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| (visual by Ivy Dawned via this license) |
dispatch fourteen
Caravel by Ian Singleton
debuted 15 October 2009 | kept 483 times | click to keep
Sunday morning around nine, I left for Bridgman. I set the odometer to zero, planning to drive the highway until I saw Lake Michigan’s reflection on the pavement, then switch to the shore road. I put on some music, a faint dwindling guitar and voice.
You wouldn’t make the five hour drive back to Petoskey to be at work Monday morning anyways. You should have called Jessie and told her, even though she said it was over. The morning sun had paled and sooty clouds butted against the horizon. That evening you and Jess made plans to see a movie and met to carpool. On the way, she asked to stop on that hilltop while the sun set. There was plenty of time, so you pulled in. The sun was a beautiful sherbet color. You peered straight into it, focused until your eyes quivered and dampened and you had to shut them. When you opened, the sky was darker and she was staring at you. She came closer and you embraced. You made love on the highway without worrying about passing cars seeing into the backseat. You even returned to the same spot after a few drinks and made love again, then slept until morning. Right before the sun rose you woke and watched it, alert, waiting and wanting to cry again. But the clouds blocked the light.
I eyed myself in the mirror and saw the clouds in the reflection. Uncle Dem was always a sad story. A member of my family died, like my father said. I stretched my back and sat upright. The wedding of cousin Claude, Uncle Dem’s son, came to mind.
You were smoking in an alley by a hotel and ma was after you. She spotted you in the lobby and nagged all the way to the twelfth floor. Even when she came out of the elevator, her voice echoed off the walls. Inside the room, Grandpa and Pop and Neal waited by the window, each in a suit and tie. You were rifling through your suitcase for the blazer and ma shook her head as she passed all us men then shut the door to the bathroom. We only get together every once in a while and you gotta mess everything up, she moaned, muffled by the door. We’re waiting for you now. C’mon, your father said. The light through the window shone down on grandpa as if he were already in Heaven. You were sliding your arms through the blazer, but then you had to put on the tie so you took the blazer off. While you were fiddling with that, grandpa said, He was about your age when we moved. We moved a lot too. That’s probably when he started drinking. Probably when it started to go bad for him. That was soon after Uncle Dem disappeared with his car and a forty-five, the start of fifteen years without contact. The Family imagined him working odd jobs, barely living. Ma prayed he wouldn’t use the pistol to harm anyone including himself and her prayers were answered–no one heard anything. But all that day, Uncle Dem was the one who did it first–snuck cigarettes, the ones for moms losing weight; drove around with his friends; smoked at the mall and catcalled women. You thought you would die in a field drinking cheap beer.