Old house. Big kitchen at the back. The uncovered light bulb shines unkindly in the electric blue pre-dawn light as Alex and Donald slurp at their corn puffs. Alex is reading the paper.
"They’re doing a remake of 'The Seventh Seal' starring Tom Cruise."
"So?"
"This is disturbing, Donald, deeply disturbing."
"You worry too much. You shouldn't worry. Don’t worry."
Alex leaned his head back and poured the milk from the bowl into his mouth. He slapped the bowl down on the table assertively and it briefly spun, making a drum-roll like noise.
"We're talking civilization here, Donald. The end of the same. Do you know what's behind all these high school shooting sprees?"
"Lack of gun control? Absence of parental authority? A culture of violence?"
"The Four Horsemen of the fucking Apocalypse, Donny boy."
"That would be war, pestilence, famine…"
"Don't be so literal, Donald." Alex stands up and takes his empty bowl and coffee cup to the window and squints sleepily at the white light filtering into the blue of the eastern sky. He yawns and scratches his groin.
"We'd better hurry if we don’t want to miss our first class."
The early spring air still cuts cold in the first hours of the morning, and the two brothers shivered as they shuffled their way to the pickup truck. The fifteen-year-old Ford's snout was tiredly wedged into an imposing wall of brambles that Alex planned on cutting away when he had the chance. Alex looked at the long-suffering truck and whistled.
"Good goddamn. Who parked that thing?"
"You did."
"Was I drunk?"
"Probably."
"Did this happen last night?"
"No, today's Monday. We went out on Saturday."
"Shit. What did we do yesterday?"
"Got up late, had a big breakfast, read Aquinas until seven, drank beer and watched the game."
"Damn. Why don't I remember that?"
"You're just scrambled. It's early, you’ll figure it out. You drive."
Donald climbed up into the cab, shut the door and leaned against the window, pulling his baseball cap down over his eyes. It was too early to listen to Alex talk his way into consciousness. He needed peace in the morning, calm. The hour it took to drive to the University was a perfect wake-up period for him, if he could only keep Alex quiet for at least the first half-hour. Alex was hyperactive but incoherent when he awoke, ideas coming from all directions without context and without the support of basic awareness. Funny how well he drove, though.
Alex loved driving, especially the first twenty miles of straight road before they hit the mountains. He felt his thoughts and consciousness gradually stop bouncing about and begin to converge on either side of the yellow lines in the center of the country road. By the time he would arrive at the University he was ready for Aquinas, Duns Scot, Occam, or anybody else his medieval philosophy professor felt the urge to throw at him.
The sun was beginning to come up and objects had their full color. Donald scanned the landscape from under his baseball cap, watching the hills turn from blue to brown. Alex softly hummed a Gregorian chant, swinging it ever so slightly. Ahead of them, the road stretched onwards, lined by the fenced-off properties on either side. Donald saw, in the distance, something breaking the monotonous roadside order. As they drew closer, it revealed itself to be a figure, a girl in a worn denim jacket, short skirt, and big black boots. A suitcase and a guitar lay on either side of her. Her arm stretched out toward the road and her thumb shivered in the morning breeze.
Alex drove on and the small figure whizzed into the background. Donald sat up and looked behind them, then turned on Alex.
"You asshole! Stop the car."
"What?"
"Stop the car!"
Alex pulled onto the shoulder of the road and screeched to a halt raising a dramatic cloud of dust.
"What?" he demanded again.
"We have to go back and pick her up."
"Come on, Donald, we're going to be late."
"If we don't give her a ride, she could get picked up by someone who will rape and murder her."
"Give me a fucking break, Donny."
"We have to go back."
"No one rapes and murders at this hour of the morning."
"Alex."
Alex slapped the truck into reverse and squealed into the other lane. He tightened his face into the grimace of one who is doing something against his better judgment.