Black Wheels Under Red Paint

Sirens pounded in my head as I leapt up from the shattered glass table I didn’t see. Pops was carrying the heavier bags and ran ahead down the dark and empty street. “They ain’t gon’ come quick enough. Haha, we good. We good,” he whispered to himself while I limped behind. After an hour, we made it under the Jenson bridge and unpacked the goods in our bags to wheelbarrows. My leg was cut up and bleeding. It stung like someone was taking a cheese grater to my calves, but I kept packing and lay black tarp over the loot. “You ever think this’s wrong?” I asked as pops lifted the rubber handles. The rusted metal dug back into the mud and pops squeezed my jaw. His eyes were flat, like manhole covers, and he started talking like he was reading from a book. “Morality is optional,” he said. “And we opt out a long time ago.” He let me go and we got going down the moonlit trail. As the handles of my cart bounced in my hand over the gravel, I thought about what he said and couldn’t shake the feeling that what he really meant was that we’ve never had many choices and damnit this was the best one.

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