writing ex 7 doug c

The three of us piled into a bottom of the line Geo Metro to head west, down the desolate stretch of highway built for some speed to close the distance between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The haze of whiskey held court heavy in the claustrophobic cabin. I waited for some conversation but it was not a conversation I wanted because we knew as men on this journey that talk was held no more precious than silence. We were a cerebral sort. Words were only of the necessary sort. I turned up the Led Zeppelin from some fading Las Vegas station and watched mountain desert maintain view out all the windows. The January winter brought fierce sunshine but maintained brisk temperatures. We didn’t remember. We didn’t reminisce. It was a scene that had been anticipated on the horizon even as it hovered. “You hungry” “A little bit.” “We need gas.” “Let’s stop.” He loved to see how far he could push the pregnant roller skate and make her squeal. I thought we might tip over around the off-ramp. A crushed oblong egg laid in desert sand. He made it around as I grabbed for a door handle or the roof strap to stabilize myself before I fell into his driving. My brother had an edge that was buried beneath random occurrences that had plagued his existence from birth. It might have been carrying our grandfather’s middle name, but I wanted to believe that was a gift, today. Back on the road, our family had its moments of self-destruction, other self-destruction and male bonding. With our father being one of three brothers, the men were equipped well to interact with one another. It was mainly the women we had troubles with. We learned the self-discipline of male bonding through non-verbal interaction. This bothered me and consoled me, but I had learned over time to let it console me. Many words that came out of my mouth might have been better off lodged in my brain. “Sweet Corvette.” “1957, a year older than Grandpa’s.” “I wish we were driving that right now.” “The wheels are probably just as wide. That thing was a boulevard cruiser.” “Yah, I never saw it, except in your 110 pictures.” “I sat in it closed my eyes and drove it in the garage, down the beach.” Once my brother and I hit high school, I went drama and he went football. Never the twain shall meet. We lived in the same house like neighbors passing on the stoop. I didn’t go to football games and he didn’t attend plays. I hung out in the director’s hot tub and he spoke football as if some kind of sick mantra. I thrived on pastel Polo-shirts, acid-washed Guess jeans, and stiff Joico hair. He Anthrax denim, acid-washed Levi’s, and a proud mullet. Running copilot with him felt backwards, I usually ran our show, but not today. We repacked our mutual muzzle load after he moved out to L.A. and stayed with me for eight months and a broken back. I was unsure how this shot would release. We hadn’t actually lived together in over a decade. To share a one-bedroom apartment on Sepulveda Blvd would be quite the test. He was at wit’s end in Spring Texas. I had just ended yet another of those fruitless tangential relationships I was versed in. After I broke my back, he was the only one to visit me in welfare health care. Every night after work he came bearing gifts or distractions from a hole that was swallowing me. Three months after finally graduating from college, I was broken and without health insurance soon to be doubly broke with student loans. We rekindled a friendship. “Margaritaville” came on the radio and we sang the first refrain and chorus in unison. “Remember the time we went fled L.A.” “Yah we were in West Texas. You must have just loaded a bowl.” “It was dark. We had been driving for miles.” “Yah your Honda had shitty heat. It was cold.” “I hated Jimmy Buffet, but you played it so damn much, I learned the words.” “It was funny. I remember thinking how in the hell you knew the words.” On my ninth or tenth birthday, my brother was forced to take a nap when he really wanted to go out and buy a birthday present for me. The tension around the house was polemic. My birthday did not seem so happy. We had just moved to Texas and my brother and I were struggling to make friends. We latched on to each other because this is what we knew. The comfort of having a live-in friend throughout growing up made the transitions tolerable. My parents often had to come in and break up our post bedtime talks. Before the move, we shared a bedroom, bunk beds, and we could talk until we fell asleep in semi-unison. It was random or not so random that my brother had planned a trip to Las Vegas months ago, that ended up falling on the weekend of Grandpa’s wake. These things always make me wonder whether the universe, God, Fred, or Buddha has a bigger plan in mind. My brother had not actually planned to get a rent-a-car until my Toyota died on the drive out to Las Vegas to pick him up. I was eighty-five miles outside of town. He was on the phone as soon as we hung up to get a car and drive out to pick me up. Having three cars, I was distraught having driven another car until the wheels fell off or the transmission turned into a coffee grinder. I have always had trouble parting ways with my cars. I cried when my Scirocco died. My Toyota had lasted me much longer, lived with other people, had a girlfriend ass-dent on the hood and had my history lodged in the seat cushion. I knew I would not see Cressie again. “How much further do we have?” “We’re almost to the turn off. This is where we go dirt biking.” “I want to go.” “Yah we probably won’t have time this trip.” “Probably not.” “Do you have memories of Grandpa?” “I remember going over there a couple of times for dinner when we lived together.” “What was he like?” “Owly. Grumpy. Hairy. Grandma was much more entertaining.” “Yah Grandpa has his way about him. I like cantankerous. The last couple of years living with him, I just thought he pretty much hated me. He didn’t like my hair, couldn’t understand why I taught colored people from the hood. Moving in with them wasn’t much better. Except he was vacant. I would sit on my back porch smoking a cigarette and he would walk right by. Did not smell the cigarette. Didn’t see me there, the cherry of my smoke when it was dark it was creepy.” “Do you have good memories of him?” “One time he looked right in the living room window. Being six foot six inches, he could see right in. It was eerie, but he looked right in at me watching TV. Got this great big smile and waved. I wondered if he knew what he was looking at. Maybe he saw his mother or his aunt or his father who lived in that house years before. And then I realized it didn’t really matter. He saw something he recognized, something he remembered, and that is the moment I will rememeber. He seemed happy.” It was a moment. A memory. A fragment. A piece of what I leave each place. An out of context grin, a wave, and a question. We progressed up the mountain pass and eventually pulled in the driveway. Grandma was on the deck smoking a Pall Mall, Canadian whiskey and diet Pepsi in hand. She waved and smiled. I wondered if she even knew what had happened or was just glad the sun finally set on his horizon.