"How can I possibly go on feeling like this?" thought Peter. He shook his head but he couldn't get rid of the thought. His mind and stomach were linked by a churning, writhing darkness. He felt like vomiting, and involuntarily lurched forward. The feeling was madness itself: the guilty, rotten overture of what he'd done, dripping like acid onto the soft, dying core of his very soul. Shame on you. Shame on you. The long-dead voice of Mrs. Fremont smashed against the sides of his skull, and he was blinded. Grasping in the darkness, he turned on the car's radio and feebly scanned through the stations until he found something old and soothing by Pink Floyd. He turned it up and took a breath at last.
Then it was on him again. The darkness overtook his mind and threatened to destroy him. "There must be something wrong with my brain," he thought. "This happened so long ago, and it still affects me so deeply."
His eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders tensed with the overwhelming stress of the shame. His head was pounding with the questions: Why had he done this thing? Where could he go? How could he have become like this, so demoralized, so weak and helpless? The remorse was immense, condemning, shaking its bony finger at him. Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.
Peter shook his head to reject the messages. He fumbled for the key and found the ignition. The engine roared to life, and as he gently eased the transmission into reverse, the dank fog in his mind began to lift. He pressed the accelerator to the floor. The tires spun violently in the gravel. He slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop, smacking the back of his head into the headrest.
Now he could take a good, deep breath. Peter looked out into the dark Oregon countryside. Across the road he could see a barn and some quietly shifting cattle. "No one out here but me and these cows," he thought with a wry smile.
The neon sign of the rural wrecking yard reflected in the darkened windshield. 24 HR TOW. 24 HR TOW. Shame on you. Shame on you. "That's enough," thought Peter.
He flipped on the headlights, and the reflectors lit up on the two-lane road about 40 feet away. He threw the car's shifter into gear and stomped on the accelerator. The muffler roared as he spun the tires in the gravel, all the way out onto the road. When the spinning wheels hit the smooth asphalt, the car careened right, then left, and then found its groove and leaped into the night with a howl of relief. He was headed south, Cherry Vanilla was wailing on the radio, and he was free. But still, he hoped that somewhere down the road he could find real freedom. Freedom from these thoughts, this shame that haunted his waking moments and sometimes even his dreams.
