Maurice's Day, pt. 2

The cemetery was next to a church next to an expansive countryside with paths cutting through the rolling hills on which the dead were buried. Maxwell's parents were right by the road on a particularly flat stretch of land. The mourners began to gather around the two coffins, suspended above the two gaping holed dug fresh in the earth. Maxwell wondered if money and space could have been saved had they been laid in one coffin and buried in one hole. He quickly shuddered and told himself this was a horrible, horrible thought, but he wasn't entirely sure it was.

The priest's remarks were short. Maxwell hadn't heard a word until he said Maxwell's name. He perked up then, but only because the priest sounded a bit like his father, or how he imagined his father would have sounded in ten or fifteen years. But then he wondered if he was just making this up. He tried to remember his father's voice, but could only hear himself imitating his father's deep, grumbling speech. He tried to see his father's face, but could only picture himself with a heavy beard. He looked at the shadow cast by the leaves on the grass next to his parents' plot and tried to clear his mind.

When the priest had finished, the mourners began milling around, comforting each other, especially the two remaining parents of the deceased. A few came up to Maxwell, but he quickly broke away and started walking swiftly back to his car. Maurice saw this and jogged after him.

Maxwell got into his car and started the engine. Maurice ran up to the car, opened the door, and threw himself in the passenger's seat panting as Maxwell put the car into reverse and pulled out of the church's unpaved parking lot. Maurice turned on the radio and flipped it to Hot 93.7. A DJ was shouting much louder than he needed to, introducing the next song. The thundering bass rattled the windows. Maxwell flinched. He reached out and swiped at the tuning knob with the force of everything he'd kept inside himself for days. The dial flipped to an unused wavelength and Maxwell sighed, allowing himself to be lost in the waves of white noise rolling through the speakers.

Maurice turned the radio off. He slapped his hands on his thighs and expelled tuneless bursts of air through his lips. Maxwell turned onto the highway and immediately imagined yanking the steering wheel to the left and veering into oncoming traffic like the man who had killed his parents. But it would be different this time because Maxwell was driving the small car. He reached down and pushed the button next to him, releasing the seatbelt. It slapped against the window next to his ear. Maurice was looking at the breasts of the girl in the car to their right and hadn't noticed. Maxwell saw an eighteen-wheeler barreling towards them. There was another lane in between them, but it was clear. A freezing shiver jolted Maxwell's spine and he nervously regripped the wheel, unsure of what he was about to do.

"I want to invent something," Maurice said, breaking the silence as Maxwell watched the truck fly by to his left. Maurice was resting his head against his window, his gaze at the girl driving next to them (who couldn't have been older than eighteen) unbroken. "Yeah," he added, as if Maxwell had said something in the preceding twelve seconds of silence. "It would be nice to just invent something and make a couple million dollars and just live off that for a while." He sighed. Maxwell passed his exit, reluctant to change lanes. "Just sit around all day, get high..." Maurice trailed off for a few seconds. "Then when that money runs out just invent something else."

The girl in the car next to them accelerated. "Yo, give it some gas!" Maurice yelled frantically. He watched her car surge forwards. "I should have gotten her license plate." He thought for a second. "That's what I should invent. A little...thing you put on the mirror," he said, knocking the rear view mirror out of place so Maxwell could only see the light on the ceiling of his car. Maxwell flipped open the bin in between the front seats and began clumsily rummaging through it. "So you can flip the letters and numbers and keep someone's license plate on it so you don't have to remember it."

Maxwell threw a pen and an old receipt at Maurice. He looked at them for a second then quickly began to take down the license plate of the girl's car in front of him. "I'm gonna give her a call," he said, a bit wistfully. Maxwell's lane became an exit and he drove into a town he had never been to before. He off-handedly wondered how he would get home.

"I'm so glad I didn't have to go to work today," Maurice said.