November 2025 "The Casualty of Burning Time" by Paula Rawlings

Filling my lungs in preparation to exhale Tanner Wareham’s “Bitterman,” I tried to steady the restlessness inside me. We were going to be late. I despise being late. To arrive even on time feels perilously close to failure.

The traffic ahead was Gothic in its own right—a slow, mechanical dirge, like a funeral. I pressed the clutch, lifted my right foot off the brake, pressed the accelerator, and lifted my foot off the clutch. The car would be momentarily lifeless if my timing was incorrect. A white sedan, unmarked and spectral, stood dead in the left lane, its hood gaping, crying for help like the mouth of a baby in a mute and breathless cry. Someone had stalled in the leftmost lane amidst the noise of crawling metal deathtraps on wheels. Poor soul, I thought. Only a man has confidence enough to lift a hood in the middle of Fresno’s streets on a Friday afternoon.

I kept to the middle lane, letting a few cars merge as if my small offering would help. Then I saw them—two young women dragging a dark-haired man from the driver’s seat, his limbs slack and heavy, his face paling. That’s someone’s son. The women’s faces were disturbingly calm and fixed as if their task was already complete. Adrenaline stirred beneath my scalp. The traffic murmured and inched forward. People were already helping, I told myself. The paramedics would arrive—eventually.

We drove on.

Up ahead, the traffic lights were out, their colorless sockets ceased to cue over a four-way stop-and-go tango between three- and four-lane roads. Everyone kept a different tempo.

We came in five minutes late.

“So,” the instructor said, slinging his guitar across his stomach, “how was the concert?”

“It was amazing,” the student replied. “How’s the new band coming along?”

  He chuckled—a contradictory sound to his dipped eyebrows. “Well,” he said, “I think I have to fire someone.”

He’d spoken for weeks about this new chapter—a new movement, he called it, as if his life were a musical composition. “The man was amazing on bass,” he continued, “but during practice, he collapsed. I had to call an ambulance.”

“What?”

     “Yeah. He’s eighty-seven. When the paramedics arrived, he told them his medical history right there in front of everyone: several heart attacks, fainting spells, explosive diarrhea. Poor guy. He can’t keep playing. I feel terrible.” He sighed. “Anyway—how was your practice this week?”

Student and teacher drifted into talk of music theory, of intervals and the circle of fifths, of how sound itself bends under tension. When we left, the night had settled, and the world outside the windshield had grown sharp with too many headlights, too many forgotten brights.

Traffic flowed again, despite the flickering yellow, red, and green flames dripping from the driver’s side door of a semitruck parked on the shoulder of oncoming traffic—a displaced traffic light in the dark. A man stood before it, hesitant, holding a fire extinguisher as if he doubted his next move. 

We drove on.