I am autistic. I have wondered and wondered. I lived on the wrong side of the river. Rusted ugly town of rusted ugly people. There was no blue sky. The coal cars stunk like corpses and the sulphurized-yellow clouds that drifted through our homes and lives, and as it lifted up, fell again in rain as acid. It was an acidic town and it produced acidic people. The power plant sat exactly next door to the autofactory.

The power plant took in river water to cool stuff down when energy was released. Rivers and lakes took the brunt of it. Cool water becomes warm water and it’s released simultaneously from the plant and the autofactory. You could smell paint at every meal. The poor pay. I fished those rivers so my family could eat. We lived in a two room rat hole apartment just across the river where my dad worked. I fished from the dam. The only fish I could catch were Carp, and all of them were covered in tumors. When you are that hungry, you will eat tumors.

Blacks were kept out of both the factory and the plant. How do I know this. Who do you think I fished with. Be a man. Harder! Better! Faster! Work! My dad was the one who had to fish out dead babies at the dam. Abortion was not reality. People threw their babies into the river. My dad fished bodies out. He was insane. It’s never just the air. Caste and class. Life is cheap and ugly. I drove my bike south. Avascular Necrosis is killing me. Mom and dad are dead. Never. Go. Back. I live in Appalachia. I am still fishing that river of Carp and tumors in every dream. I’m autistic. I have wondered and wondered.

I no longer wonder because I know.