midnight

On the old route, a dome light of a 1988 aftermarket Fiero makes the driver look almost adorable. 

-Wanna go for a ride? The seat has broken glass and the smell of iodine is everywhere among the car's interior when Leila swings her legs in and says "Hurry up. Catch that bus."

-Easy there little lady. You ever heard the expression 'No hide, No ride?'

Shaki can't do a proper cowboy impression because anyone can see his hat is orthodox. He wears the costume of a child returning to his parent's house for Hanukkah.

Leila doesn't have time to play love- me-not with the driver. She turns quickly and exclaims, "If you don't catch that bus the next town is going to become so infected that we'll never recover."

Shaki, Shahar of the Haredi, didn't need to be told twice. Pandemics always have that patient zero.

This time, Shaki did not peel away but simply put all four cylinders of the Fiero into a slow climb. He held onto his hat as the convertible would not return the bonnet to its catch. His black Borsalino hat featured hair extensions that curled to the side, fuzzy as baby ostrich feathers that did not like the wind.

Leila leaned forward, her red Jimmy Hendrix scarf whipped around her neck, the Jordache slim fit pants had a friendly elastic waistband and her nails were painted to display different phases of her cycle with the moon. "Hurry! Hurry."

A police cycle tried to pass, then slowed down, looked at the two people raging against the wind, considered pulling them over and heard the unmistakable sound of a traffic collision further up the causeway. The moon was rising, the radio sang a sentimental tune from Lord Huron about a girl that could not find love at a dance and decided to kill everyone.

Leila had a scratchy throat. She would not take Halls mentho-lyptus although a Halls mentho-lyptus drop was clearly stuck to the tray below the radio. Shahar hummed under his breath and was too excited to get into the song.

A bird died.

It was probably a white Hooded Crow but definitely not an albino Box Owl. It just flew down from the sky once it decided that the Fiero grill was the last thing it wanted to see in the desert. The motorcycle officer drifted his blue and red lights in an effort to show the motorist he was sad and aggressively pensive. The road was clear of other travelers, other road kills, the dividing bumps remained but everything was becoming slippy and dewed.

"You say we can save everybody?"

Leila turned to the driver just as one of the Fiero's lights faded out. Must have been thermostatic shock. Or Aliens.

Now Shahar had to really concentrate on the road. It didn't matter if they were saving the world, if Leila was changing from a summer shirt to a plaid pattern with two breast pockets. He would not let his peripheral vision leave the mission. Shahar believed there was still a place for rigid self control.

They took the exit. The police lights were half a mile ahead but there was no bus. Instead, a semi had rolled over the road and was caught between a meridian gully and a medium size tree that would not let anyone change directions.

The police were trying to slow everybody down, just in case the engine caught fire or the contents of the tractor trailer. Leila spurred her driver to continue on and Shahar threw caution to the wind though he had an ArmaLite AR-31 behind his seat. Without the long waiting permit, the weaponized luggage wasn't legal.

He began to sweat under his hat (drenching his holiday yamaka) and licking the tips of his mustache at the place that the whiskers became a fence above the lips. They sometimes ate together. He looked at the rear view mirror over and over and Leila prodded him on.

"WE HAVE TO catch that bus. "

-I know. I know , he whispered.

His eyes had gone from pecan goldenrod brown to reflecting the rear-view mirror and the police lights by the shine. Even the wind could not dry out Shaki's eyes as he thought about being alone in a prison shower with ten guys that wanted to check him for candy. He didn't know the people on that bus and it was getting harder and longer to stay on the road with only one light. Assiduous.

Keep your good eye on the white shoulder line.

It might have worked had the Palestinian Authority not set up a roadblock with a guard booth on the thoroughfare. Their solar powered warning lights were ghostly low as the Fiero ripped right through the thin wooden stop plank, shanks and shrapnel free at last, waking the guard and spilling his Coffee arabica.

Someone hit the warning buzzer behind them as Leila and Shaki suddenly wondered if the border had changed again. The Kidron Valley seemed to take on the smell of old fish that were never caught. The limestone ridges of Mount Scopus promised that Titus would not scorch the Earth, again, and the winds kegled the clouds; impregnating rain.

The two slowed down the car and looked at each other. Cracked concrete that was about to split. Shahar got nervous when the engine sputtered because the mixture of gasoline to air was too thin, the clutch preaching that it should wind down with gears. The KC fog lights below the Fiero pop-ups flickered...

Once, twice.. and then they lost sight of the several meters before the bumper. The cool air became unfriendly; stepping out of the Dead Sea and forgetting that the land radiates only chill at night. It was warmer in the sea, warmer at high speeds but the lack of light. The lack of light.

Leila really didn't know if they were following the bus anymore. Had the bus gone to the west and had the nation changed its borders without a warning? She couldn't let Shahar lose his faith in the cause. They had to move forward. He was stumbling on the accelerator, making the car burp and sputter, squinting into the low light.

High beam on.

The fog pushed back the lone high beam and the driver begrudgingly went back to one regular beam, a halogen whose contact points had not been cleaned in over a decade. Did the last person that changed the bulb use gloves or dielectric grease to keep the finger oil from cross connections? He couldn't say.

Leila thought of water in the desert but she couldn't see anything behind the seats. The seats in the back were so small that only children would enjoy the coupe from that place. They were basically practice seats. Things made for people with no knees. Perhaps the lame, the stubby, a yoga artist, or contorted pets.

Just ahead the iron oxide peppered to the scattered groves became a strange red glow. The fertilizer was tossed like a celebration. They were at the place where the ancient sacrifices of the old temple mount seethed its way into dry pan, and scrublands — with thirty thousand beasts for Passover and Eid al-Adha, and thirty five hundred years of sacrifice; how saturated could the ground become before the blood just started flowing… a pump is always priming.

Shahar slowed down like he knew.

Leila played with the door, like she would really risk the Valley of Decision, God's place of final judgment. Alone.

Shaki stopped and put his hands over his chest. The night was quiet as he waited on the shoulder in an idle position. He prayed by song, Mizmor LeDavid. He hummed the song like it was deep inside, a part of his pneumonia. The sound of marching for mandatory service. Everyone in Israel has mandatory service.

Leila reached back for water and found his gun.

Everybody has mandatory service.

Shahar heard the unmistakable shift of power. The way a long piece of machinery comes out of its cradle. The look of unregulated duty on her face in the light. The way Leila flared her nostrils, the heart finding its pace. It would take nearly as long to reach for her as for her to reach the weapon.

Sometimes we don't ask why but we know. Shahar knew to pull the door handle instead of testing her resolve. He flopped out of the car, his car, into the grate of the roadway, a Damascus gravel — coarse and cheap.

He looked at her beautiful eyes as she took the steering wheel. Never even brandishing or threatening. Just a woman and her scarf. A burqa revealed. A kiss and shes off. the clock strikes midnight.

*

On the last day of Hanukkah an Arabic woman took a twenty five hundred pound car to save her oppressors. She had but one light in the tisk of God breathing over the inland empire.

The turn of the world calendar was just around the corner and her child, her baby-man-child with an explosive vest, was riding in the dark. 

Shaki decided to keep walking to the old city. The last morning of the festival of lights rended the sky in a petula of bronze cardamom lightning. The sizzle burst of droplets to oil, the cavernous belch of a shock wave surfing the land in splinter. The old quarter went to flame.

It wasn't the Messiah.

He dropped to his knees with that disgusting feeling that a person gets when he has been used to harm another. The full anointing of fear and foreboding – maybe if he hadn't lost his upper hat — but the skullcap fell to the ground as he began a mad dash to his parent's house. He dropped his honor. 

Shahar of the Haredi ran for he knew not what.

Sometimes a person needs to atone in disaster relief. The Wailing Wall is cold.