Buy the book at Amazon.com
Salmon
When she heard about his
night at the rest area, Zasu let him move in right away.
“But I swear,” she added. “If that credit report comes
back with multiple bankruptcies, your ass is right back out! And don’t tell
anyone, ‘cause they’d probably fire my butt.”
Shawn made impassioned promises, and spent the next hour
shuttling his stuff up the stairs. He turned his bass drum sideways for a table
and spilled out the contents of his pockets, then headed to the tub for a long
soak. He barely had the energy to towel himself off before collapsing on his
rolled-out sleeping bag.
Two hours later, he woke to a sunbreak (an indigenous
Northwest term), and peered through the half-open blinds to look for his
mountain. Alas, she was hiding behind a sandbar of gray, flecked with sunset
salmon.
Freshly invigorated, Shawn slapped on his few clean
clothes and went for a drive, tooling up Sixth Avenue to find a club district
with all the usual fringes: vintage clothing, used records, tattoo parlor. When
that gave out, he cut left and found a small coffeehouse at the edge of a large
shopping center.
When he saw the sign on the door, he almost had to slap
himself. Open till midnight – on a Monday! It was true: the streets of Tacoma
were paved with gold.
Sitting in the back with a mocha and a News-Tribune, he began to notice things.
For one, the place was populated exclusively by polite, clean-cut youths (a far
cry from the Ellensburg Goths at Café Bovine). And there was a Bible on his
table, next to a napkin reading “Proverbs 3: 3-16.” Then there was the music:
pretty standard anthem rock, but peppered with words like “lift,” “found” and
“divine.”
Shawn went to Jeff, the friendly-seeming barista, and
asked him, as matter-of-factly as possible, “Hey Jeff, is this place sort of a
Christian hangout?”
“Oh sure,” said Jeff. He was a college kid with one of
those chin-liner beards. “Nothing official, but the owner is pretty active at
church, plus there’s a Christian college up the street. Hey, can you excuse me
a sec? Got a song I’ve been dying to hear.”
Jeff headed into the back. A second later, a hip-hop drum
track rolled from the speakers, then a professorial voice listing all the
synchronicities of Earth’s survival (orbits, rotations, distance from the sun)
that precluded evolution.
“Isn’t that a cool song?” asked Jeff. “I can’t believe we
teach evolution like it’s some kind of fact or something.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Shawn.
“You know that eruption at Mt. St. Helens a few years
ago? They found spots in the resultant mudflow that precisely mimicked natural
phenomena that had previously been dated as being billions of years old.”
“Wow,” said Shawn. he looked at the clock above the
smoothie machine. “Oh, man! I was supposed to be at a friend’s house fifteen
minutes ago. Take it easy, Jeff.”
Shawn got into his car, thinking, I am not about to ruin a perfectly good late-night hangout over a
theological debate. He turned onto 19th and began muttering all
the pro-Darwin arguments he might otherwise have used, lacing them with big fat
obscenities. He was headed up a small hill when he saw a little white mutt
scampering along the sidewalk. Shawn kept a careful eye on the little dog,
which is why he didn’t see the big dog until it was too late. Before he could
hit the brake, there was a loud thump at his left bumper, and a sickening yelp.
“Jesus! Shit!”
Shawn regained his steering and pulled into a side
street, where a yard full of dogs erupted in a chorus of accusatory barks. He
got out and walked back to the main road, half-expecting to find a slushpile of
former dog. What he saw was a black Labrador, sitting awkwardly in the turn
lane, still and calm. Shawn wasn’t really sure what to do, so he knocked at the
nearest house to see if they could call animal control.
“Yes, we did that already,” said the woman, a middle-aged
Hispanic lady. “Did you see who hit him?”
“Yeah, said Shawn. “It was me. Poor guy, he’s so dark, he
ran out in front of me and I didn’t see him.”
“Well, be careful if you go out there. I heard a wounded
animal can be kind of snappy.”
But someone had beaten him to it. A fortyish blonde woman
was slowly approaching the dog, hand held out, speaking in reassuring tones. By
the time Shawn got there, she had the dog’s head in her lap and was stroking
his graying snout.
“Poor thing. Did anybody see who hit him?”
“Yeah,” said Shawn. “It was me. He’s so dark I didn’t see
him.” God, he thought. How many more times do I need to make this
confession?
The blonde woman had to leave for work, but she left her
card with the Hispanic lady and said she’d like to adopt the dog if he turned
out to be a stray. Shawn fetched his car, pulled into the lane behind the dog
and switched on his flashers. He draped his windbreaker over the Labrador and
knelt beside him, petting his head and making sure he didn’t move. He was
relieved to see that the line of fluid trailing from the dog’s hindquarters was
not blood but probably urine.
Shawn sat there another twenty minutes, legs falling
asleep, asphalt biting into his thigh. He checked occasionally to make sure the
dog was still breathing, and spoke to him in apologetic tones. Two different
cops showed up, ten minutes apart, to ask who hit the dog.
Welcome to Tacoma,
Shawn. Try not to kill the animals.
When the guy came from the Humane Society, Shawn helped
him slip a blanket under the Labrador and load him into the back of the truck.
Once they had him settled, two pre-teen girls came around the corner in their
pajamas, saying things like “Omigod! Is it Baby?” and, “She isn’t dead, is
she?” Shawn took the opportunity to head back to the sidewalk. He wrote his
address on an ATM receipt and handed it to the Hispanic lady, asking her to
send a note if she heard anything about the dog.
When he turned back around, he was surprised to find that
everyone had cleared the scene – except for another cop, who had pulled in
behind Shawn’s car.
“Sir!” said the cop. “Is this car disabled?”
“No,” said Shawn. “I hit a dog, and I was… No, it’s
fine.”
