It starts, somehow, in the dusty drivers seat of a ’96 Honda Accord. Is it sunny or cloudy? Am I awake? I’m awake. Maybe it starts in a waking dream – a driving waking dream. Cloudy, but only partly. The road passes unnoticed. Uncomfortably obsolete political yard signs lean to the grey ground, also unnoticed. The fumble to solve a puzzle. A little piece of the puzzle. A little sliver carved whole from the great wheel. The road passes unnoticed. School children are ushered onto busses. The birds are leaving. The ground is grey. The light is going. Just a little sliver is all. I’m so tired. Granola bar wrappers and junk mail mingle in the passenger foot well. Only dirt and forgotten gravel beneath the worn out clutch pedal. The fog on brown fields of stubble drifts by: murmur shmurmur murmur shmurmur murmur shmurmur. Grumble and fade.
A green fly and another and another and another. There is no refuge. There is only sand and sun and pain. Children laugh. How are they laughing? How do they have fun under these less than ideal circumstances? I want to feel the ocean wind on my face and read a damn book. I cannot. The green flies will not let me. They hold me terribly hostage. My dismay spreads. I am not a god, but I can throw a mood with the best of them. Children scream with mirth. Ice cream is sold. Trash bins lousy with bugs and seagulls overflow. I wonder if someone is breaking into my car at this very moment. I imagine these sand dunes next to this ocean were once wild and beautiful and free. I bury a leg and then another. Those parts are free now from bite and buzz and my joy increases. I bury more of me. More joy. I wonder how much of me I would have to bury to feel maximum joy. The trash will blow around on the ocean breeze. The sun will burn at least some of my skin. Will there be enough joy? Grumble and fade.
The city is bigger than I could have imagined. House after house after house. Finally, we come to water, but I can’t tell what kind of water. Is it a lake? Is it the ocean? It’s not a river. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got for reference. Wait. Is it some kind of water I haven’t yet come to know? Everything is confusing. There is a park with swings – great swings! – but it’s also an old factory. Right by the water. I decide the water is a lake. But it’s summer, and no one is swimming in the lake. Why is no one swimming? I ask. Because the water is polluted. I know about pollution. Pollution causes cancer. Cancer makes people dead. All makes sense. Time passes. There is a concrete wall around the water. It is fun to walk and balance on. The concrete is old. The factory is old. The playground is new. The world is big and wide and strange. The water causes cancer. Of course. I fall in the water. Of course. Yelling, screaming. I’m going to get cancer! Of course. Of course. Grumble and fade.
It’s sunset red and orange and yellow. A woman carries a young boy across the in-between house’s driveway. He’s screaming and crying. There is a gash hidden by his hair somewhere. What her day was like before or after this accident isn’t known. There’s a large cardboard box and a basement. Me, my brother and another kid playing contentedly with the box. What a deal. The cardboard box and the carpet and sliding and a brick wall. A corner. An edge. The box, the carpet and the corner and the head collide and now there is blood and crying. So many tears and so she’s carrying the little body to the mother, the other mother. My mother. The mother who will drive the child to the doctor and will pass out as the doctor stitches up the head. But all of that is lore. The moment in memory is the carrying and the red and the orange. The memory is from afar, somehow, as though my body with the bloody head remembers from afar. Like a stranger saw and donated the memory. There is general agreement of the facts. Is the memory real? Is it an echo? Grumble and Fade.
The top of the bluff is an edge. It’s tempting and abrupt. A little dirt path descends toward the river at the bottom. It’s not straight down, but has the steepness of a place where in winter only those with the greatest courage or least intelligence muster the will to brave the ride on a sled. My older brother broke an arm there the winter before. But now it is summer, and my little bmx dirt bike – no hand brake – sits temptingly at the top, front wheel inches from the edge. The gang is talking. The gang is deciding where to go next. The gang, my brother among the oldest, seems aimless and far off. Just another inch. I’m bored. Just another inch. Rock back and forth. The dust of the little trail coats the rim of my tire. The late afternoon sun bakes our summer skins. Our parents will be home from work soon. The gang will have to break for the day. Just another inch. Just one more. Rock. A moment of distraction and my front wheel passes the event horizon. Then I’m in motion, screaming down the hill trying to steer and brake with the desperation of a fledgling just pushed out of the nest. Everything seems quiet, though there must be sound coming from my panicked lungs and from the gang. There are tall weeds everywhere now, just milliseconds after my plunge, patches of thistle grab at me, cushioning my inevitable collision with the ground. I am too stunned to cry, but there will be tears. Finally, motion ceases. Dirt and blood everywhere. Scratches too numerous to count, bruises too many to absorb. I am picked up by my brother. My bike is gathered. I am stunned by how far down the hill I flew. Still, no broken bones. Only a scolding from my parents to my brother for not keeping an eye on me better. Battle scars and my brother in trouble. Wins all around. Grumble and Fade.
