Il y a un autre monde mais il est dans celui-ci.
Beneath grayed layers of hotmix on Highway 79, the past lies buried note for note
under the tread of these tires. Eluard was right,
there is another world, invisible and spirit spun, and it is just behind the surface
the light strikes, biding
its time, restless to speak. I’ve heard it myself of an evening, sweet strains risen
through the joints in the road surface.
I remember my father saying September was his favorite month, though I couldn’t
have told you his reasons
or what he meant by it. To me, a month was a month, a day a day. One night
coming home through the Jarrell bottom
we pulled to a stop behind a stalled pickup, the September dark new and unworn.
That year all three of the bridges
were being rebuilt; a three-minute red light would switch the direction of the one
narrow lane left passable. A pile driver
waited for the morning shift, blacking out a stab of sky above the void where half
the bridge had been,
the concrete pilings stacked by the road, depth markings crudely painted down
their length. Everything the headlights touched
stamped a painful outline to my eye. A man in a white t-shirt caused the broken-
down truck to rock
as he got out of it. “She died when the light caught me.” His voice was without
expectation, as though
he didn’t have a word of his own for either hope or regret, making his case with
whatever terms he’d scavenged
along the shoulder of the road. “Can you push me off if our bumpers match?” The
night air was so sweet I almost wanted
to get out and walk. I was sixteen, just learning to drive—it occurred to me that
the lessons might never stop—and I was surprised
when my father told me to go ahead. I eased forward until the vinyl cushions of
the car’s bumper found
the rusted step bumper of the truck. A load of deal furniture roped down in its
bed seemed ready to spill onto the windshield. The Ford
had a 400-cubic-inch V-8: I didn’t have to be heavy on the accelerator before the
both of us started to move.
“Give him some more,” my father said. I miss the power of that car as much as I
miss most things. When I eased off,
the old truck rolled out ahead of us, then bucked as he popped the clutch and the
engine caught, sprung free as though
I had tossed a dove into the air. When I swung out to pass him, he lifted a hand
from the wheel and I nodded back. You have little say
over what rises up, but no say at all if you fear to lay hands on the world. Over the
last hills into town, I was suddenly aware of the road
diving under the long hood of the car, how narrow the strip of blacktop was, and
how little anything mattered once the car had put it
behind us. Even if I’d taken a good look, a five-mile stretch of straight road would
turn to black in the mottled glass of the rearview mirror,
though I knew it was still back there, indistinguishable from the weedy ditches and
woodland shimming up a black night sky.