COLD CHERRY by p. e. britton

Tensed, he sat ram erect on the back seat of the car. Through the floorboards, he could feel vibration, variance, fluctuation of motion telegraphed from wheels. On either side, his hands clutched the seat edge. His palms were sweaty, his feet were clammy.

He was a young man, not quite twenty.

Riding in the front seat, two men, years older than he; the driver, in his mid-fifties, the passenger, well into his forties.

The driver was fixed to his job, eyes to the ribbon concrete, all his attention to the immediate problem of traffic.

The passenger seemed completely relaxed, his body easy to the back of the seat, his left arm raised, extended over the shoulders of the driver.

The young man felt stiffened, his whole body, as though made of pipes. and rigid rods, the skin stretched unmercifully and uncompromisingly as though upon an armature. The flesh of his face felt as though starched from the underside, from within. His feet and legs seemed solidified, to have turned into some immovable substance.

The car made a smooth curve of freeway. He felt the centrifugal pull of it along his torso, shifting strain unequally from one bicep to the other. He had to hold himself up, lest he fall over like a manikin.

Of silence, there can be silence of sharing, understanding; or a breaking away of significance, or no significance, of meaning, or no meaning-silences of beginning, or finality, fatal silences.

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