God's Gonna Cut You Down

The driveway pebbles softly crunched under the limo tires. The reflections of lush trees and the low slung red brick buildings stopped gliding over the polished black paint of the limo. A brown leather slipper with white socks reached out of the backdoor of the limo. Red faced, a young man stepped out looking in a 360 circle in quiet panic. He wore a vest over his shirt with the orange-black seal of Princeton. His eyes found the entrance door. He calmed down and took a deep inhale of oxygen-rich West Virginia air.

"Prescott! You made it! You are our first intern from Princeton. We didn't know how to get you from the Clarksburg airport to here. So, we sent you the president's limo!" The forty year old man in the door had gray hair, and the hair on top of his head was gone entirely. He wore glasses with heavy black frames. Anyone could have pinpointed that he was a software engineer through and through. The way how he held himself, his facial expressions, and the monotone sound of his voice gave it away.

Prescott yanked his carry-on out of the trunk of the limo using his whole body as leverage. Then, he pulled it with both hands eagerly towards the door. The limo driver watched him with a smirk. Keeping utter silence, Prescott hurried to within two feet of the software engineer and shot his hand out for a standard American greeting.

"My pleasure, sir. I won't disappoint you!" said Prescott.

"Just call me Daniel! I'll be your guardian angel during your internship."

Daniel smiled warmly and put his hand on Prescott's shoulder to guide him through the glass door. "Pathway - The Traffic Light Company" was written in white letters made from stickers on the door. The side entrance lead to a carpeted hallway. The frequent door handles along the way suggested tiny offices behind the opaque doors. Daniel knocked on a door with the placard: "105 - Purson."

A deep grumbling voice with an Appalachian accent asked them to come in. There was wide sweeping oil painting of twelve feet widths behind the big man, who sat on his swivel office chair like a throne. A salt n' pepper beard covered his face. A Viking axe was displayed on a cabinet behind the man. This wasn't a modern interpretation with mystic ornaments. It was the real deal: A bare shank and simple triangle shaped iron head. One could have taken it for simplistic and dismissed it, if there weren't that creeping feeling that real skulls could have been cracked by this murder instruments and real blood could have bathed this docile-at-the-moment tool.

A young girl, presumably another intern, was sitting in the corner on the chair, silently. She was small in stature. Her Converse sneakers barely reached the floor. Her head was an overladen pile of curls. Her cheeks were chubby. Her fingers were round and stubby. Her stature was full of energy and joy, yet her face was pale like the light had been blown out of her.

The man who was presumably named Purson rubbed his hands with intense abandon that showed that he never worried about having his motives understood.

"Sit down, Prescott. You are the star pony! We have never had an outsider in our program before. This year, we had to take extraordinary measures to make sure that the internship winner was of the proper kind," gleamed Purson proudly ending with a stare at the girl in the corner. A cloud came over his face. His nostrils flared with disgust.

Daniel whispered into Prescott's ear: "Purson has an old fashioned view on women's abilities. But you mustn't worry."

Purson starred at Prescott with a big wide green. Purson had four big white incisors. His mouth was so white that the canines showed their glamourous size as well. Purson was completely at ease reveling in the moment of a new hire at length. Prescott tried chasing red and white spots across his cheeks. Then, he had an epic battle with a drip of saliva tickling his throat. He tried to breathe deeply to hold the tickling at bay. His eyes started watering. He tried clearing his throat with soft hisses to avoid opening his mouth. Purson enjoyed the display of Prescott's face like a woman enjoys a delicate spa treatment. Every new struggle on Prescott's face was another delight to be discovered by Purson. It was very much like a woman looks forward to the sensual delights of cold towels on the face, honey poured on the forehead, or an exfoliating spanking of elderberry leaves. Only this delight, was a pressed snort, a glassy eye, or a struggling twitch.

The door was pushed open in a commotion. A police officer pushed a youth into the room. The police officer walked bowlegged. He was wearing boots of slick, smooth leather that went up to his knees. He had a round, white helmet on and big, black sun glasses on his face. He opened the handcuffs of the lad. The lad had a tear in his checkered flannel shirt. The ends of the shirt were untucked. The black hair was matted and stuck to his forehead. When his hand were free, he moved them from his back to rub his wrists. The knuckles were covered in blood with white feathers sticking to them. The feathers were very fluffy and soft.

"I found Will drunk out of his mind beating a pigeon into a bloody pulp. From the look of the pigeon, he's been at it for twenty minutes," said the officer.

Daniel whispered into Prescott's ear: "Here is the first dirty secret about your internship. Pathway owns this city. When I say own, I mean that everyone knows that this company owns everything. Every little girl knows that her little Barbie dolls are property of Pathway."

"Thank you, Bill. I'll take it from here," said Purson.

"It's gotta be a real shit year if that's your only real local applicant," said the cop. He emphasized the word "real." The cop looked at the girl in the corner and shook his head. The cop gave a loud knocking salute with the heels of his boots and walked out.

"You mustn't look so worried, Prescott! This is the country. We have livestock here. If you'd grown up here, you'd have snuck out at night and tipped cows. That burger on your plate is a dead animal corps. Wipe your horror of your face, city boy. Will's done a silly thing. God damn pigeon probably shat on my car at some point. It should have known that it had it coming. Let's pray!" said Purson and stood up to reach both his arms out.

Everyone circled around Purson's desk except for Prescott who was taken by surprise. Though, he quickly recognized the gap in the circle that was meant for him. Will smiled big at Prescott while Will held out his blood covered and feathered hand. The girl was on the other side of the gap. Prescott grabbed both hands and followed the lead to bow his head down with closed eyes.

"God, thank you for this year's crop of interns. May your justice prevail..." Purson launched into a poetic prayer.

Prescott felt the room getting hotter and sweatier. His right hand was sticky from Will's blood. His left hand had to deal with the girl's epileptic hand that kept squeezing his rapidly. She must be spooked out, Will thought at first. Though, there was a periodic rhythm about it. Was it the tune of a song? It was a rhythm. It wasn't random twitching.

Short-short-short-short-pause-short-pause-long-short-long-long

Then, there was a very long pause, and it started all over. Was she Morse coding him? He listened for that long pause again to find the start of the rhythm. It repeated exactly. Four shorts was an 'H'. She was saying "hey." He replied with the same rhythm.

The next sequence was a long burst of shorts, longs, and pauses: "Will you help me?"

"Yes" was his response: long-long-short-long-pause-short-pause-short-short-short

The next morning, Prescott was sitting in a fold out chair at an intersection. His black Lenovo laptop was on his lap. A cord ran from his laptop into the gray utility box that controlled the traffic light. The cord was made from individual multi-colored strands. A cup of coffee steamed mist into the cool morning air. He was wearing finger gloves that exposed his fingertips. His chest was covered in a bright yellow traffic jacket. He inhaled the brisk air. Wires were hanging overhead to connect the power and phone network. The small city had a few pickup trucks rumble to his stop light. They paused at the blinking red light and proceeded after negotiating right of way with the trucks from the other direction. Betty's diner was at the corner of the intersection. A little bushel of grass had burst through the sidewalk concrete near Prescott.

"Well, son, you've got your very own traffic light now. We've cleared the flash memory and set it to maintenance mode. You upload your traffic control program over the serial port. When I think back to my internship, writing a traffic light program from scratch was a lot of fun. I suggest you write a simple program first, so that you can manually control the traffic light."

Prescott nodded earnestly. He opened up the PDF manual. The traffic light system could be set with a number. Each number set the lights into all four directions into a specific combination. For example, 13 meant that the main road had green lights and the side street had red. Codes above 64 were for special configuration. 65 turned on red lights in all directions. The reason for not being able to control an individual light was to make it impossible to set the light to a dangerous combination, like green lights in all directions.

So, he opened up the shell terminal on his laptop. He re-directed standard input, so that all his key strokes would be sent to the traffic control box. He entered 13 and hit enter. The traffic light switched from the red blinking to green light for the main road. The line of three pickup trucks accelerated with a roar as a single column and took off. Prescott smiled satisfied.

He looked up the street. At that intersection, Will was still fumbling with splicing the cable. He was cursing under his breath and hitting the traffic light utility box. The intersection down the main street had the girl already furiously typing on her keyboard. Wow, girl! She must have been already writing source code for automated traffic control.

"Prescott, that was very good," praised Daniel standing next to Prescott. "You better remember your AI (Artificial Intelligence) classes from Princeton. Sea is very good. You better have some Ivy League tricks up your sleeve. She grew up in this town and knows a lot of about traffic routing."

"I'm going to write a simply pattern of one minute of green for the main road and 10 seconds for the side road," explained Prescott.

Daniel made another tick mark on his clipboard as a blue Chevy passed the intersection. The paper on his clip board read "daily score." It had spaces for tick marks broken down by every hour. There was a legend at the bottom of the paper with cars/per minute rates for regular traffic lights, Pathway traffic lights, and the best score of last year's intern. Every year, the intern with the best score would be hired.

A baby blue Cadillac Eldorado from 1979 pulled up to Prescott. The engine was crackling. The front tires twitched with the grumble of the engine. An old lady with hair curls in her wet hair looked at Prescott point blank: "Son, the traffic light is working god damn straight. I've checked it from all four directions. That's Ivy League quality swash darn it patriotism!" The old lady meeped her horn and roared off.

"You are going to get quite some fans. Have I told you that traffic lights are a big deal in this city?" smiled Daniel and patted Prescott on the shoulder.

While Prescott's program was compiling, he got a cream cheese bagel out and leaned back in his foldout chair. Daniel was diligently tick marking every passing car. Will up the street had taken to kicking and punching the utility box, actually wailing on it. Down the street, Sea's foldout chair was empty.

"Where's Sea? Did the crooked cop arrest her?" asked Prescott in panic.

Daniel smiled wide and knowing. "First, never call a crooked cop crooked. They don't like that. Second, you better take a look and learn from her."

"She's gone! She's dead," yelled Prescott.

Daniel shook his head amused. "Your mistake is that you only look for what you expect. You don't look to see what is really going on," said Daniel mysteriously watching the preppy boy's confusion grow. When Daniel felt that toying any longer with Daniel was cruel and inhuman punishment, he pointed his finger to the sky and said, "You should look for her there."

"They already buried her, and she went to heaven," Prescott's eyes went crooked and saliva dripped down the left corner of his mouth.

Daniel broke out laughing. He couldn't control himself. His face pained from the violent contractions in his belly. He squeezed out a "no." The laughing contractions of his stomach wouldn't stop. Every time, Daniel looked at Prescott's face, the laughing only turned more violent. "On the light," he pressed out in a bid to stop the amusing look of shock on Prescott's face.

Sea was sitting on top of the traffic light. She straddled the pole with her thighs. A hammer hung from her belt on the right side. She was putting a bracket around the pole with a laser sensor attached to it. She was working hard with a screwdriver.

"Oh, she is going to make an algorithm based on if there is actually a car waiting or not!" exclaimed Prescott.

"Gotta think outside of the box. Your time based algorithm isn't going to give you a very high rate of traffic," encouraged Daniel.

"I can write a computer vision algorithm to count the people in the car and prioritize high occupancy vehicles to boost my persons-across-intersection ratio!" exclaimed Prescott.

"Now you are thinking, Ivy boy," said Daniel.

When the sun started setting, the cars drove up to the light with yellow light cones coming out of the front of the car. The air turned chilly. The water in the air turned to mist. Prescott stuffed the laptop into his leather backpack and straddled it. He took a look down the street to Sea. His face was hesitant until he made the first step in her direction. She looked up. She now knew that he was coming. He tightened his steps as he pushed past the trash can with the ripped of trash bag that had the trash sprawling into the street. A soda cup was turning, pushed by the wind.

His knees started buckling sideways. He tried to jimmy his butt in his pants. The boner in his slacks kept growing. He stuffed his fists into his pockets to obscure the shape. He turned back to his foldout chair behind him. Sea looked up at him again. He awkwardly smiled and decided to keep walking.

"Hey, so we are colleagues. What's up!" said Prescott.

"Why are you even here? Shouldn't you be at Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon?" shot Sea back.

"Well, my teacher told me to think about little fish in a big tank or big fish in a small lake. So, I came out here," replied Prescott.

"You didn't get in," said Sea with true awe and looked at his face like she was discovering a whole new side to him.

"There is that, too. Though, it's not so much about being a failure but rather finding the right corporate culture fit. I'm less of a corporate drone," said Prescott while looking at the floor.

"I've seen your source code in the Linux kernel. It is damn brilliant. You have a red flag!" exclaimed Sea. Her curiosity was coming out.

"I have a drinking problem," said Prescott dryly. "This was a bad idea. I'll see you tomorrow."

"It's only getting interesting. See Will has a drinking problem. You don't," Sea pointed down the street.

Will was lying face down on the sidewalk. One fist grabbed a can wrapped in a brown back. He was hip thrusting the pavement. "Yeeha! I'm fucking Mother Earth!"

"Well, not like that. I compulsively drink. If I see something liquid and am stressed, I drink it. When I was seven years old, I drank a bottle of soap. My mom called poison control. A week later, I drank a bottle of drano. My mom called poison control. That stuff is really not pleasant. There is a lot of puking. I've drunk gasoline. I don't know. If it's liquid, I pour it down. My teacher left the urine cup with her pregnancy test on the desk. She walked in on me drinking it. She was very upset. It went to court. In jail, my cellmate freaked out when I started drinking out of the toilet. He kept banging against the cell bars for hours until the prison ward put me into another cell. So, the charges got dropped. Though, my school record has a hard to explain note in it. Well, now I'm a complete weirdo. See you tomorrow," Prescott turned to leave.

"You are the only one in Elkins who talks to me. Come with me for dinner," said Sea holding her hand out.

"Really?" Prescott stopped and happily grabbed her hand. Sea folded up her chair and leaned it against the traffic control utility box. They walked to the diner swinging their hands.

The diner was one of this old American affairs with a worn wooden floor, swivel chairs that were bolted into the floor at the bar, and deep booths in the rest of the restaurant. The waitress wore white sneakers and held the coffee kettle high when she walked around and offered everyone a re-fill. In the warm light, Sea had charm to her. There was actually a quite witty personality lighting up in the corner of her eyes and mouths when he was talking. He could tell that she wasn't taking him serious and had her funny thoughts about him. Being short and pudgy gave her quite a handful of boobs. There was this little spot of cleavage, a little triangle skin that her loosely wrapped scarf kept uncovered.

"So, why does Purson hate girls so much? He seems crazy," said Prescott rolling the glass in his hand, so that he wouldn't have to look her in the eyes.

"Well, you don't know town folklore at all. The owner of Pathway is quite the rich playboy. He's fucked a lot of girls. My mom was a skank he fucked under his table in a Vegas club. When she followed him to West Virginia with me in her belly, he sent her out into the cold night. He told her to never come back. He had a wife and children already. My mom didn't survive one winter night. She was poor. She couldn't afford the heating bill. During a cold snap, a gnarly blizzard from the arctic, she froze to death. So, I'm going to win this internship. That'll force them to put me on the fast track to executive management. I'll take the company. Simple as that. What's mine is mine." Sea looked fiercely at Prescott. That shy little girl in the corner was gone.

"Holy fuck," muttered Prescott. He lifted up the top bun of his burger and looked like he wanted to crawl underneath it to hide.

"I just like computers. My parents made me go to Princeton," replied Prescott.

"Hey, do you like Dojo Cat?" asked Sea and lifted one earbud up for Prescott.

"Oh fuck, you like raunchy rap?" asked Prescott in disbelief and plugged his ear into her music.

When the food was done, they talked for a while. Prescott could feel that the dinner date was going to be over soon. He was waiting for her to straighten up in the chair to signal that she was about to get up. When she pulled a toiletry back out of her backpack, he took a double take.

"Oh, I'm going to brush my teeth," explained Sea.

"That's quite the hardcore travel pack. That looks like you are going to floss and rinse with mouthwash as well," said Prescott with innocent puzzlement.

"Well, not everyone has a nice bathroom at home," said Sea awkwardly and a bit of annoyance.

"That bathroom is filthy. I've been in there. Someone's painted with pee across the whole place. Someone else put toilet paper all over. And a million people trampled over that nasty mess," Prescott was going full force. This was a topic that he was clear about. She made no sense. There was no logic to her plan of action.

Sea looked back into Prescott's fiery eyes. He nodded as if to say, "C'mon tell me already." The pain was evident in her face. The silence grew thick until even Prescott realized that something was very wrong. The waitress took one look at them and decided to pass them over with an offer for a free re-fill.