We are in a car driving across country.  The stops will be limited.  Dad likes to say he "drove straight through."  Mom likes to echo, "three days, three nights."  The rows of sprawled tract housing are for now forgotten.

 

     We rotate seats.  One of us sleeps on the hump in the back floor.  One sits at night as wing to the driver.  "Map girl."  That's me.  The racing brain of my brother and the damaged brain of my sister are never counted on for thought and process.

 

     We feed the red dachshund grapes.  He gets gas and worse.  Dad has to stop.  He swears.  Mom has to clean and clean again.  She pours water from a milk jug into a towel.  The water marks an impression into the shoulder of the road and trickles down until it runs the blacktop.  Mom bends lean across the wagon's back seat in her fitted black skirt and lilac blouse.  I watch the beetle crawl atop her white tennis shoe. Every other week mom washes these shoes.  She adds a cup of bleach to the water.

 

     We get hungry.  We reach into the bag and pull a can of sausages and sleeve of saltines.  I am no longer interested in the novelty of a bad picnic in the car.  I visualize my grandmother's plank table in the hollow piled high with a summer's bounty.  

 

     We travel Route 66.  Traders on the highway get a few of our dollars.  I  hold an Indian doll and peer out of the window questioning the heat of the desert.  My sister is crying.  My mother is "shussssssing" her.  My brother is making faces and gesturing what he will do to my doll.  I think I may break his arm somehow this summer.

 

      We cross into deep south where some roads in town are crumbling brick and local skins are a duskier shade of dark.  My dad sucks juice from boiled peanuts and spits the shells into an empty bag.  My mom's head now reclines on the rest.  My sister sleeps avoiding the hump in a well behind the driver.  My brother's face is pressed into the crevice of the back seat.   I'm up front and snug.  At a yellow light, I connect with black eyes on a street corner.

 

     We cross Hartwell.  Dad talks dams and tells foundation stories and mentions crew members of his past.   All stories lead back to Hoover, somehow.  I think about his Japanese laborer who wears the same tan work clothes.  It's his size that sets him apart from the other burly draws. The man doesn't speak English well, but at the cookouts he pats my head and always pulls wrapped candy from his pocket.  Everyone drinks beer.  Cans are tossed like rockets into a waiting barrel by the grill.

 

     We see red dirt, green trees, and rolling foothills.  Mom's voice gets higher.  She stretches and leans across the seat to wipe our faces.  Dad's arm is bent and rests upon an lowered window.  I know we're close now.  The space in the car is tighter, the food is gone, the dog's tongue is wagging.  Mom asks, "Do you think we need to stop to fill the jug?"  Dad's head shakes with a furious "no."

 

      We crest the hill.  Mom starts to cry.  My brother kicks me in the stomach.  My sister rouses.  Dad begins to tell us late how we must behave this summer.  We know how we'll behave.  I'm looking at the barn where I'll soon build a library on the third floor.  No one ever finds me there.   I'm listening for the swirl of the creek.  I'm spotting the cagey rooster.  I'm watching the screen door back of the old white house.  Grandpa's at the pump with a bucket, six-foot-five and stooped.  How old is he, eighty-five?  Grandma's pushing open the door.  Her apron is a small blue print.  It's flour dusted.  We're home. 

 

 

 

 Scupper © 4/2010