😂Damian Sterling Returned From Calgary and Offered His Family a Consolidation Agreement

The taxi driver wanted forty dollars, even though the trip from the Ocala terminal was barely six miles of flat, sun-baked asphalt. I gave him two twenty-dollar bills and told him to keep the change, my voice sounding deep and slow even to my own ears after the long hours of travel. He did not thank me, merely popping the trunk lock from his dashboard before shifting back into gear.

I hauled my heavy canvas suitcase out of the trunk and set it on the cracked limestone driveway. The Florida air was thick and heavy, smelling of damp pine needles and old swamp water, a wet heat that felt completely different from the dry, freezing winds of the Calgary winters I had lived through for the last four years.

My fingers were stiff from the flights, the skin on my palms rough with the silver-grey welding scars of the pressure-vessel shops where I had spent forty-eight months working double shifts. I picked up my old silver thermos from the front seat of the cab, the metal dented near the lid from a drop onto a steel grating during a five-dollar lunch break.

The taxi backed out of the driveway, its tires kicking up a small cloud of white dust that settled onto the glossy paint of a brand new black SUV.

The vehicle was a massive luxury model, the chrome trim around the windows gleaming in the late afternoon sun, the dealership sticker still clinging to the rear window glass. It sat where my old rusty truck used to park, occupying the center of the narrow driveway.

I stood beside my suitcase and stared at the gold emblem on the grille of the sixty-thousand-dollar machine. I had sent ninety-five thousand dollars home over the last four years to cover Phedra’s medical consultations and our mortgage, leaving myself barely enough for cheap groceries and reheated metal shop lunches.

The presence of a brand new vehicle in the driveway of a house that had been three months behind on its payments when I left made a cold sensation crawl up my spine.