FEATURED ESSAY
highways and cars
by Lou Varick
I am sitting on a hill again with my knees pulled up to my chest and my ugly crying mouth hiding behind my arm. Watching cars drive by on Highway 95. Sometimes i bring matches and make little fires in the grass.
It seems i always stomp them out in time. There's that part of me that's like an adult. no matter how mad i get i will always be polite to the old church ladies or stomp the ground before i make a raging grass fire. Even though the little flames and smoke bring me joy and make me feel more like myself.
People are in those cars. Going north. 4 miles to Canada from here. Or south, everywhere in the united states from there. Maybe they are going to Hawaii. On TV one day they said that Elvis died. and i didn't know who Elvis was. But all these people were so sad. And he'd been so beautiful and talented but he'd died. and i kneeled in front of the TV and cried. There was a world out there where things were beautiful and tragic. and it is out there on the highway.
And i want to go. Oh i want to go. I mean what that says. I want to go with them, the people on the highway and the people on the airplanes. Bellyache longing. Take me with you. I would give this all up easy.
Instead the adult makes me pick up my bike from the grass and ride slowly home from the curve on Burma Road. The Sixty-Nine hill. From there it is ¾ of a mile to the driveway. Right 1/10th of a mile to the house where I pretend. Some days i play chicken. I center up in the road and close my eyes, riding a nice even speed. The object is to see how far i can go before I look. Usually i open my eyes too soon because I'm imagining I am off to the side heading into the sloping ditch full of pricker bushes. Almost always though my tire is center straight on middle of the road. Once I opened my eyes after feeling the road disappear. It was no small joy to crash into the wild roses and survive. That's as far as i could go. I went there.
The air in the house is quiet. Actually there's an umbrella of pressure built around the whole house that keeps almost everyday ear-ringingly quiet and meanly dull. My parents don't hear it. My brother hears his own private wars, which is a good reason to stay clear of him. Cause sometimes he shares. There are the sounds of things being picked up and put down on the kitchen counter. The distant clink of dishes. The front door slamming. But each noise is like a perfect illusion of a noise. Like an uninspired Foley artist making our life's sounds in a sea of quiet. And the quiet always rushes back in quickly to take over the space and make you think you're going deaf.
Grandma lives in the little yellow house down by the creek and I'm thinking she made the quiet in the first place. She clears her throat all the time because of a botched surgery, and her house smells like Jergen's lotion. She's smart and tells jokes I don't understand and she has a way of pausing and looking at me after I say something that makes me think maybe she sees right through. So I stay polite and try to make her think I'm playing along. And also I love her and am afraid she might be hurt by everything. She's shorter than I am.
The quiet seldom gets displaced and usually only when the older brother and sisters come home. Or if there's a church event. Or a cattle drive. Then there's new people who say things that come to their heads and people move around without my Dad saying so.
There was a secret filling up in my belly that happened when Billy Elden let me put my head on her shoulder on the way back from the Troy basketball game. She was an anorexic senior tomboy, and the third most popular girl in school. Some days i think i imagined the whole thing. I was a freshman. I got pulled hard by that feeling. It took a lot out of me pretending i wasn't thinking about it.
I fell in love without knowing it. Susan McDonald left me bereft when she started dating Kevin Scheile. I ate 9 of my father's high blood-pressure pills, drank half a bottle of Nyquil and put a shotgun in my mouth. I requested (and got!) Susan to keep me awake on the way to the hospital. It was so great and dramatic. "Don't fall asleep." And she watched me the whole 65 miles. Every once in a while I let her shake me awake. It was an afterschool special and i felt terrible for loving it. I asked the doctor if i could stay in the hospital an extra day or two. I couldn't stand the thought of going home. In the hospital was the first time I saw my mother cry. I am still ashamed to have caused the surprising whispery sobs.
21 years later the quiet is still there. Grandma is down off Hwy 37 in the cemetery. And i live 580 miles away. I go home as often as possible and try to make up for being gay.
And i am still corrupting my perfectly good life with want.
Lou Varick is an adventurer in the Pacific Northwest.