#albert garcia

Trucks roll down I-5, trailers full of tomatoes. Almost always they’ll spill a few as they round a corner,

hard, small fruit bouncing over asphalt, a bright scattering of red

on the road’s shoulder of star thistle and tarweed. Maybe you left the house

angry over an argument with your wife, words in the air like a whining fan belt. Maybe

you’re headed down the freeway because it’s the fastest way out of town and you’re suddenly sick

of the same streets and just have to drive to something new. You’re in your car, mind dulled by the flatness of rice fields,

their green monotony, when somewhere in your vision’s periphery a pheasant coasts over the road

almost hitting the big rig in front of you. The trucker taps his breaks and it happens: spilling, filling your view,

tomatoes bouncing around your car in a flash of color so sudden you wonder if this is real

or if it’s something else that’s made your pulse quicken, your grip tighten on the wheel. In the rearview

you see them roll onto the shoulder’s hot gravel, and you can’t help it— you keep glancing in the mirror,

feeling lucky, wanting to say something though no one is sitting beside you, and you drive

until the small red dots are gone and the road bends into the dreary gray grove of olives.