John Fleming
Weighing
of the Heart
“Give thou unto me my mouth
that I may speak with it.
I guide my heart at its season
of flame and night.”
I
was out driving one day and saw this girl drifting along the side of the road,
and it appeared to me she was riding air, a clean three inches over the gravel.
She took little steps, though it didn’t look like she had to–she bounced and
glided, bounced and glided, like a ghost who’d just become a ghost and didn’t
yet know she could just up and float and thereby rest her legs for all
eternity.
She wasn’t hitching and didn’t even look at me, but I braked for her anyway. This was the middle of nowhere, the eternal flatness where somebody must have once taken a big stamper and stamped everything to dirt. No place for a lone young girl. She might burn up or die of thirst or else float off into the dusty blue.
I spit my gum out–pphuh–pulled over in a cloud of dust, and
before she knew what from what, I reached out and grabbed those dirty little
ankles, and since she was thin as a rail and weighed next to nothing at all, I
pulled her in through my open window.
“Hey, darlin’,” I said. “Funny sort of locomotion you had going
there.”
“You ought to keep your hands off a girl’s feet,” she said. She
wore a leather skirt down almost to the knees. Her sleeveless blouse, faded
from green, showed off her tattoo: a plain old small white feather, like a
stray fluff of goose down had tumbled out of the sky and settled between her
shoulder freckles.
She reached for the door handle, then changed her mind and said,
“Hey, where you going?”
“That’s a little secret between me and the road,” I said. “But
generally speaking, nowhere at all.”
She thought for a second, not sure what to say, then looked at
me with dusty blues pale as air. “Think you’ll keep driving this way for a
while?”
“Seems so at the moment.”
“I’m going to California,” she said, convincing me with her
smile.
I looked straight west, trying to picture it, but saw only the
dirt pressing out, mingling somewhere with the old empty vault. “Can’t say I’ve
been to California, unless it was late at night one time and I cut through a
piece of it without really knowing for sure.”
She said nothing. There were more words in there but she held
them to herself.
“Okay,” I decided, “we’ll keep toward California. That seems
right. But I’d like to ask you a question first, if I may.”
I noticed now how she floated above the seat the way she’d
floated down the road, and her sandals hung above the floorboard, idling with
the big V8 and the rattle of some half-crushed soda cans.
“That’s a personal question,” she said, folding her arms.
“What is? I haven’t asked you anything yet.”
“You were gonna ask me how I came to be on the side of the
road.”
“No no no no no. I wasn’t going to ask that at all. Uh-uh. Historical
markers and road signs–don’t care for either. I was only interested in your
walking style. Never seen a floater before, unless maybe in a ghost movie.”
Her face suddenly wound up and she put her hands to her eyes and
began sobbing, sucking in her breath and catching it short. Not something I
expected in the least. And every time her shoulders twitched, she notched up a
little higher off the seat until her head bumped the nappy roofliner.
“What’s wrong, darlin’? What’s wrong?”
I’d gotten myself into something now. I knew I ought to set her
back on the road. After all, she’d been floating sweet as suds without me. But
when I heard those sobs and watched the straw hair spilling over her fingers, I
didn’t have the heart for it, though the open road and my carefree driving now
looked sadly endangered.
It’s like this: I’d put long miles between me and old times, but
once in a while it felt like nothing at all. I’d be driving for days, paying
close attention, testing myself even here in the stamped-out flats where the
land’s been muzzled for good. Then, late night, the radio signing off and the
wind pouring in like sighs, I’d lose my focus and fall into blackness,
ratcheting downward till a bolt jacked my chin back in place. I’d steer my
wheels back to the road and twist up the radio fuzz. I’d howl and twitch and
claw my nails into my cheeks. I’d draw up blood with a broken toothpick. And
still I tumbled toward the black. Finally, I’d check my rearview, the way a
guilty child checks his mother’s face, knowing just what I’d find but dragged
to it anyway, and there she was, like all the miles I’d driven had come to
nothing, like the attention I’d paid for years hadn’t bought me a moment’s
peace: the End of Old Times, and I’m staring again at the spider web my head
had weaved in the windshield, apologizing to my wife, who’d already joined the
dearly departed.
I’d forgotten so much in the miles I’d driven since the
accident. I’d forgotten the car I’d wrecked and the kind of tree I’d twisted it
around. I’d forgotten my departed wife’s face, and I’d have to work hard to
even call up her name.
Thanks to the miles, the way they swept away the past.
And I’d forgotten the town where we’d once made our lives, the
house we’d once kept together, the plans we’d made in bliss, the struggles to
love and the talk between us at night.
Thanks to the miles.
But I hadn’t forgotten my lapse of attention on our last night
together and the blight of regret on its heels, and in moments of careless
driving it would all replay in the rearview.
And here I’d reached out and grabbed the girl’s ankles when I
should have kept to the road. A natural instinct, I guess, like when someone
holds out a balloon or a bouquet of flowers–you grab without thinking.
I put my hand on the girl’s shoulder now and tried to pat out
the sadness.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. I told you I wouldn’t get
personal, and here I must have done it anyway.”
I patted until my hand got uncomfortable there, and then I made
some shushing noises until she quieted down.
“How about if I put this in gear now?” I said, thinking I’d take
her as far as the next highway then tell her I had a turn to hang, a new road
to drive.
She nodded, sucking in her lips, holding back the crying and
whatever other words she was afraid of letting out. She touched her fingertips
just gently to her eyes, pressing the tears before they built momentum down her
face.
I kicked up some gravel and let the road pull me on.
“See now? We’re moving, and that’s a lot better. We’re back in
motion, experiencing all the pleasures the open road grants to the alert
traveler.”
She nodded again, working her lip like gum.
We drove for a little while. A few patches of scrub slipped past
like refugee camps. The heat puddled and scattered on the road, fingered up in
the distance. A hot breath roared in my ear. The tires and engine hummed, and
the dome of the world hovered high. I eyed the county two-tracks, the tempting
way they angled back and away from the main road, but said nothing, feeling
okay now. Out driving, there were times I felt like a mummy in steel rags, but
then moments like this confirmed the perfection of the present tense, a flame
eternal for those who attend it.
She’d stopped her crying now and had one hand gripping the door
handle and the other squeezing the edge of the vinyl seat, holding herself in
place. Her feet still swayed with each ripple in the road. I kept quiet,
guessing that something was coming.
Her arms tired, and she let herself drift. Then she held her
hands to her knees and rubbed them two or three times, like she was trying to
conjure something out of them. When she finally spoke, the words came out slow,
like she loved them too much and was giving them a long kiss goodbye as they
passed her lips.
“One night it just happened,” she said. “I had beautiful dreams
about floating in the bluest oceans, and when I woke up I was looking down on
my pillow, fluffy and round like I’d never slept on it ever. I grabbed hold of
the bed and held tight, afraid I’d float out the window and up like a spirit
and nobody’d ever see me again. I stayed there, floating where I was until I
got up the courage to float down the hall to the breakfast table, more like
paddling than walking.
“When Mamma and Daddy saw the state I was in they turned their
heads away like I was something shameful.”
“‘You get yourself down on the ground this minute,’ said Daddy.
“‘How’m I supposed to do that?’ I asked.
“‘I ain’t no voodoo doctor,’ he said. ‘You got yourself up
there, now you get yourself back down or I’ll put you out for good.’
“‘Eat some bacon,’ said Mamma. ‘That might do it.’
“But not even a whole plate of bacon helped. Soon as I let go of
the breakfast table I rose up and bumped my knees and spilled the coffees, and
Daddy threw down his napkin and slammed out the door.
“‘Your Daddy told you not to get that tattoo,” said Mamma. “That’s
likely what done this to ya.’
“I shook my head and cried, but every breath launched me higher,
out of my chair then over the table. My head was knocking the ceiling when
Mamma finally stopped rinsing the dishes and looked up at me. ‘Always thought
there was something wrong with you,’ she said.
“I decided right then I’d leave home for good. I guess my town’s
so small there ain’t no room for personal expression. And I’m tired of gettin’
put down for being different. So I been wandering four whole days now.”
I could tell the story took a toll, like she was putting the
whole nasty business out on the table again, but I still wished she hadn’t said
it. It felt a burden I didn’t need, not even my own burden, and now all I could
think was, How do I shake this off?
“Well,” I said. “Well, well. That’s some story. Yes. Well. How
do you suppose...I mean, I never heard of a live floater before. I’ve seen
magic shows, but I don’t take stock in illusion. I heard about ghosts, which I
take slightly more stock in given the nature and limits of human knowledge with
respect to the world’s mysteries. But no, never a live floater. You been to a
doctor? They’ve got all kinds of specialists these days.”
She crossed her ankles, trying to keep her feet from swaying. “You
know any free ones?”
“There’s clinics,” I said, “but none I know that tends to
floaters. Oh! Oh oh! There’s the obvious solution!”
“What’s that?’
“Ankle weights!” I said, slapping the wheel. “Sure, we get
something heavy around those feet and you’ll be clomping around terra firma in
no time at all.”
She looked at me, fingers pressed up against the ceiling now,
strands of straw hair clinging to the roofliner, that little white feather
bobbing with every squeak of the shocks. “You think so?”
“Worth a try. Look around my back seat, see if you can’t find
something heavy under those blankets or on the floor there.”
She steadied herself as she spun around, then leaned into the
back seat and rummaged through my personals, her sandals dusting my glove
compartment.
“You been sleeping back here?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, knowing I’d have to speak to that at some point. “Yes
I have, but only to take naps by day. Late night’s best for driving. No traffic
and not much to look at, a real test of driving skills.”
She tottered on the seat back now, her blouse riding up her
spine and her feet thumping the windshield as she reached way down to the floor
with her long skinny arms. She looked like an astronaut struggling with an
unrehearsed experiment.
“Wow,” she said, “you sure do like to drive.”
“Yeah, well, when I’m doing it, it’s what I do, and I don’t
believe in doing things indifferently. Too much of that in the world these
days.”
She twisted around, pushed herself back down in the seat, and
held out a pair of black work boots.
“Steel toes,” I said. “There’s the stuff. Put ‘em on if you can
stand the smell.”
She knocked off her sandals and worked her feet into the boots,
heels squeaking, face scrunching, but I could tell they weren’t going to work
because even with one boot on and the other in her hands, her behind was still
gliding around the vinyl seat.
A little curve in the road floated her over to my side.
“‘Scuse me,” she said, pushing against my thigh and launching
herself back in place.
I cleared my throat and watched a dust devil whirl across the
road, carrying bugs and birds and small rodents to a new life elsewhere. The
sun swooped lower and I flipped down my visor.
She banged her head on the window and dash–oof, and I cringed a
little–but finally she got the boots on. She caught her breath, staring down at
them a second like she was waiting for them to work their magic.
They clunked together over a bump. Then again.
She smiled with half her mouth. “They ain’t ruby slippers.”
Clunk.
I gave her the other half of the smile. “Hmm. Don’t understand
it...those boots must weigh more than you do.”
“I kind of like them,” she said. “They’re so big, it’s almost
like I’m touching the ground anyway.”
I’d grown to like her now, and the burden of her problem didn’t
seem like much at all. Maybe even something to keep me in the here and now.
The night of the accident, I’d had a fight with my wife, whose
name and face I’d since forgotten. I’d forgotten the substance of the fight,
too, but the fact of it remained, a tankful of fuel for miles of regret. The
outcome was that my wife was giving me the silent treatment, which it seems
right to believe was her habit in these situations. I didn’t expect it to last
so long.
We drove through the woods–maybe pine–on our way home from an
evening somewhere, or else a vacation. No radio. Maybe it didn’t work. Maybe
we’d even fought about that.
A silent wife and a broken radio put my skills to the test, but
I failed miserably. I began to nod off.
I might have thought: You’d better make nice or it’s going to be
a hell of a long car ride.
But by then I was too tired to think. Maybe I’d even had a few
drinks.
The motor hummed, the wind sighed, the tires roared softly, but
the silence held its own. It wrapped me in rags, one by one, and the weight of
it pressed my head just gently to my chest.
If my wife had been talking to me, she might have said, Pay
attention! There’s a curve in the road and a tree with your name on it!
But maybe she’d nodded off, too. And so the silence drew a bead
on forever, and long miles of driving couldn’t make me forget it.
At least now I was awake and in the present, and the past seemed
a shy passenger slumped in the back seat, the riddle of this floating girl more
to my liking.
“Half a solution is no solution,” I told her. “Listen, I’ve been
down this road once or twice before and my turnaround’s always been a service
station up ahead. There’s a man there might set you right.”
“People’ll laugh when they see me float,” she said.
“Not this fella. I came in once with a muffler problem and a
special request. I told him I’d like to just stay in the car while he fixed it,
if I might. So I drove the car onto the lift, turned up the radio, and ate my
lunch ten feet in the air while he replaced the muffler. He never raised an
eyebrow. And you hear that?” I asked, cupping my ear.
“Hear what?”
“See,” I said. “Problem solved. A right-minded mechanic if ever
there was.”
She smiled. “You talk different,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows, and she repeated my last words with her
shoulders thrown back and her chin tucked in, then burst a laugh at her own
impression.
“You making fun of me?” I asked, mock-serious. “I warn you, I’m
a sensitive man, at the mercy of whims and fancy. I might could get the urge to
turn around and drop you off where I found you.”
She tried to gauge me. “Sorry,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter. Right now I’m taken with this idea of getting
you back on solid ground. Seems a worthwhile undertaking, but I need to know
that you’re committed to it.”
“Am,” she said with a nod. “When I was drifting down the side of
the road, I was thinking about the things I might do in California. Be in the
movies. Get my picture taken for magazines. Roller skate at the beach. Then I
imagined everybody laughing at me. Even if they put me in a movie, nobody’d
know it was me.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’d float up off the screen. At least my head would. ‘Bout the
only people’d know it was me’d be Mamma and Daddy, and they’d just be more
ashamed than ever.”
“Oh,” I said, “but they can keep a close-up on your face and
never bother with the floating body. Too much emphasis on a woman’s body these
days, anyway. Of course, there’d be problems with action scenes. Maybe then
they could put ropes on you and pull you along like one of those Thanksgiving
parade balloons.”
“Might could,” she said. “But who’s going to hire an actress
they’ve got to do all those special favors for?”
“All the stars get special favors. But you’ve got to show you’re
star material. We get you through a couple auditions and into the movies, fool
‘em if we have to, then when you’re a star you kick off the weights, rise up
high as you like, and tell them they’ve got to deal with it. And they will,
because then you’ve got star power.”
She grinned at that.
I pulled off the road into the lone gas station that hung out
there in the flatness like a handhold for cross-country climbers. It looked to
have risen from the dust, and then the dust set to work to reclaim it. What
pavement there’d been had crumbled to dust, and the fallen sign had been
scoured to muteness by dust. Dust had driven itself into the white paint and
chipped it off and peeled it back. The office window and the pump faces had
clouded with dust. Dust had begun to pile against the pumps and against the tires
of the cars and the engine blocks and mufflers and the other parts that ringed
the station like a rusty choker.
The mechanic was sweeping the bays, slinging out dust in
dragon’s breaths.
I pulled to the pumps and gave a little honk.
The man set his broom against the wall and took his time walking
over. I cranked the window down all the way and put my elbow out in greeting. “Fill
her up, if you would.”
I watched him in my sideview. He had a good pair of sideburns,
not as a fashion statement, and his gray hair followed the sunlight like a
little field of sunflowers. A couple of threads hung at the pocket of his
overalls where someone’s name had been torn off.
“‘Member me?” I called.
He clicked on the pump handle and came forward, hand on the
vinyl roof.
“‘Member me?” I asked. “You gave me a new muffler, and I’ve been
making good use of the peace and quiet since.”
“Temporary fix,” he said. “I saw lots more problems under
there.”
“And you told it to me straight,” I said. “What more could a
customer ask of a good mechanic?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“You remember how I ate my lunch ten feet in the air, the radio
playing something old and sweet?”
“Didn’t notice.”
“Of course, of course. You were busy. Well, I was thinking about
that today–tell you why in a moment–and I was remembering how kind you were to
indulge my little peculiarity. I know a mechanic’s got a proper procedure for
everything–we all do–and my staying in the car had to go against proper
procedure, let alone a state law or two.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said. Click. The pump handle.
“Well okay,” I said, “we’ve got a situation here, the solution
to which might involve some creative thinking that also goes against standard
procedure. Beside me is a budding Hollywood starlet with a career-threatening flotation
problem.”
He leaned down to get a look at the girl through the open
window. She gave him a shy smile, which he acknowledged with a slight nod.
“Probably best to show you what I mean. Darlin?”
She pushed open the door, those boots clomping like dancing
puppets.
The mechanic replaced the pump handle and came around for a
look. I slid to the passenger’s side to oversee.
He stared for a moment, fists on hips, judging the few inches of
space between soles and dust.
“Take off your boots,” he said.
She fought to keep her balance as she pulled each one off and
let it drop, raising two little clouds that marched off on the breeze.
“Now walk a bit,” he said, and she took a few deliberate steps
away and back like she was testing a new pair of shoes.
The man squatted for a closer look, rubbed his stubble to invoke
the mechanical muse, then swept his hand between her bare feet and the ground
like he was checking for strings. She wiggled her toes nervously.
“Turn around.”
She twisted a bit and turned without moving her feet, and when
she came to rest he gently squeezed a heel between his thumb and forefinger. One
heel, then the other, up and down, testing the firmness or the sponginess or
what have you.
“Boots didn’t help a bit,” I offered. “Steel toes, too.”
“Make any difference whether she’s standing or sitting?”
“No sir,” she said.
“I bet she could do a handspring, a cartwheel, and a somersault,
never once touch the ground,” I added.
“That’s true. I done a cartwheel a couple days back, just to
see.”
“Mmm.” The mechanic stood up, put one hand on her shoulder, and
seemed to gauge the pressure against his fingertips. He lowered her gently to
the ground, let her go and caught her, let her go and caught her, like slowly
dribbling a balloon.
“I figure if it was helium it would’ve passed through her system
by now,” I said.
He steadied her and let go, gave a decisive nod, then walked
back to the garage he’d been sweeping, which had already sprouted a new thin
layer of dust.
“Don’t you worry,” I told her, my head out the window. “He knows
what he’s doing.”
She crossed her arms and scratched one foot with the other. The
shadows inched their way east, and the air lost some warmth.
“Don’t you ever get out of the car?” she asked me.
“There are necessities,” I said, “but generally speaking, no. At
least, not while I’m out driving.”
“You’re an odd bird.”
“Look who’s talking. You’re the one with the feather. Flap your
wings and you might get to California for the winter migration.”
She smiled, not so self-conscious anymore. “I’m not gonna forget
that you helped me,” she said. “When I’m in the movies and giving interviews,
or else roller skating at the beach and talking to my friends, I’ll tell how I
owe it all to you.”
I laughed. “You’re star material, darlin’. You already talk the
talk.”
The mechanic returned with a set of keys hooked to one finger.
“What’s the prognosis, doc?”
He flipped the keys up into his palm. Clack. “Follow me in the
car.”
When he jumped into an old convertible at the side of the
building, a cloud of dust rose up around him.
“Hop in, darlin’,” I said.
We pulled onto the road behind the mechanic and headed west,
farther than I’d been down this road. Dusk had been set in motion. The blue sky
thickened and the air stilled. I rolled up the windows.
Pretty soon, little teeth rose up in front of the setting sun,
first I’d seen of the distant mountains between here and California. I was
about to point this out to the girl, when she jolted me half-crazy, grabbing my
sleeve and shouting,
“Look there! Look there!”
I took a deep swallow, my arm hairs on end from the fright she’d
given me.
She was pointing to an old drive-in that backed up to a curve in
the road, the huge screen like a dark cut-out in the evening sky. A little
ticket booth stood beside it, and a wooden wall squared off the empty viewing
field. Looked like ages since the last movie, and the marquee left no sign of
its title.
A cold wave of memory passed through me, my hands shuddered, and
I suddenly seemed to be driving the wrong direction. I’d taken this project too
far, strayed from my purpose, I thought, and now I felt ashamed of my
inattention. The dozens of heedless miles I’d just driven weighed heavy on my
heart, and the world felt smaller and smaller.
When the mechanic pulled off the road, I followed, but when he
rolled past the old ticket booth and through to the viewing field, I jumped on
the brakes.
The girl looked at me as the dust rose and settled. The little
ticket booth stood beside us, its angled roof half-caved. No one reached
through the broken glass to take our money.
“Can’t do it,” I said.
“Can’t do what?”
“I haven’t been in a drive-in since–not in years. You go on in,
and I’ll wait right here.” I lied because I didn’t have the heart not to.
“We gonna watch a movie
here?” She looked worried.
“He’ll take care of you. Just go on.”
“Is he a talent scout or something?”
I could just barely see the shape of the mechanic. He leaned
against his car, waiting, all the way back at the projection building.
“He’s a good mechanic, and he knows to go beyond the mechanical
parts if that’s what’s called for. Now get out,” I said a little too hard. My
wet palms slipped on the wheel and my throat tightened up.
She looked at me like she wanted to cry again, and I think she
suspected the truth.
“Go on,” I said.
She sniffled, but then pushed open the door and drifted on
through to the viewing field, bouncing and gliding a little slower than before.
I idled in reverse, crackling the gravel, then spun the wheel
when I hit the road. I flipped my headlights and gassed it back east, trying to
swallow back the miles I’d let slip that day.
The flatness everywhere rose up and darkened the sky, and now
there was just the darkness and the cones of my headlamps. I cranked down my
window, hoping the wind and the motor would hum away my thoughts and keep my
attention on the road, where it belonged.
No dice. The silence swelled like an orchestra, and the wind and
the rpm’s and all the miles I’d put behind me couldn’t block it out.
I gripped the wheel hard and pressed the gas till the motor
wailed, but the old times filled my rearview anyway.
After the accident, brushing glass from my hair, apologizing to
my dead wife, I tried to think. I knew there was a proper procedure for the
aftermath of tragedy, but I was scared and couldn’t recall it–the forgetting
had begun without my even trying.
I pulled my little garden shovel from out of the trunk and
started digging there in the woods under the trees I could not name. My hands
shook and my sweat dropped in the dirt. Things were too quiet, I noticed that
already.
I loosened the topsoil with the point and then shoveled it out,
a tiny scoop at a time, the rhythm of the action and the slush of the dirt
numbing me, my breath clouding the cold night air. I must have dug for hours,
though the memory of it’s lost. And the hole I dug couldn’t have been
regulation depth, maybe not even deep enough to cover her, because when I
placed her in there I know I held her hand for a moment, patting it maybe,
rubbing it I’m sure, double-checking her face to see what I’d done.
Silence, and then again silence. I let go.
When I filled in the hole, I stamped down the earth as best I
could, with the shovel first, slapping the ground and working up a sweat, then
with my feet and my palms, trying to make it all even, like nothing had
happened there. Failing, I put my fists to my forehead and cried.
I remembered all that, and then I suddenly remembered something
else, too. In the town we once lived in and the house we once slept in, my
beautiful wife and I would lie together at night and whisper. I didn’t remember
the town or the house or the beauty of my wife or the words she whispered, but
now I remembered her warm breath when it passed from her lips, each breath as
good as her last, and I felt it again, the way it whirled in my ear, slow and
aimless, like it might linger there forever.
I crunched on the brakes and stopped there in the middle of the
flatness, my head on the wheel and the tears tracking down, salting my lips. I
let them fall, and let the memories play as they would. It seemed like all
these years they’d been whirling and whirling, like a whisper’s breath without
the whisper. Now I heard the words, too, and I finally made sense of them.
After a while, I told myself to breath deep. I told myself to
open my eyes.
Dusk had turned to night, and the stars drifted through the
vault, quiet and distant. I cranked down the window and took deep breaths of
the biting air. When my hands could flex and grip the wheel again, I turned the
car around and mashed it back to the drive-in.
At the curve in the road, little cinders of light now burst
through where the dust had bored holes into the screen. When I crunched past
the ticket booth and onto the viewing field, I saw the cone of light hanging in
the air, kindling the dust.
Rows and rows of speaker poles gridded the field, all of them
singing the same old tune in chorus. As I idled through the field–half cement,
half weeds, all dust–the music rose and fell, rose and fell as I passed the
speaker poles, some of them beheaded and hanging by wires. I could hardly catch
my breath.
Finally, I spotted the girl up at the glowing white screen–star
material, just as I’d thought.
She had the opposite problem she thought she would. Instead of
floating off the top of the screen, she hadn’t yet floated high enough, so the
bottom of the screen cut her off at the knees.
But that didn’t seem to bother her. She danced in the light like
she was part of some Busby Berkeley number. She jumped and kicked and
cartwheeled and somersaulted and never once touched the ground. The mechanic
had put her in the movies after all, and now I was her audience.
As I idled slowly forward, the cone of light shining above me
and the chorus of speakers on either side, I seemed to raise her up little by
little, a matter of perspective. She jumped and kicked and threw her head back,
and she waved her arms and swiveled her hips, and as she rose up higher on the
screen, calves and ankles coming into view, the coldness seemed to pass from me
and I smiled.
At last her bare feet were in line with the bottom of the
screen, and I put on the brakes and watched for a moment. She was back on the
ground now–movie ground, anyway, and that seemed good enough. An illusion,
maybe, but I could almost feel her laughter, and that was real as anything. I
put my elbow out, listening to that old melody in chorus, wishing for a box of
popcorn, even.
Then maybe because she kicked a little too high, or maybe
because she just got carried away, she started drifting upward little by
little. She didn’t realize it at first, but after a spin move she looked down
and got scared.
I put the car back in gear and kicked up the dust, trying to get
to her quick. I skidded right to the bottom of the screen, but I could see
already that I wouldn’t be able to reach her.
“Help!” I heard her yelling over the music. She kept floating,
up toward the spirits like she’d first feared.
I couldn’t let her go. I thought I’d take her through those saw-tooth
mountains and down into California after all. I got out of the car, stumbled a
bit, my legs heavy from underuse, then pulled myself up onto the hood. She was
just out of reach and still rising.
“I won’t forget you!” she yelled down, tears in her voice.
I wouldn’t give up. I crouched, took a deep breath, and sprang
up with all I had. I somehow got hold of one of those dirty little ankles I’d
grabbed once before. I stood there, arm stretched high, feeling as light as I
ever had, like I’d just been handed a balloon or a bouquet. But this time I
wouldn’t let go.
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Last updated: May 1, 2001.