It's desolate this time of year, in this place. The only life came from the bangs, whispers, booming televisions and thudding beats from within walls that surround him. They were so loud, you'd expect the concrete bricks to crumble under the sheer torment of their incessant pounding. The paint has already gone that way.
Jack's jeans were so new, they had stained his fingers blue after he'd gummed his mouth with his thick thumb. The left side of his face was throbbing, but the piercing pain that once made him weep was now a dull, humming numbness. He was fixated on his blue finger -- that of which, he could only see out of his one eye, as the other was warm, nearly swollen shut. That too was now as good as numb. Once or twice he attempted to prop his swollen eye open, but the fluid that surrounded it would allow it. It was the only warm feeling on his face. His lips were cracked from the piecing winds and his nose felt like cheap prosthetic that leaked once in a while.
Jack was going somewhere. Where, he didn't know, but his body moved with an ignorant sense of determination. He thought about the Tangiers, his voyage across the ocean, as a stow-away, the sickness that nearly consumed his body, the pitiful food he found or stole, the beatings that left him bloodied and nearly dead. His mind wandered to his time in California, as a fire lookout. Monkishly eating white rice, first dutifully, then begrudgingly.
He remembered the salmon. He could not figure out why fought so hard to meet their demise. To struggle up stream with all their might, to arrive in the Promise Land, when they have their last meal and die. Were they stupid? Couldn't they have figured out an alternative way to reproduce? Why would they willingly take the most difficult journey of their lives and die? It didn't make any sense.
