The junkies, drifters, and other unfortunate souls that wander US-1 in Daytona in various states of decay are out in droves tonight. There are more and more and ever more of them lately. One of them, emaciated, clothed in muddy looking rags with bare legs visibly swollen from infection wandered into traffic on my way home and locked eyes with me as she shambled toward my car at a red light. Her eyes were glossed over like a dead animal, locked in a state of hopeless resignation.
I didn’t know what she wanted. The light was about to turn, and I pointed at it as it did and drove off as she meandered toward another stopped vehicle. Wounded, wasted, rotting away, but still moving. I used to think motion meant life, drive, direction, all that. Motion happens when maggots swarm, too. Chaos is motion, the buzzing of flies bursting from a carcass is motion, the running of blood in rivulets down a slit wrist -these things, too, are motion.
Further down the road, on the corner of international and US-1 across from a derelict car wash I saw a couple of sun-baked women with skin like leather passing a cardboard sign back and forth as traffic shifted that read “Why lie? I need a beer” and smiling as they did.
Even further down the road, between two seedy motels just past Shady Street on the west side of the road, I saw a disheveled looking black man lying on his back in a flower bed; a heavy, sagging white woman with sun-parched skin lay partially atop him, her head rested face down in his lap. Neither moved. Did she nod out sucking him off? The sun was still out, but I still wondered.
All this misery heaped into one place. It’s contagious, too. This I know well. I carry it with me always.
Towers of Rust 