RIDING THE HIGHLINE

At first there was only the faint sound of sprinklers hitting the tanker

near my head. The cool rush of semi-trucks leaving the valley. The low

moon climbing the trees. And off in the distance, the endless procession

of Hanjin container cars vanishing into the hills. I was somewhere near

Minot. Hungry. Dehydrated. Doing my best to approximate the hour by

watching the glow on the distant ties (some thirty miles closer to California)

get brighter. I watched the line. Waiting to feel the drum of the engine,

the guttural sound of the Bull car rounding the higher-priority freight.

Maersk. Ying Mang. Piggyback rides for the shipyard in Oakland. Fords

for the dealerships east. I could feel the cold weight. The muscle of diesel

and slack-line beneath me. Air brakes shuddering, starting to wheeze.

And then, as if finding a hole in my body, as if turning a handle and opening

up a door, the new medication cut through. The rails went forward

and backward at once. I could see the divided lines, ox-bowing slowly,

losing themselves in the haze. How even the clouds moving over them

froze. How they backtracked and ended up blending again into darkness.

And how, as a boy in my grandparent’s pool, floating with water-wings,

holding my face near the chemical drain in the wall (because it was safer

there, the echoes somehow less exposed), I discovered a bee’s nest the size

of a baseball, small enough to cup in my hand, and thought it was strange

to have built one so close to the water. How the waves didn’t touch it.

How the pool must never get used. The wash of those river roads, covered

in brightness. Deer bodies rising away from the snow. The mouth of my

grandmother opening, closing, laughing to cover the loss of a name.

The weight of her memory falling like stones through the wrought iron grill

of a drain. Rippling lowly. Slow light returning. Mealworms, prairie dogs,

dark knots of garter snakes, small toads snug in the earth. The smell of my

father’s shirt. The smell of the dry florid dust-wind of South Santorini.

The towering, suicidal cliffs of the White Beach. Those breathless

prehistoric pillars of salt rock. Startling blue of the Mediterranean Sea.

Your eyes at the train station lobby on King Street, kissing me awkwardly

once on the forehead and turning forever away. The letter unfolding.

The faint and invisible mist. The pure soul. I could see the green wheel

of time underneath me. It rolled endlessly over the dark horizon. Into

the sheer plains, into the clay fields echoing dawn, breathing the held heat,

smolder of dead fish, nitrogen, hogs ground up in the slaughterhouse plow.

It continued in green waves. Into the one-horse midnight towns. Into

the holes in the hearts of mountains. It became a country. A possible god.

And there in ballast, there in the field beside the train, I could picture

my father bent over the first dog we owned, gone rabid from chewing on

batteries, eyes closed and quivering, shaking her back legs and stiffening up.

Not from the pain but from something more sweet—the prairie beginning

to let itself loose, or the clear unexplainable sound of the sea, when you

hear it as distance behind some hills (the seagulls sit hovering, tipping

their wings just enough so they don’t ever have to come down). At first

there was only the static of rain, the sprinklers turned on, and the haze

of a dream I was already leaving behind. But then, I could see how the rails

combined. How they joined at the far edge, wound with the wheat rows,

truckstop sprinklers, pallid lot, bricks in the small tiled sign reading: Come

Back Soon. The truckers emerging from claustrophobic blankets, jaded

by landscape, refusing to stretch themselves out, walking horse-like

and lighting the day’s first smoke. It was all there. Endless. The hands of my

grandmother braiding themselves to the fields—the bruised veins shivering,

riding the morphine, long-haulers chasing the star-cover west. The sediment

dust in a vacancy, pillowcase, blanket stain, antique sideboard—I saw it

contained in a similar frame, extending in soy fields and spraypainted

billboards forever. Not to say infinite, but to go on without it. To endure

without knowing there’s anything left. And my bent father, lifting our dog

from her seizure, carrying her over the wet grass into the backyard, pushing

the kitchen knife through. The certain, appropriate action. Now hard

to remember completely. The motion light bleaching the roof of the garage,

the sight of his boots moving over the lawn, the walnut leaves hanging

indifferent as stars. The slow-motion focus. The lack of a sound. I remember

the terry cloth waving alone on the railing. The fly still inside it. The frayed

edge. The small undramatic collection of blood. And my father alone

in the backyard digging, saying nothing, believing he did something good.