In William
Gays short story Closure and Roadkill on the Lifes Highway the
comment is made that ten thousand dollars would put things in a
whole other light... (Gay 172)
This sparks the catalyst to the unlikely friendship of Raymer
and an older supernatural-like man named Mayfield, leading to a
journey for twenty thousand dollars that may or may not exist. Gay
uses symbols, metaphors, character development, and much more to
illustrate the struggles of learning when to let go of certain
aspects of your life and how to achieve closure. In the beginning
of the story Raymer is described as being in more pain than he had
thought possible. (Gay 168) This is due to his High School
sweetheart, Corrie, recently dumping him and moving on rather
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He offers
Raymer the chance to acquire ten thousand dollars by scaling bluffs
off the Tennessee River and searching for twenty thousand dollars
in a cave that the old
manclaims to have
left the money in and promises to split evenly with Raymer. When
climbing a particularly difficult bluff Raymer feels the need to
stop halfway up and as he does he turns around and is greeted with
the view of the world
spread out in a panorama of such magnitude
that his head reeled, and for a moment he did not think of Corrie
at all. (Gay 181) The view that Raymer is viewing gives him a
glimpse of what is out there waiting on him and allows him to
realize for at least a second that he has the whole world in front
of him and that life is bigger than his and Corries breakup;
however, this is immediately followed by an intense loathing, a
maniacal urge to throttle [Mayfield] and wedge his body under a
rock somewhere. (Gay 181) This is partially due to Raymer not
being ready for this type of epiphany. For so long he has held on
to the idea of working to get Corrie back and now Mayfield has
revealed to him that maybe that is not what he truly wants. When
Raymer is face to face with his denial he feels this intense hatred
towards the old man because he is the one that showed him his true
feelings and he was not prepared to admit that he was actually mad
at himself. This is the
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He arrives at
her
apartmentwith
three dozen roses and tells her all about the old man and the
hidden money and how he has been promised half of the twenty
thousand dollars. He proclaims that he plans to win [her] back by
using the money to run off with her to somewhere they can
reconnect. She retorts that she thinks that he should get all of
the money not only half of it as he is doing all the work and the
one risking his life. This does not settle well with Raymer and
Corrie is beginning to show her true colors and how greedy she is.
As Raymer leaves her apartment he realizes that as she is kissing
him that her mouth did not taste the same as it had
and the odor
of the roses had even saturated her hair. (Gay 185) In this moment
Raymer realizes that things can never go back to the way they had
been before with Corrie because he now sees her in a different
light. The roses having an odor that has seeped into her hair is
a metaphor for their relationship that is no longer something
beautiful and fresh, but instead it is now something that he sees
as decaying and repugnant. He is realizing Corries greed and that
the only reason she is even considering getting back together with
him is because of the money she believes that he is going to be
acquiring. In this moment an enormous sadness settled over
[Raymer] as he comes to terms with the fact that his relationship
with Corrie is over
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