A short story by Michael JordanIt was close to evening when I reached the crossroads leading into the cemetery. Not remembering how I had got there; guessing I was maybe drunk again but not really caring; wondering only at the strange urgency that made me quicken my pace as I entered the open cemetery gates.I turned east into the tree-flanked road that led into the cemetery, turned again, into the red-stone path on my right. And there I was, beside the three tombs that were at the end of a row. I stared at them,Chile Soccer Jersey, feeling a sudden vague unease.Something wasn’t quite right today, something I couldn’t quite place. I continued to look at the tombs, trying to fathom what had aroused this disquiet. But now the feeling was gone. Instead, I felt the old ache welling up in me; the pain that hadn’t lessened at all.I could almost see them there. Carlton, Cleo, Linda. Especially Linda.I moved closer, and there she was, sitting at her computer at the office, headphones stuck in her ears so you had to pelt her with something to get her attention; rocking to music that only she could hear. I bent to Linda’s tomb, and now I saw Carlton and Cleo arguing in the office canteen, maybe over his drinking or over one of the women she knew or imagined he had.I sat and there I was again in Carlton’s second-hand Toyota Carina; Cleo sitting beside Carlton, me and Linda in the back seat. All of us noisy, and more than just a little high after a Friday night at the Club.Movado blaring from the CD that Linda had practically played to death; Linda rocking and singing off-key. I sensed her smiling at me, and I was about to touch her when Carlton said suddenly: “Shucks…rain again…”I turned to Linda, who was still singing off-key and said: “See what you make happen now?” Then the rain, which had made this a really wet January, had started.The windows were frosted; one wiper was sticking, and the headlamps through the frosted windscreen were a weak bilious yellow, and Linda was still rocking and singing; her full hips bouncing mine.I sat by Linda’s tomb, and now I saw again the sudden double-glare of headlamps dead ahead of us; heard Cleo scream, the desperate swerve of the Carina, the sudden sailing through space, then the falling.I awoke in hospital, my whole body throbbing, head elevated, vision blurred, and the taste of blood in my mouth. I heard the whispers of the nurses who moved about the ward like ghosts, and those of the patients nearby.Dead…all of them…car turn over in the canal….and all of them so young! Only he survive…wonder how he gun take it when he know?Later, I saw the story in the papers. Bold red headlines—in the Kaieteur News, I think—that said: DEATH STALKS THE HIGHWAYS. Pictures of Carlton,Wholesale Jerseys From China, Cleo and Linda, sprawled on the muddy roadway near the Toyota; Carlton’s hands bent as if he was still clutching the steering wheel.There was a picture of me, too, in the hospital. Beneath some had captioned ‘The Survivor’. Their seats were filled by strangers when I eventually returned to work. I had sensed, beneath the sympathy and the WELCOME BACK poster, the stares of those who wanted to know exactly what had happened; staring curiously, almost accusingly.I wanted to scream: You don’t understand, it was like being in a tomb, with the blackness and the windows turned up and everybody screaming and the sound system still playing, and somebody was grabbing me and the muddy water was choking me, and I don’t know how I escaped and I couldn’t do more!I left the job to avoid the stares, but yet the thought had followed me that maybe I hadn’t done enough. That maybe I could have done something. Sometimes I dreamt of pulling them all to safety, and seeing the headlines next day: ‘Brave Youth Saves Friends from Watery Grave’, with a picture of me with an arm around Linda.But mostly my dreams were of choking on mud, breaking away from someone, it invariably was Linda—of swimming through a broken window; of looking back and seeing her staring at me bulgy-eyed as she clawed ineffectually at the rear windscreen.I would awake in tears,Marshon Lattimore Jersey, guilt knotting my insides, half-wishing I had drowned with them. I can’t remember exactly when I started taking those long swims at the sea walls. Every Sunday, without fail, swimming until my muscles screamed for rest. Sometimes I would let myself go loose, let the tide pluck at me, let it drag me out, drag me down.But always, at the last moment, I’d fight against the tide and swim for shore, thinking next time, maybe…next time…Most times,China Jerseys, I would get high somewhere before heading for home, where my parents would be anxiously awaiting my return.I guess that it was loneliness that had