Killing is Easy, Living is Hard :: Personal Narrative, Autobiographical Essay

Killing is Easy, Living is HardI did my best to exhaust Bobby Ackerman late maven April night when we were both seventeen. We were speeding down a two-lane highway, a narrow trail of asphalt that sailed shoot a ridge and down into a long, sweeping right-hand turn and because rushed past a etiolate stucco house with a tile roof, a house that crowned the hill beyond a quaint covered bridge over a dry brook bed running parallel to the avenue. We were descending toward a little town named Crane, and we were flying. Geez, man, Bobby said. I looked toward the passenger seat as the Plymouth dug into the arc of the curve. Bobbys eyes were wide. Slow down, slow down. Bobby grasped the armrest with one hand and braced his left hand leg against the hump in the floorboard. I could smell the beer on his glimmering as he fought to stay in the seat. The old sedan wallowed acantha toward the right lane. It was the first time Id arriven his car. But it wasnt Bobbys car, really. It was his dads. His dad was a railroad engineer, complete with the traditional bib overalls and cloth cap. Bobby was my friend, trapped alike me in the last year of high school. But he was different. I was secretive, sullen, and sarcastic, moreover Bobby was outgoing, with an ever-present desire to please sometimes amplified by a brittle manic energy. I liked beer, the drug of choice for our generation, but Bobby liked beer too much. That night he needed someone to drive him home. Now I had the old car racing down the road and off the ridge at something close to 80 mph apparently because that was all the speed I could wring out of it. Id made one turn, but there was one more ahead before we entered the vale and the town that lay astraddle a creek. The next turn was a sharp, banking left-hander, edged by a dozen or so white posts laced together by steel cables, and oncoming traffic was obscured by a little hill. I caught a glimpse of a scandalmongering sign ahead, one marked with a black a rrow curve around the words 35 mph, but I didnt lift my foundation from the accelerator. My hands chased the steering wheel, persuading, begging the car to stay off the limestone bluff to the right, and the old sedan was reluctant, never steady, demanding one correction after(prenominal) another.