weights, despite being underground for eight hours, he was able to lose himself in the darkness.
The darkness was a warmth in his soul that the sun could never provide: it was a blanket of obscurity from reality. The place fantasy books included, but where he wrote--as much as one could in the spreadsheet software--his own writings. The darkness had a regular life to it: when Owen remained still behind the monitor, the lights would cut off and remain off until the next load of coal, fifteen minutes after the previous, arrived and triggered the motion sensors.
Most times his entries, always copy and pasted together to keep them at the bottom of the document, were questions. What would happen if the tunnel caved? What would Mother do if she had a stroke and could no longer bake? Where will we be in a year's time? Will Dad still love me? Other times he tried poetry when he had to get the words out and because the spreadsheet's columns and rows were too restrictive for prose.
One of the things Owen often revisited in his spreadsheet questions was his father. Owen loved the older fennec, but the two had grown apart. Samuel Rivers was a man that believed in hard labor, working every day until he died of coal dust like his father and grandfather, and Owen was a man that believed in pointing out that no one died like that anymore. Samuel had been proud of his son who had originally gone to college for accounting, but at the end of the sophomore year, when Owen admitted to changing to an English major, the rift had started to form. "You were going to join the management of the mine as an accountant." "What good is piece of paper in English?" The questions only got more desperate as the parents' money went toward state tuition for a son that they feared would never amount to anything. "A writer has to eat, boy, and you'll thank me later for at least teaching you a trade." During the summer break, it was a topic that neither mentioned: Samuel hoped his son would see the error, and Owen hoped his father would accept it.
Accept him.
His Creative Writing professor had complimented him on one poem he had written during a break while sitting in the duct tape patched chair, but also said that tact was a gift too. In the car, Owen smiled, remembering the fox's warm grin and rich laugh that always silenced the room before becoming contagious. "Mr. Rivers, you wear your heart on the paper, and any poem needs that if it's to be successful. But. But! Sometimes it's best to wrap your heart up too. Put a condom on that thing, as my mom always said." Everyone in the room had chuckled, especially when the fox pointed to his missing fang and joining in the renewed laughter. The students knew the story behind the missing tooth: the professor had lost it when his brother punched him after being told the unwrapped truth about what had happened during the night with his girlfriend.
It was easier to laugh about that rather than the estranged brothers that resulted from it. Much of the the professor's poetry dealt with the lost time he had with his brother.
He wondered if he'd soon be an estranged son. Owen thought about the hug from his mother and the forced handshake of his father before he left home for graduate school. He tried to ignore how his mom didn't kiss him, and especially how his dad didn't even say goodbye before their son drove out of their lives again to sit behind the wheel of his Jeep for 721 miles and invest his now further-indebted life into the art of writing. They never acknowledged how much of an achievement it was to get into Swindon for writing, how it was--
The rain hitting Owen's ear startled him. He glanced down at the odometer and smiled as it flipped over to 606. He turned on the windshield wipers and held his paw out in the rain, briefly closing his eyes and enjoying the pitter-patter of droplets hitting his exposed arm. A few minutes and a turn that bent around a mountain, the storm picked up, bringing with it a gust of wind, some leaves, and heavier rain.
Owen pulled his arm back and grabbed the window knob, turning it quickly to get the window up and stop the water from coming in. He got the window halfway up before the entire knob pulled away from the door. "Fuck." He tried to put the knob back on, but he couldn't get it lined up just right, and he had to turn the wipers up, and now his jeans were soaked....
"Fuck!"
In trying to get the knob back on, he had unconsciously slowed down and drifted across the center medium. He quickly jerked the vehicle back into his lane, still trying to get the knob back on and looking for a place to pull over. A hundred or so yards later, he pulled over onto a gravel driveway. With the cabin light on and two paws, in merely three seconds, he got the knob reattached and finished rolling up the window.
Owen turned the light off and sighed, gently laying his forehead against the wheel. His jeans were soaked now, and the side of his shirt wasn't much better, and dammit, he hated being wet, especially his ears, instinct driving the left one to flick in a failed attempt to get the water out of it. He turned the air conditioning off and adjusted the temperature to lukewarm.
After brushing a paw across his cheek, he pulled back onto the road and drove on, losing himself once more in his thoughts.
Owen clambered out of his Jeep and grabbed his backpack along with the blanket and pillow he had in the front seat, tucking both under his arm and then leaning against the vehicle. The apartment building was tall enough for four floors, but there were only three sets of windows; the bricks were larger than the modern manufactured ones, and their color had faded. The ivy snaking under the first-story windows and inside the stairwell, the chipped mortar, and the busted door knockers went noticed at 3AM.
The wet asphalt had been cool on the pads of his feet. The dry tile sent shivers through his spin.
The fennec climbed up the first flight of stairs and then scurried up the second, covering his nose and hoping to God that the smell belonged to mold long gone and not anything still festering, else he'd be sneezing and having sleep issues until the mold was cleaned.
He padded his way past two doors and stared at the apartment number on the door. The "303" looked more like "3u3," a thing he'd fix tomorrow. Working the keys, he unlocked the door and slipped inside, closing and locking the door behind him.
He sneezed and then sighed, turning on the lights and frowning at the barren room. At least there was carpet. After dropping his pillow and blanket near the door, he walked into the side kitchen, barely big enough to cook two dishes, and then into the bathroom. He sneezed again before the lights came on and once after. The mold on the ceiling caused him to sneeze again before he closed the door and slipped back into the living room, digging into his backpack and pulling out a scent wad. He held it up to his nose, breathing deeply to clear his sinuses and stop the mold from irritating further.
It would be a long night on the floor, trying to sleep with the scent neutralizer over his nose.