Postmodern Angst

On the first day he was out of prison he sat in the sunlight so long his face burned red. They used to let him outside for 30 minutes every Sunday. Days it was raining he still went out and stood in the yard until his uniform was soaked through. A half-hour of sunlight a week is not enough to activate skin melanin so he was pale the day he was released and the sun did a good job on him after four hours of direct exposure. It was when he was paying for his barbecue at a roadside stand that he realized he had raccoon eyes from his brand new sunglasses. He raised the glasses to count out pocket change and caught a glimpse of his face, a beet crimson that enhanced the glow of the ghostly halos around his eyes. The girl behind the counter smiled nicely at him. He wondered about her for a moment but then drove the thought from his conscious mind. She had a portable radio back there and was listening to the oldies station. He caught a line from the song that was playing. He’d heard the song before. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” He walked a few feet away from the window to wait for his food. The sunlight was hot on his back and the skin of his face was beginning to sting a bit. I should buy me a cowboy hat when I get to the city, he thought to himself. Two kids played tag around the back of a station wagon parked nearby. The rest of the family sat inside the wagon eating sandwiches and fries. Whoever wrote that song didn’t know what the hell she was saying, he thought. Whoever wrote that never lost their freedom and then got it back. He was free and he had a lot to lose. He was free. He had that.