(note, this is a real place in PA.)
These are the things I couldn’t tell you when we were dating. You would beg to know, and then demand. Where did I go for an entire year? You saw me working at the bakery on Elver every morning for months, and then I was gone. And when I came back, somehow you knew right away. You showed up at the bakery and waited around for a while, we went to that park with the intricate fountains the night after I re-appeared. You didn’t ask me where I had been right away, it was simply too early to tell whether or not I had been in prison or someone very important had died. By the fourth night it was obvious that I was fine, just exhausted. I wouldn’t tell you where I had gone because you didn’t need to know. But now that you live an important and fulfilling life and do not hang around the bakery anymore, I don’t care. You can tell your new girlfriend that you once dated a deeply troubled and nomadic woman, if that is what you would like to say. You could walk her by the bakery and say something like “One day she was just gone. My dark marauder.” And since she is obviously a simple woman, she will be amazed and probably intensely jealous. Or you could read this, and then burn it, it’s not really any of your business in the first place.
I will give you the facts about Centralia. It is in Pennsylvania, which is quite a ways away from where we live. Don’t be insulted by my telling you that, I have no idea what you know. You could only be aware of the geography of your own block. And that would be fine. The world is the size of a fingernail if you want it to be, there is nothing wrong with an honest life and a simple woman, Adam. Four people live in Centralia. and I only ever met three of them. When the stakes are that low, you expect to be in on everything but your not. The thing about the place is that it has been on fire since 1940. The whole space under the town is one very large coal mine, this was the soul reason any one ever lived there in the first place. Coal mining men with sooty clothing and bloody coughs, and their patient, understanding wives who were probably not much different than your new girlfriend. There were children, of course, who could grow up to be two things depending on their reproductive organs, a bloody cougher or a patient woman. Either way they would stay in Centralia. You could probably up and leave the place all together , but I guess you could never really come back. One man started a fire in the mines one day, I like to think it was on purpose, and it is as simple as this: the fire never went out. There is enough fuel for this particular fire to burn for four hundred and fifty years. Everyone left, obviously, because the ground is liable to collapse at any time and there is no coal to mine. Everyone except for these four people, obviously. Part of the reason I chose to stay in Centralia is because there was a risk of being forever swallowed by the fire at any moment, there are even signs posted all over saying “PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.” The other reason is that it was where I ran out of gas for the first time, and there was no station around. I hadn’t eaten yet, either, and I figured that if at least one person lived here there would be some food. You are probably wondering if I stopped along the way and the answer is no, absolutely not. One day has twenty-four whole hours in it. Again, do not be insulted, my days consisted of varying lengths before Centralia. For all I know, yours are only the length of a school-day, six hours. But if your day has twenty four hours in it, you have to assume that about twelve of them will be spent alone. Most people are sleeping or fucking or in their basement drinking or thinking about killing themselves, but I was just driving. When you do something alone it gets done much faster, you must know that by now. Anyway there was just one house on the main street, and the three people I knew lived in it. The fourth person was bitter and old and named Jiffy. He may have been dead, no one had gone down to the other end of town to check on him for a month. Jiffy wouldn’t have wanted them to. The people whom I know are alive were called Joseph, Gladys and Judas. Judas and Joseph were old, but not bitter, and Gladys was young so she took care of them. By young I mean forty, that is called young nowadays because people are living to be at least one hundred, so that’s less than half your time here. If it were up to me I’d bring the life expectancy back down the thirty, more incentive that way. I didn’t really know what to do when I got there. I mean, I didn’t park anywhere because I had no gas. And even if I did, what’s the point of looking for parking in a town of four people. I just knocked on the door of the only house I could see and I thought God, this is it. I didn’t have to think any further than that because a woman opened the door. Obviously, it was Gladys. You’d think she would have looked shocked to see me, but she was obviously a steady woman and only said
“Yes?”
Like she thought I was here trying to sell some magazines. And I didn’t know what to say except for Hi, which sounded flat and meaningless.
“You lost?”
“I’m out of gas.”
“I got a can in the back. Aint a station for miles.”
“Actually, I’m not looking for gas.”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, its true that I don’t have any gas but I’m not trying to get any more.”
Gladys looked at me for a good minute and wiped her large calloused hands down the front of her apron which must have been white once, maybe twenty years ago. She had sturdy ankles which were just as wide as her calve at their largest point, she wore muck boots unapologetically and thick grey socks. I thought of when you used to take me out, I wore matching underwear and frivolous bras, just in case. I was more jealous of Gladys than I had ever been jealous of anyone in my life. Gladys made her own soap out of lavender and lye. She patched her own gutters and didn’t run away from things.
“Are you okay?”
“I didn’t plan on coming here. But I can’t really go back home. I’m sorry to bother you. Actually I can just leave, I’ll even walk, which way is the gas station?”
Gladys tucked a piece of hair behind her small, pale ear.
“You can come inside if you want.”
