writer – Page 83 – Michael Seidel, writer

Burping blue smoke and violent noise, a pickup truck pulled into the line of stopped traffic.

Tan with brown accent panels and chrome wheels, the pickup truck was elderly, maybe an eighties vintage, dated as far as motor vehicles go. The right-side door – that’s where the passenger is in America – was smashed in. Broad black tape all around the door held the door shut against the body.

It looked to me like he’d been run into. I could see how another vehicle had slammed head on into the pickup truck’s side. Imagined scenarios easily rose. Maybe he ran a stop sign or red light. Then again, maybe the other vehicle ran the traffic order to stop and hit him, who was innocently motoring along.

Or, it could be the result of passion. He and his wife – or his girlfriend, boyfriend, cousin, sister, brother – argued. He fired up his truck to leave. As he was slewing the vehicle around, dust flying, the other person leaped into their vehicle and drove it into his truck, trying to stop him.

Perhaps it wasn’t passion, but a broken drug deal, or an attempted theft. Television tales and real-life reports fertilized possibilities.

Maybe, though, the driver wasn’t involved at all. Perhaps it wasn’t his truck; he was just borrowing it to move some junk.

The maybes are endless, and I’ll probably never know.

I feel liberated. Released. Like I’ve been locked up in a building and now the doors have been opened and I can go anywhere.

Yeah. Finished the first draft of another novel.

I also feel humbled and happy. Satisfied.

I struggled with finishing. Kept running into a wall with where those final chapters would go. I had to reach the odd realization and understanding that the character is not me. The character had much more to give, more to use. They understood things that I did not. I just had to let go and accept that. Once that finally took place, the ending fell into place, and here we are.

Now it must be edited, revised, etc. But the storyteller is free to start another tale. Almost as if signaled, I saw something and a new adventure began taking shape.

As it’s always been.