For an unusually hot October, I realized that my childhood was becoming distant. Not distant in a sense that it appeared far away, but removed from me in a way that seemed unreachable. Maybe there was a churning in me that caused a longing for the comfort of my childhood. Likewise, the irony of growing up caused me to wave fondly at my fleeting youth, never to look back. On this morning, I laid in bed listening to the creaking springs of my mattress while I turned to my side. I wondered how long it would take or how many times I could roll before the worn springs would push through the tired mattress, poking my side and piercing my dreams. I stayed there, full of sleep, scanning the walls of my room that were adorned with posters of bikini clad women and sports icons. I gave no life to the thoughts of what the day held for me. I gave no prediction of the feeling of fear that I could neither ignore nor explain.
Within an hour of sunrise, the morning dew was dissipating into the hazy light rays and the promise of the day was more heat and humidity. My dad awakened me an hour earlier and I raised my bedroom window in hopes of capturing a slight breeze.I paused for only a moment to take in the echoing song of bull frogs and wearied crickets. My view was interrupted by imposing clouds in the eastern distance and soon a sky the color of gun-metal was shielding the typical morning sun, casting a hue of uneasiness and worry to the dirt and bareness between the grassy patches of yard.
Before eight o’clock my father loaded me into the cab of our pick-up and we were in motion. I traveled with my father without speaking. We drove for almost an hour and the area was unfamiliar to me. I knew approximately where we were, but I also knew that I had not been here, although there was a sound of remembering in the wind. We exited Old Vallonia Road and turned onto an unmarked path through the woods and were an hour through desolate fields without houses or evidence of civilization. The silence hurt my ears while I waited for him to say something that might make this trip tolerable. Occasionally a small rock or debris would fix itself within the tread of our tires and jump out onto the side of our vehicle making a clink against the paint. Besides the bouncing monotony of the engine, the exchange between rocks and tires was the only conversation.
My small physique was tossed around the faded seat of the Chevy truck as I tried to compensate the bouncing with my arm comfortably rigid against the door handle. My open window let in the smell of fall and harvest. The sweet smell of the dirt road masked the odor of what I remembered to be decaying flesh. This was a familiar smell from the many long summer days spent alone on the banks of our family’s pond in countless hours fishing. My cousins and uncles frequented the pond and most times would dispense fish much too small to eat down to the lower portion of the bank to die and rot. This was a thinning-out process to give larger fish room to grow and something that I found difficult to understand. In a way I resented the action, sighting that in my youth I was also a small fish in a very small pond. In a family of great strength and pride I was not surprised when my opinion was quickly misunderstood and so rejected like the rotting carcasses of fish paste which spotted the banks.
The road traveled hard upon us. On and on we ventured forward, seemingly never slowing or hindering from the trail on which my father placed us. He wore upon his face a look of confident dismay and the corners of his weathered blue eyes dropped slightly downward. Still there was the comforting constant of my father beyond the scowl. The lines of smoke from the endless cigarette balanced upon his lips traveled upward from the corner of his mouth and circled his rugged looks before being captured by the wind of his open window and escaping into the morning air in what seemed to be a great hurry; as if the smoke sensed a greater urgency and direction that it needed to follow, and carried out its duty without thinking. I tried to carry my thoughts out that window and high into the atmosphere.
A metallic rosary hung suspended from the rear-view mirror. The beads, worn and elongated, were evidence of use and clutching. The unevenness of the road would ricochet the crucifix between the stereo knobs before Dad’s hand, scarred, weathered, and callused, would gently halt the cross in mid-air in a momentary display of reverence.
The summer heat placed its mark on my surroundings which is most apparent by the brownish tint of the grass near the tree lines. A dry summer makes men weary when thinking about the wasted days of no rain. In days such as this, the dust dances like a jet stream through brick dust and behind every ground ball that you try to field making the day seem hotter than it actually is. Most nearly intolerable summer days are spent inside until the sun sets and the dew plants itself, cooling the grass and softening the earth. With fall upon us, there is a certain relief to the misery of a teenage boy who cannot stand to spare a minute of summer enjoyment.
The truck continued to follow the course that my father had placed us on, regardless of the dust, fields, stench, or memories. I sat patiently. I rode nervously. I wondered unknowingly. Without warning, my father reached to turn the knob of the radio, changing the atmosphere only slightly. At my young age I had developed distaste for the sound of Johnny Cash singing Sunday Morning Comin’ Down early in the morning. I am sure that I had been conditioned since early morning was the usual time that I would hear the tune while eating breakfast before school every week day. A salty taste of grits and bacon filled my mouth as Johnny sang:
“…and the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert.”
A smile broke through the lines of my father face as he began humming along and slowly dragging smoke through his cigarette while never losing sight of the oncoming road. Knowing this look,
I decided to break through the drone of travel.
“Ronnie says that later he will take me down to White River and we can fish for Channel Cat.”
“You don’t have a fishin’ license and I doubt that Ronnie does either. You boys ought to just fish in the pond where you don’t have to worry about it.”
This was a typical response coming from my father. I knew the answer even before I made the statement. I only chose to leave out the part of our plan to take beer from a cooler that Ronnie’s dad kept in his garage. We had done it before and had grown accustomed to the taste of skunked Old Milwaukee on our fishing outings. Besides, his dad never missed them. They were left over from his fishing trips on the weekend and generally after they warmed from being on ice, they were no good to drink and he would toss them out. We were not drinking for the taste, but because we were sixteen and they were available. We could have been drinking bile and would have been just as happy as long as we were forbidden to do so.
“You are right, but you can’t catch Channel Cat in our pond, Dad.”
“Ah! Boy, there’s catfish in that pond as big as your leg if you know where to catch em! Just the other day I saw a snapper in there as big around as a wash tub. You wanna watch that Ronnie anyway, he’ll get you in trouble if ya ain’t careful.”
“Ronnie’s not a bad guy.”
“I didn’t say that he was a bad guy, I said that he would get you in trouble. He’s just like his dad and his dad was always into something that he wasn’t supposed to be. Be careful hanging around with Ronnie Turner.”
Once again, silence filled the cab of the truck as we tumbled forward in time. My father had won the discussion as he had many times in the past and most likely would in the future. I knew my limitations with him and occasionally would push the boundaries as the subject would dictate. My father’s downfall was that he was an extraordinarily intelligent and well-rounded man. In the small town where we lived, he was an Einstein among Forrest Gumps. This situation made it difficult to communicate as the community loud-mouths can make him into the fool since he did not think as they thought. I remember countless conversations with some of the locals in which my father would speak in a manner more appropriate to their understanding. His vocal inflection changing to match theirs, his weight shifting from foot to foot, and hands nestled in his front pockets. Even his noxious smoking habit was a product of those around him; an effort to blend in and be unnoticed.
Each time I witnessed this, I would ask myself why he behaved this way. Instead he chose to laugh as they laughed while they told him of the pet tricks they watched on the previous night’s Late Show. My father was more complex than those. I watched him work out calculus problems in his head as he planned projects that he engineered to build an idea that was simply on his mind. He created for the sake of creating. Sometimes I could find him in his garage before the sun raised reading from the diaries of Freud and studying the minds of great authors. I never fully understood why he chose the path that he walked as I always saw him as something much larger. I guess that explains why he speaks to me in the fashion that he does with the mannerisms and dialect of the community. Occasionally, when we are alone, his true self emerges and I experience the knowledge and power that he keeps asleep inside of him.
A familiar voice cuts through my thoughts as Blair Wannamaker begins the agriculture report over the hum of radio waves.
“Corn yields are low and that could mean trouble for area farmers. This has been attributed to a dry spring, an early summer, and the blight which plagued most farmers recently. Agriculture specialists are expecting results back on tests conducted on crops from Vallonia and surrounding areas throughout Jackson County as early as next Tuesday. The unidentified blight swept through many areas of Jackson County
“Dad, have you ever noticed that the stations play the same songs in the same order everyday?”
“Well, you gotta understand that we live in a small town. Our music is taped from a bigger station and piped in over our air waves. Hell, our only DJ is Blair Wannabe Wannamaker. He basically just sits in a hot room all day and interrupts the transmission when he’s got some local news to give which usually amounts to bull.”
“What’s the deal with this blight that he was talking about?”
“I wish that I could explain that one to ya, son, but I think that it will make more sense to ya in just a little while.”
We traveled through a narrow pass beyond a section of trees that formed a bottle-neck passage into an open field of dirt. Through my window crept the thickened air which carried the stench plaguing my nostrils and intensifying as we entered the passage. The scenery did not change except for the ground. The soil looked as though no life had emerged from the reddish clods of earth or ever would. In the distance of the open field I noticed that we were circled by trees that produced no foliage within their inner circle. The air seemed still and stagnant as it passed through my nostrils, infecting my lungs with its putrid scent. This was not a smell that I recognized. There was a smell of what I imagined to be death without remorse. The rosary swung to a halt expelling the truck’s inertia.
In the center of the clearing sat a single house long since deserted and falling down. There could not be more than two rooms in the dwelling, and an outhouse, far removed, displayed a hanging door; captive upon rusted hinges. There was no sound and no movement as my father and I sat gazing at the old house. I noticed a different look upon my father's face. It was a look that I interpreted as a runner facing the eighteenth mile of his marathon when the oxygen is indebted to his lungs while his legs are pleading with him to stop. Something makes him go on when his body tells him that he can’t. He is an animal or something much more primitive: he is a waltz of time.
The silence is broken by the exhaling of air from my father’s mouth. He reaches into his shirt pocket and brings out another cigarette giving it life by the touch of fire from the Zippo in his right hand.
“Dad, where are we?”
My father turned to me with cigarette in mouth and places his chiseled hand on the back of my neck. Looking at him face to face was something that I would dread most times as his appearance reflected years of fighting and struggling. I knew that if he locked his eyes upon mine, he was serious and wanted me to hear and understand every word. At this time I tried.
“Son, we are here.”
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