The firefighters at a neighborhood station once said to me, as I was about to leave their side parking lot on my motorcycle, “You know we can see you over there in the shrubbery when you are kissing her.” Somehow this didn’t bother me. They had windows and were mostly waiting for a fire. She had to come home from the school I had recently dropped out of, so it might take her a little longer to walk home, but not so long that she would be asked about where she had paused along the way. I had left school after being hammered down by religion so hard, from such an early age, that I no longer thought wrong had much to do with anything they said it did. And the men telling me this didn’t really seem to have their hearts in the kinds of warnings I was used to. Their expressions appeared wistful. “We don’t mean to be looking, but ... you know,” they said. They probably figured the draft would soon have me packed off to the jungle anyway.

It was odd to discover how relaxed people could get when, every day, disaster was right around the corner. Nothing much happening for the longest time, and then all bells and sirens.

Bio: Daryl Scroggins