Granddaddy keeps me in the back because I complain too much about the. smell. I tell him that being held captive in the cab of his Chevy is like being

Transcription

1 2004: Granddaddy keeps me in the back because I complain too much about the smell. I tell him that being held captive in the cab of his Chevy is like being suffocated by something that can t kill you, but you sure wish it could. Because when he isn t chewing on his good friend Copenhagen, he s smacking Big Red that turns his lips pinky, his breath spicy, and a noxious cocktail of smells rolls off his tongue like cigarette smoke. So instead of being in the front, next to spit and tobacco and metallic gum wrappers stewing inside a plastic Dolly Parton cup, caught inside a smog of Sothern hick smells infused with old geezer smells, he puts me in the back with his paint cans that glow white hot in the Texas sun. My back rests cushioned on a fluffy white tarp that contrasts with the truck s glittering aquamarine paint job, mirroring the sky above, so I can pretend I m suspended on a bed of clouds, traversing the atmosphere. Looking up is like seeing the world through a Viewmaster toy I had when I was little. A landscape of clouds unfurls itself, jagged shapes layered like mountains on the horizon. A vista that changes with every blink like slides in a movie. Momma says that s how my eyes got to be so blue by lying back and watching the world reel by. She thinks that my irises sucked up the sky, absorbing it like little sponges no bigger than my pinky nail. Eyes watering, nose red and blistering, I stare upwards until I can feel the blue bleeding down my sunburned cheeks.

2 The beautiful thing about a life aimed upwards is that there s no gravity. The ground is nothing but brown-yellow-green blurs tie-dyeing my periphery. I feel sacred aimlessness, pure and free, where I m not pulling or pushing, but riding, coasting. We pass cows with a slice of white stretching from their shoulders and around their bellies, a flash of lightning bolting through their oil-slick coats, like a natural cut-here line. We pass old rest stops and abandoned barns with wooden exteriors dry, dusty, and dead. We pass miles of crumbling wasteland, withering/shriveling, burning/baking, so thirsty that when the wind blows you can hear it wailing. We pass these things and my face remains upturned to an endless ocean. The road unravels behind me. 2009: The air smells wholesome and warm, peppered with nuances of firewood, alcohol, and gunpowder that wriggle through my sinuses like a sneeze. Ridley and me sit in the back of Granddaddy s old truck, on a white tarp scratchy with dried paint blotches, while fireworks go up like a corks vaulting from champagne bottles. With each new color and design, her mouth warps like a pencil being pushed through paper first a tiny pin-prick of lead, then an all out O-gape of awe.

3 Ridley, she has glasses and freckles and a shy smile, and when her mouth goes circular, radiating and collapsing like the zoom function on a camera, I want to hold her hand even tighter. She watches the light show, I watch her, and our eyes flicker red, white, and blue beneath the night sky. I move to lean my head on her shoulder, but she shrugs me off. We re not little kids anymore. I nod, sitting up straight. She lets go of my hand, and I lift my chin. As I look up, tears glow red, white, blue as they track down my burning, blushing cheeks. 2013: No one will drive me around any more, so I get in the back of the truck, parked stationary and silent in the driveway. I close my eyes, and when the wind ghosts through, I try to pretend like I can feel the bumps and cracks of the road rolling beneath me. I like riding in a car because there s this feeling like the world is rushing around me, going full throttle, but slow motion. A cacophony of sound, numbed by the wind. There s this sense of motion without moving, passivity in an action. At this stage in my life, I want nothing more than to be moss on a tree: cool, stagnant, and silent. I want to be a log on the river: floating, not flying, but not falling either.

4 At this stage in my life, I feel like I m too big for my skin and something inside me is pushing out. It s a depressing thing that s like realizing your only article of clothing doesn t fit. I want those days back when I didn t feel that itchy in my body, when I tried to capture the sky with my eyes. When Granddaddy was in the front seat, instead of six feet under. I like riding in a car because it s something like oblivion. You can get lost in acceleration without direction, nothing but a speck of cosmic stardust being swept into the dustpan of life. A nameless energy, another car in a traffic jam. With no identity, there s no responsibility. There s no expectations and no future. No uncertainty. It s funny (in a dry, ironic, morbid sense of the word), because adulthood hits you like a passing semi. Or a stampede. Or an earthquake. Or the nuclear apocalypse. Because no one really teaches you how to be a functioning person they can try, sure, but there s no real guarantee it ll take. So I guess that s why now, just now, seventeen years old in the back of the truck, that I m on the precipice of maturity and a mental breakdown. I m realizing that I can t capture the sky just by looking at it. I can t move without putting my keys in the ignition. And I feel something like love, like sameness with the back seat landscapers, the dogs with lolling tongues. We are not drivers, we are not fighters. We don t take the wheel. We are sitter-backers and observers, slow riders, because from below looking up, it doesn t seem like we re hair-brained hamsters rolling around in a

5 vacuous sphere of ozone, we don t put our trust in hollow skies, but make our homes beneath limitless horizons. So now, just now, I m realizing that I m scared. I m scared to look down. I m scared to accept a life of gravity and consequence. And I m scared to be responsible for it all all the storms and the sunshine, the pain and pleasure. Me, I m too afraid to do something wrong, that I never do anything at all. But I m starting to think that life is that itchy feeling, the icy drop when you dunk your head under cold water. It s the ongoing battle of the rider who needs to become a driver. I think that if I didn t sometimes feel like I m growing out of my skin, I wouldn t be able to feel anything at all. I ll always have these moments where my stomach feels like it s in free fall. I ll always have comfort, and I ll always have it taken away. But maybe most importantly, I ll always have the moment when, from the back of the truck, I watched an end become a beginning. I saw the sunset give rise to the stars.