| The moon was painting shadows. The branches and
leaves were its brushes, the hard packed dirt roads were its canvas
and the light of the sun reflected, gave it the only pigment it needed. The
light filtered through green leaves and brown beer bottles and he was lying
in that pickup, looking up at the stars with his arm around a girl named Natalie.
His best friend’s girl was called Shelly and they had been going steady for
almost two years now. They were all fast friends, passing another cold beer,
smoking cigarettes and trying to see the future in the moonbeams that caught
in the white smoke rising, but like the moon and stars the future was too
distant to see clearly, it was only shadows at play with the light. Once
in a while a pair of headlights would arise in the distance, and a car would
sail by them slowly where they rested on the side of the road. “I wanna do something more than work in a factory, than live here for all of my days and get buried on that damn hill over there. I want to change the world,” he said. High school was almost over and they were talking about what they wanted to do with their lives. None of them really expected that though. He was a Ford Factory worker’s son, and everyone assumed that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. It was a factory town, and in those days few of them ever went to college. His friend wanted to change the world and maybe that was too much to ask, but he deserved better than what he got. A sad death in lonely place, cradled in his best friend’s arms while he faded like a flickering lantern caught in a storm that was stronger than what it could withstand. He was nineteen years old when he died, a kid really, just barely on the first precipice of manhood, they both were, but after that night, one of them was gone, and the other grew up fast. He often wished that just for one night he could go back to one of those evenings. Shadows swaying gently through the trees, four kids and their dreams, with no doubt that they would all see tomorrow. The soft scent of the fresh rural air in his lungs, the whisper of his girlfriend in his ear, and a whole world before him, waiting to be conquered, and a mind full of dreams just waiting to come true. She came back a year later, and walked across the sand. |
