In Britain they call it a jab and that slang has drifted over so that everyone is now posting selfies of their vaccine jab, but it’s not a jab. It’s a stab, and I got my first last Friday. 

Canton, Mississippi, high school, twenty minutes north of town, a place I’d never been. When the vaccines first started, it seemed like a conspiracy of the state visitors’ bureau. The shots were scattered to the distant ghost towns. Explore Mississippi! But not anymore.

I had my paperwork, my confirmation printed as well as saved on my phone, a full tank of gas, photographic identification, a mask, a robot map guide talking to me, and a recent trip to the restroom. I hadn’t been this nervous since dating in high school. I grew terrified of arriving too late.

A National Guardsman checked me in at the gate. Another sat in the bed of a pick-up truck underneath a beach umbrella, flicking through his phone. When I reached his long end of the driveway, he pointed to the line’s entrance. The high school sat inert in the afternoon distance. Our line of cars quickly bifurcated. They seemed long but not epically long. I couldn’t yet see the end point, the shot point, but it didn’t feel too long in that ambient way long lines feel long, like when you amble into a new ride at Disney and you can feel the unseen weight of the line coursing through the tunnels of entertainment structure, the dawning self-knowledge that you’ve just trapped yourself, your entire family, in a line. I’ve heard anecdotes of families going to Disney this spring, since Disney is capping attendance. It’s really something that under normal circumstances there is no real span of time at Disney when it’s not crowded. What a feat of human entertainment, I suppose. “There aren’t even Fast Passes.” That is, you don’t have to buy your way out of the line into a better line, the line above the line. I haven’t fact checked this. This is just the word on the street — on Dad Street. 

It was unseasonably warm even for Mississippi, but I kept my windows down, A/C off, out of some perverse need to feel real air. I find myself waiting later and later each year to roll the windows up and turn on the artificial coolness. I remember as a teenager riding around in the summer night feeling the coolness through my windows, the only time in the summer that it ever got cool. Perhaps I am perpetually trying to recapture that sensation. Is there anything better than riding with the windows down? Perhaps I really am part dog. We made it through a kink in the line and that’s when we saw the nurses. 

Two of them, one for each line. They wore laminated tags that said VOLUNTEER. I wondered if that was to preempt anyone giving them grief. I found it sweet of them to volunteer, borderline foolish, but I was grateful they were there. We were in the parking lot of the football stadium, curling between the high school and the stadium proper. The first guard had given me paperwork, which I dutifully filled out on my steering wheel, making sure to press hard so that the ballpoint pen worked but not too hard so that I wouldn’t accidentally honk my horn. This is how road rage incidents begin, I am sure, the hurried completion of deposit slips in transit. 

I got the nurse in red scrubs, masked, long brown hair, deeply tan, warm in disposition. I am positive if I had 90 additional seconds of conversation I could have gotten her to call me “hon.” I live to be called “hon.” I also live for small talk, theatrically holding the door for strangers, earnest disputations about the weather, and dropping by people’s houses. It’s taken the pandemic for me to realize who I truly am. She verified that it was indeed my first shot, that I was not currently symptomatic or otherwise positive, that I was who I said I was. Afterward, she said I would have to wait for 15 minutes in another line, the line after the line, to ensure I didn’t have an adverse reaction. “If you need assistance, just roll down your window and get someone’s attention.” There were tables under smaller, tailgating tents, clumps of bottled water, and what looked like a box of donuts. A couple of other volunteers were milling about, moving by with lanyard immunity. It was like a street festival but with less trash. She confirmed that I wanted to receive the shot in my left arm and placed the checked-out paperwork underneath my windshield wiper. 

My next stop was the tent. But there were two, the first one and then farther down, a tent beyond the tent. I didn’t know which one was the shot tent, or if they both were. We were moving away from the nurses, away from the un-uniformed, into the realm of the Guardsmen. I pulled into the first tent, slowing down, pulling up my sleeve. “Oh you’re good, you’re good, pull on down, the next tent,” the Guardsman said. Inside the tent were several fatigued Guardsmen milling about, sitting, dealing with the paperwork. An industrial sized fan whirred away inside the orderly visqueen. 

I pulled down to the second tent, the last tent. It was farther away. It seemed the farthest point away from the field, the school, civilization. I was two cars back, not even in the tent, when a Guardsman approached my vehicle. She confirmed my name. “You’re receiving in your left arm?” I concurred. She was tall, masked, hair intricately braided but held back in a bun. She wore a gray-green shirt, fatigue pants, and boots. She was muscular. She had the aura of strength. Tattoos snaked down below her short sleeves. I could not tell what they were. She quickly came back with a needle. Wait, I wasn’t even in the tent. She’s going to give it to me now? Already? Aren’t the nurses supposed to give the shots? I had my sleeve rolled up, my arm positioned on the open door frame. “I need you to relax the arm by your side, hold your sleeve up with your right hand. Relax.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

I did as I was told. The shot stung briefly. As a grown up I don’t mind shots. My only requirement is to not look directly at the needle while it’s going in. I just look to the side like a distracted animal. Part of this adult ambivalence is no doubt from being a parent and having to put on a brave face for the children, especially when hauling them to a clinic for their yearly flu shots. I remember taking the babies to get their vaccinations. The doctors gave the shots in their heels, and after a slight delay, the babies screamed indignantly. They were offended that we had taken them from their soft cribs all the way across town for this. 

She was tall, beautiful, masked. She placed a band-aid on my arm. She had the broad shoulders of a person of consequence. She had been transported from a distant land of better physique and vaster organization, sent here to the realm of the sweaty and pudgy to help us find a way to live. I could see into the final tent. More Guardsmen, paperwork, fans. A trash can full to overflowing with syringes, interlocking gears of sheet-checking, shot-administering, moving people through the line. Here it was: the numinous engine of incremental progress, slow but moving, the quiet beat of life drumming underneath the afternoon sun. We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do. No faces flinched at my masked face. No one said, “Well those people were in nursing homes.” No one said, “He did have diabetes.” No one said, “Everyone should just live their lives.” No one said, “Do you know anyone who’s actually had the virus?” No one said, “The doctors are saying all those deaths are Covid because they get money.” No one said, “It’s just like the freaking flu.” No one said, “If you’re scared, then wear your mask, I guess.” Girl, there’s a better life for me and you. 

“Proceed to the wait line,” she said. “After fifteen minutes, they’ll let you go.” 

“Thank you so much,” I said. 

“Have a blessed day,” she said.  

And so I did.