JOY RIDE
No More Joy for Teen, New Orleans Times Picayune headline
You put the key in the slot and you turn, igniting the night air with fumes,
the Buick oiled black with twenty years of misuse on back roads
and bayous. No see-ums spin and jerk in the columns of headlight, which
point straight to the interstate. You are fourteen, everything a possibility,
nothing for sure. For now it is midnight, the lunar eclipse, your fight-wearied
parents are fast asleep. Who knows how you know how to do it, how to
ease into drive, push on the gas, and go. But you do it, and black grace
hurtles you out: you’re gone. The Buick rocks along, a humid room of
Juicy Fruit breath, brittle leather chirping like bed springs, slick green
dash light filming every surface of metal and glass and skin. The night
is cool, gulf breeze edging off tops of salt pine savannas, edging in to
velvety magnolia buds closed tight, waiting to bloom. You cross the
bridge at Lake Pontchartrain, the stone and white steel pulled taut across
flat water, see ghost fisherman along the pier, gathered around a fire
with all the people they loved once on this earth. You drive and know
the world can be made over in your mind, in an instant, made over slick
like sunset postcards sent from seedy motel lobbies. Over the glass dark
the Buick almost flies, ticking a song that sounds like liberty. The moon
backs into darkness, waning. You notice for the first time how much light
there is in darkness, everything shining – glint of quartz in the asphalt,
a sheerness in the canopy of trees, even the skin of passing motorists,
their faces grim or tired or singing, their teeth white, dazzling as wet
shells. Pale light of moss and mold, swamp water and alligator and every
slow-growing thing. You see light in the sunken ribs of a dead dog on
the sandy shoulder, a still black husk in impeccable repose, facing
away from the road wind, slick casement of fur, smear of blood luminous
underneath. Everything you care for is awake. Your brother tosses, yeasty
warm in his trim cot, glow-in-the-dark stars stuck like wishes on the roof
tiles. You drive. Cut south, pass boiled peanut stands in the shadow of slick
new hospitals, slip under the false neon blue of floating Biloxi casino
barges, crossing yet another bridge to Ocean Springs. You do not, as the
paper will report, stop to pick up friends. You slip through the austere jade
shimmer of Gautier strip malls. You do not, as the paper will report, smoke or
drink or turn 360s on the lawn of First Baptist Church of Vancleave. All
you do is drive, pass the sandhill cranes of Pascagoula, shy in the marshes,
prettier than swans. For just one moment it is dark: pure black night. You
drive. And even though you see in the horizon’s coming dawn a faint splatter
of blood, you turn around. Even though you see your father at
the table, shirtless, smoking Camels, you turn around. You hear the
echoing ring of the metal princess phone as it strikes your skull. Your
body, like a gift, soars through the night, toward his rage. Your brother,
dreaming, limbs perfect as new branches, sleeps, and so you turn around.
Head west now, toward home, all of it so fast, the oaks and the light and
the bridges and trees, until finally, you pull into the yard, kill the engine,
dust settling behind you in tufts like a ball of gauze thrown, unfurling in
the air, filthy and picturesque. The slider is lit up blue-white from the set,
the glass opaque and filmy in great swipes of dog nose and handprints in
the shape of waiting. You see your father: he’s waiting at the table when
you slip in, set down the keys he picks up and slashes into your face. You
take in sharp breath and think: nightair. The sun turns from pink to white,
seeping into every corner of the paneled room, you taste salt in your mouth
and think: rough water on the gulf. And when the bone of your
arm splinters like old kindling stomped on in the yard, the sound is like
a word whispered: luck. When the phone cracks your skull you think:
freedom. You close your eyes and see darkness emerging before you
like a bridge. You’re a breeze now, a shore line, an engine ticking
gently, night star, black dog, a bird they can’t see.
You’re a story in the paper: No More Joy For Teen.
You’re fourteen, everything a possibility, nothing for sure.
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