I moved closer, easing my way down the embankment to where the automobile rested. I could hear the radio or a CD playing through the shattered windshield. It was a classic rock song. I'd heard it many times before ("Oh yeah, that old number ..."), and yet I couldn't place the artist or title.
Something about this inability to remember the name of the song really unnerved me. You know, like when you can picture someone's face, but just can't think of his name? What the fuck, right? It's crazy. And it was like that with this classic rock song. It seemed crazy that I couldn't think of it. Insane.
But I know this song, I thought to myself. Of course I did ... Yet hard as I tried, I couldn't name it.
I just couldn't.
Keep in mind that I knew as much then as you do right now about where I was and what was happening to me. (You know more, actually. I didn't even know I was in Ohio, near a small college town called Gant.) Anyhow, that was when it hit me.
Amnesia. This must be amnesia.
I must be the man who went through that windshield, and this must be amnesia.
The driver's license was buried deep in the folds of the thick brown wallet I found in the back pocket of my jeans.
The name on the license was Peter Mellor. Though it listed a birth date, I couldn't pin down an age because I couldn't seem to remember what year it was. In the photo, he looked early fortyish, probably of Irish descent, with moppish brown hair and a drinker's redness to his cheeks. There were the beginnings of lines on his brow and circles under his eyes, but the face still had the confident jaw and steely eyes of a healthy man. In the right light, I suppose he might have looked handsome. In the right light ...
The weight was listed as 175. Looking down at the bulge above my belt, I guessed this was being a bit generous. But was this, was he ... really me?
I crept over to one of the car's side-view mirrors and woozily knelt down in front of it. In the dying light, I stared hard at the face it showed me. The visage I beheld looked fatter and more haggard than the one in the picture. The cheeks and nose even redder. The lines crossing the face even deeper.
But, yes. It was the same face. I was ... apparently ... Peter Mellor.
And Peter Mellor (said the State of Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles) lived at 313 Wiggum Street, in a place called Gant, Ohio. Zip code 43022. Well, fuck, I thought. Okay. So we've got that much. Not a lot, but something to start with.
And then another thought: Wiggum-like the incompetent, round cop on The Simpsons. The Simpsons-that TV show I like to watch! Yes, it was coming back. But when did I watch it? And where? I couldn't remember, but it seemed I was unable to think of this street name without thinking of the porcine, Edward G. Robinson-sounding policeman each time that I did. They were connected in my mind, now as then. I was remembering some things, I realized.
I patted myself down and found a cell phone in my right front pocket. I opened it. It felt familiar, like Wiggum Street, but the names saved in the phone's memory did not.
Jeeps.
Sam.
Mo.
Harvey.
I had no clue who these people were or who the phone would call if I clicked on one of their names. For a moment, I thought about dialing 911. (That was the emergency number; I hadn't forgotten that.) But what would I say? Where would I say that I was? I turned the phone off and put it back in my pocket.
Keys, I thought. That's what's missing. The third thing. I should have a wallet, cell phone, and keys. After some looking, I found them in the ignition of the car. I pulled the keys out (which also, finally, killed the radio) and shoved them into my right front pocket, where they felt familiar. At home.
Then, as I stepped back to close the car door, I saw the gun. It was on the floorboard, next to the gas and the brake. Maybe it had been secured when I'd been driving, and had only rattled loose after I'd gone into the tree. Maybe it had been in my pocket and had fallen out in