The Space Age (3)

[GT Jones]

He stood carved of clay in the porcelain and chrome room. His first true shower in a month. Not splashed from a creek, rinsed by a hose, or wiped by handi-wipes. The metal tongue crackled the showerhead to life. Flesh was stained with a blend of dirt, oil, sawdust, and rusted metal cake of the past thousand miles. Blood was oil seeping. His knuckles and fingertips were whorls of knotted wood. Fine hairs sprouted from the fleshy top of his thumb and the callused outer edge of his hand. Only the nailbed still showed shine, like raindrops not yet soaked into the ground.

He unwrapped the soap protected by wax paper, his peeling fingers from a different world. Lilac and milk, the scent a foreign memory. The pins of water stuck into his chest. Campfire smoke from his hair rinsed past his nose. The blood from his forehead, his back, his arm, rinsed away. A scent of wet fur. The water carried away dirt from his body as a river carries silt, downstream. Away. Momentary, transient, fertile only until the next flood. Pulled it from the tips of his toes. He stepped out of the water. Could everything to this point be so simply washed away? Only a beginning, he thought. It swirled at the polished drain then ran clear.