Like magic, the clock went from 2:00 to 1:00, a free hour found in the midst of the wreckage of the day, a do-over if you wasted the first time the clock went from 1:00 to 2:00 and then stayed up late enough to do it over again.
The days get away from me these days, hours melt in a blizzard of work, the job, the kids, the homework, the arguments, the dishes, the laundry, the cooking, the scrubbing of the bathroom floor. Hours always seem to come with some sort of price tag attached, and I pay the price just for the chance to make it to some hour that never seems to come.
One kid thinks she broke her foot doing gymnastics, another slipped and fell getting out of the shower and seemed fine for the better part of a week and then all of a sudden his left ankle turned purple and swollen. Another one puked all over her mother right before bedtime, and her mother put her in the tub and I sprayed some sort of cleaner all over the floor and wiped it all down with paper towels.
And then I counted the money in my front right pocket, a couple hundred, enough to get the week's grocery shopping at least started tomorrow. I thought about checking the checking account online but thought better of it; wait until tomorrow, yeah. Paid the car insurance, the cable, the heat, the electric, but sure as shit there's something else coming, just can't think of it right now, and as long as I can't, might as well try not to remember it.
There was a six pack in the fridge, and I went to work on that, and threw the headphones on and went online looking for music. A little Hold Steady, a little P-Funk, what with it being Saturday night and all, a little Bruce, and then an old Steve Earle song, "When I Fall," that's the one I repeat a few times.
I think back to a long time ago, another Saturday night, a lot less children on my hands, a lot less of everything, it seems, me and my boy Dan wandering the streets of the city, a whole bunch of sheets to the wind, and then wandering on up to the Beacon Theatre to see Earle perform this song with the Dukes, and his sister coming out to sing the harmony parts just like on the album, and I felt young and strong and full of right answers, knowing life would just kind of work itself on out in a good old way.
Closing in on fifteen years later and amazed at what I didn't know back then, amazed at how what I know now doesn't seem to do me all that much good. I replay the song again and turn around to look at the clock, and more than half of the found hour has already slipped away.
I glance at the articles here, the news.
A lardass governor who couldn't take my eight year old without his security goons backing him up screams at a seemingly decent guy just looking for some answers.
A tool of the oil gods get caught spewing filthy truths, yeah, they're even worse than we thought.
It seems worse than ever, but then I guess people have been thinking that way since the Pharaohs were running things, so I'm not sure.
But I do know that when you take people who give a shit but make them run around like rats trying to make ends meet, the good guys have less of a chance, but again, maybe the good guys never really had a chance anyways. Maybe there is a God, and he or she is one mean old motherfucker who likes to see people suffer, hell, seems that way some days, doesn't it?
The song plays again, I take another pull on the pint glass, I ache for a cigarette, I ache for answers, for justice, for something, but there's nothing but the minutes of a found hour slipping through my fingers, and the hope that maybe I've put at least some of them to decent use.