271 miles to Spokane, Washington, from Seattle. Filthy Jerry didn’t mind the distance, or the way that the sun curled it’s flaming fingers around his ears and face halfway there and started talking dirty in a huge, loud voice. What he minded was the unsanitary methods of the lone diner he stopped at in Quincy, Washington, whose primary export is despair. As the sun spread his dirty fire over cement and scrub-brush alike, it wasn’t inside that eggs were cooked. It was the pavement. No butter, even. Right there, parking spaces 4-7. You could only get the eggs scrambled, and bacon burnt. Grown farmers wept openly at the sight of chicken progeny, charred and crusty on their plate.
Filthy Jerry had known hopelessness-- in days and nights and hostel rooms wherein he got his nickname—but never had cement felt so much like glue, had the existence of sky seemed to mock everyone. There is no horizon to ride to when it is all horizon. His love was waiting somewhere inland, at a diner with stoves and people who would never dream of shedding tears. She would either propose to him there, he thought as miles of sameness rode towards him, or he’d find her there with a man who’d never been to Quincy.
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