Freshwater Literary Journal 2022

Terry Sanville Alan Luckton The beautiful woman takes strident steps next to me. We approach the traffic signal. It turns red before we can cross. But she doesn’t stop and is nearly sideswiped by a U-Haul truck. She yells into an old-style flip phone pressed to her ear. Her shouts echo down the busy downtown corridor, “ALAN LUCKTON, ALAN LUCKTON. FUCK ALAN LUCKTON.” The woman flings the phone into the street and hustles across the intersection on the red. Horns blare and brakes squeal. A UPS van noses into the curb. Some of the pedestrians laugh.

When the light turns green, I follow her down the boulevard. Her hands and arms pantomime an angry air drama. She soon outdistances me.

A homeless man passes, pushing his life’s belongings in a rusted shopping cart at breakneck speed. He mutters, “Alan Luckton, Alan Luckton, Fuck Alan Luckton.”

Like an earworm, Alan Luckton won’t leave me. Who the hell is this idiot?

Why should I care? Maybe I should Google him? Watch the evening news for hints? Smoke some pot and let him fade from my mind? I try thinking about today’s work, about meeting Marjorie at home, the kids yelling their welcomes along with the eternal question: “What did you bring me?” But Alan Luckton prefaces all my thoughts.

It takes me a half hour to walk home from my downtown office job. As I pass the Marsh Street Bridge that crosses the river, I hear a strange low rumble over the traffic noise. It sounds like voices in church, sleepily reciting a prayer at a dawn service.

I step off the sidewalk and inch my way down the bank next to the bridge abutments, my leather shoes slipping in the wet grass. The river flows full but quiet, the late afternoon sun turning it golden chrome. Near the base of the bridge, I peer around the corner. The flickering sunlight off the water reflects onto the concrete ceiling, wavering, ghostly. A group of drifters, some with families, sit at water’s edge. They chant, “Alan Luckton, Alan Luckton, Fuck Alan Luckton,” like the response to a Catholic litany.

One of them sees me and waves me forward. But I flee up the bank and down the street, arriving home in time to see my wife pull into the driveway with the kids and that night’s takeout.

She climbs from our SUV and kisses me on the lips. My daughters giggle, my son makes a face. We move inside our split-level ranch.

“How was your day?” she asks.

I lay out the plates for dinner. “Like any other . . . boring, except for this thing that happened on the way home.”

“Boring? Really? No cake? No good luck card signed by everyone?”

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