Driving



It comes in an instant.


The flash of memory: car windows rolled down, wind, black asphalt rushing past in a blur beneath and distant grey mountains like dinosaurs' backs, cut out and pasted against the sky. Eight-track stereo playing - Johnny Cash at San Quentin singing sad and dark about America, the song goes like this, the song goes like this.

Father: hand on the steering wheel foot against the gas pedal, red needle slides across the speedometer; driving, driving in the desert always driving; trying to get somewhere, trying to get somewhere.

Father: reach across the dashboard and pull open the ashtray, push in the bright silver knob of the cigarette lighter; drive, drive in the desert; pull out the lighter and press the glowing red coil against the tip of the cigarette, drive, it crackles as it burns; then stick the lighter back into its hole on the dash and drive, drive in the desert, trying to get somewhere the song goes like this.

Father: trying to get somewhere.

Driving.


It comes in an instant, the flash of memory; in an instant, and then it is gone.


Previously published in Upstairs at Duroc, No. 5, 2001, p. 56. (Paris: WICE, Jennifer Dick, et al, Editors).

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