On Saturday my boss and I drove across the river to the sad sad state of Illinois. We met an artist, did this and that, and had a few beers. Driving through steel towns so sleepy ugly flat it’d take a Wichitan to see something special, my east-coast boss looked at me and said “it sure is something to see.” I agreed in a fashion that surprised him, in way he might’ve expected. “Yeah I love it out here, I reserve Illinois for drives that are quiet, or sad.” He nodded his head and curled a half grin. “You a, you’re sort of a voluntary loner huh?” Sure, I thought, if that’s what it’s called.
In the summer of 1992, my family in full took to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where fool’s gold still sells hot and Hollidomes keep each other company. Past all that, in the deeper hills, far from Rushmore, there runs a river with trout through evergreens and quiet places. In celebration of Lucille’s willingness to somehow, some way, stay by my dad’s dad’s side for fifty years, on the arid ranch no less, we picnicked and scampered by that cold clear river.
Though moments and memories from that reunion blink and run, I can remember one hour with crystal vision. From one moment to the next, our picnic turned from a sun-streamed firmament to cold darting sprinkles that promise a hard summer rain fast coming. The subfamilies were scattered, and the countless giggling testaments to an old couple’s abiding and fertile love dashed and jumped inside an assortment of mini-vans. We threw ourselves inside and rolled the old sliding door shut.
Quiet and obedient kid that I was, I found myself in the back of my parents’ van. Sitting ahead were two of my sisters, my older cousin Peter, my dad and my aunt Bettie Lou. Peter had dark brown skin and was both older and taller than all the other children. I didn’t understand this, but I didn’t ask. In my entire life, I never saw him much. My young memory of him is that he was both agreeable and happily kind.
The vanity plates on either side of our American outfit called our ride the Bingvan, and painfully, so did we. As the Bingvan gathered speed, and we dove into the curving black ribbon through the steep forest hills, the rain came hard and speaking, like something from the bible or my dreams. One of my sisters petitioned my father for the playing of a tape, and in seconds all six of us were listening without complaint to a dubbed tape with the word Enya on it twice. Twelve eyes fixed on the mighty outdoors rushing.
My custom then, as an eternally willing passenger, was to lean my forehead out to the window’s surface and let my big skull rattle. That way I could see the passing wonder without any vision or thought of the vessel that took me on. I could act as though I was wind or a presence I can’t name. It was, and always has been an imagination fed by eyes open, not closed. I hope by seeing. I draw by watching. I pray by looking.
In that magic wet moment, doused in white rain and an early-nineties Enya drumtrack, I am certain that for once each person around me knew the glory I was always looking for. We were each quiet, even Rachelle, even Bettie Lou. When a loud and twitching thunderclap begged us to speak Peter opened his mouth first, slow and with belief.
“It’s so great.”
For the first time, I turned my head inward to see him and the others. It is for that moment alone that I appreciate the stranger that is my adopted cousin Peter. It is for that moment alone, that I remember him. Each of the others, even the old folks up front had smiles and slow nods with nothing to add. We were just kids, and we knew it. But for that long moment we were old souls, young and smiling. I wanted to laugh and cry at once, to make music with my chest.
Tonight, for the second night in a row, I drove to Illinois to watch the sky turn from pink to midnight. Through towns called Bellevue and Waterloo, where the trees tower above the empty spaces, black and abundant. I used to listen to music, to massage my head toward the road. But now I’ve taken to the noise of nothing but the small incessant rattles of an aging car just going. To let the ride be the quietest event it can be, while still racing through darkened fields. It is no silence, but it must be like the flapping solitude a high bird finds flying.
Tonight I leaned the side of my head toward the window in an aching search for that Black Hills moment. Each time I crawl inside something that moves I am searching for that moment. In my sleep I want the feeling. In these words I want it channeled. My heart breaks each day for that cheesy gorgeous moment I can only find in pieces. Among other things, I told it again, slow like the first time. Maybe even slower. It’s just so great.
