"Daydreaming," he thought, as he drove down the freeway. “Maybe I better be a little more careful.”
He rolled the car window halfway down, heard the wind. The sun was setting to the left, silhouetting the San Francisco skyline above the bay.
"Déjà vu," he thought. "Two years ago -– almost the same thing?"
Two years since the last transient global amnesia. Harry shook his head. He wasn't having a T.G.A. attack.
A car horn honked angrily behind him on the freeway. He looked in the rear view mirror. "Going too slow. I'm going too slow." He shook his head again.
Dusk. Most dangerous time to drive, he vaguely remembered. Dreamily, he saw he was now past Albany on the right, approaching Pinole. It was all right. It was unreal, but only a little sleepy-like. Dreamtime a little, but maybe all right. Not a heart attack. That was six, no, seven months ago now. Besides he had the nitro pills in his pocket. Probably. They were there, weren't they? He felt for them in his right pants pocket. They were probably there.
"Always carry your nitro pills," his friend, Millie, had told him two days ago. And then she had said something strange. "You don't talk about the meaning of life anymore. Not much. You used to talk about it too much, drive me crazy. But now that you don't do it, I kind of miss it."
He had looked at her as he pondered an answer. "Well -- it's different now."
"Since the heart attack? You mean, since then? How? I don't get that."
"It's strange now, it's different,” he said to her. “ -- I'll tell you what it's kind of close to.
Something that happened 50 years ago, about then. I was, you know, down there at Mexico City, going to college. The G.I. Bill?”
She nodded.
"And I read this collection of short stories, and one of them, a very short one, only about two pages long, it was by Erskine Caldwell."
"Erskine Caldwell."
"You may not know him. He wrote ‘God's Little Acre'?"
"Oh. Yes."
"You know. He wrote all that hillbilly, Southern belles with big breasts stuff. White trash. Bestsellers. But he wrote this one strange, short piece that was in this collection, and it was totally unlike anything else he ever did, and it got to me."
"Yes." She didn't seem too interested.
"A father comes home early from work, sees his two kids playing on the lawn, gets right down there with them in his business suit, is playing with them, only he has a heart attack suddenly, dies. Right there. With his children. End of story."
"That's awful," Millie said.
"Yeah, well -- You know me. My history. My father died. When I was a kid, too young to get it. No goodbye. Anyway -- the story just blew me up. Was everything. Broke my heart, but was so beautiful. So real. Everything. Wild wonderful -- A symphony storming. The meaning of everything. Terribly sad, but wonderful. Not thoughts, just crashing, beautiful, wonderful, perfect music -- Wordless. But that was it. The meaning of life."
"But it was so awful, so terrible. That story."
"Yeah, well --"
"So what does that have to do with the --"
"The meaning of life?"
"Yes."
"I don't know. Something. It's wordless. In the wind." He turned to face her. “These drugs I’m taking—the beta blocker, the statin, the blood thinner--?”
“Yes?”
“They make everything bleak. Black. No hope. No hope.”
“But they keep you alive,” she said.
“Yeah. They keep me alive. But alive now is the H-bomb. Global warming. Each generation making the same, the same, goddamn it, the same mistakes as the last generation. The species not likely to survive. No hope. None of us—“
“It’ll change,” Millie said. “You’ll get off those drugs someday. You’ll see it same as the old days.”
“Maybe.”
“For sure. And then you’ll feel as you did when you read that story. Only I don’t get that -— whatever it was you felt. That father dying -— in front of his kids. I don’t get that.”
“I don’t know. It was something. Something true and beautiful. A goodbye. His kids were there, got to be there. A goodbye.”
That had happened two days ago with Millie. He'd known her 22 years. 10 of those years, the first 10, they'd been together.
Now he was on the freeway almost to the turnoff. Feeling the ‘jitters’. Which was as though something was going to happen. Too much adrenaline. They had cut back on one of his blood pressure pills, but now, here, he had the jitters again.
"No," he said aloud. Big drops of rain were dropping all at once on the hood, then the windshield. The sun was nearly down now, it was hard to see.
"I'll make it," the old man thought dreamily. He liked to call himself an old man. People said he looked 10 years younger than his age. As long as he mockingly called himself an old man, he wasn't an old man.
"Gotta wake up." He turned on the radio, classical music, loud. Turned on the high-beams. Rumble of thunder off in the hills to the right. Lightning. More thunder, louder.
The rain burst down abruptly, cloudburst, strange for these parts. Like when he was a kid in Nebraska. Should he stop? No, didn't dare stop. Must stay to the left, he had hit the curb hard, blew a tire, along here one night. He pushed in the clutch, it squeaked, as he tried to decide what to do. Couldn't see. A semi-bad dream. But, it didn't entirely matter, he wasn't here. The car was tired, near dead same as him. Too many miles, parts failing one by one.
Hail? Hail in California? Gravel. Somebody throwing gravel!
He clasped his trembling right hand harder on the steering wheel. Sweat in his right eye.
"Have to pay attention!" he told himself bitterly. Shrill flash of lightning -- thunder blast two seconds behind.
Traffic light. Was it red or green? Gasping, someone crying. He punched the radio button harshly, stopped the dreadful symphony.
If it ended here, if it ended here -- his son at home, too old, too young, could he survive? That old woman, nearly as old as him, they had been closer, closer to doing something, lately. He took care of her cat, would the cat die?
"AHEAD
STOP”
He was moving, there was no simple life here, the street gleaming lightning wet, but still his heart was cold calm, tomb, harsh drugs.
"Subway" restaurant on the left.
Big American flag on the service station, the flag whipping wet.
"VALLEY VIEW RD"
Morningside, Morningside, where was it, the turn street, where was the tennis court, the church, where was he –- drifting, harsh, ice dream --
"NO PARKING
TOW OR CITE
8 AM TO 11PM
STREET SWEEPER”
Left, left! Or he’d end up lost, same as that other --
Now, now, now if he could hold it together, not crash into the parked cars on the side --
He drove the last half mile, up, down, winding road. Houses now on both sides. Hanging on.
And was there. Sighed. Shook himself.
As by design, the rain stopped. The hail was now completely melted on the pavement.
He sat for a minute, gathered himself. Found the nitro pills in his pocket, didn't take one.
It wouldn't help to tell them, his loved ones. It would dampen, half ruin the best two hours he got to have each week. Sacred time. Where everything was a good All-American movie, the old days.
He would tell them nothing, he would gather himself up, the deja vu, spell, TGA attack, whatever, was gone almost, leaving. The jitters almost gone.
He set the parking brake, turned the steering wheel, tire to curb. He got out stiffly, closed the door carefully, stood against the car for a moment. Prepared how his body would act by setting his mind.
Then he walked slowly up the long driveway with its dark, tall shrubbery. He would tell them nothing. Keep it pure.
"Grandpa!"
His little grandson was so glad to see him --
"Dad!" His daughter-in-law rushed to him, grinning.
His wonderful son came gliding up to him, loving him, he was loved, they loved him, he was perfect, exactly right, what they wanted.
A brief moment of self-pity -- he would tell them -- No. A small sacrifice, he would keep it beautiful, something perfect to remember, a goodbye maybe. The present a beautiful goodbye forever.
"You wanna play balloons, Grandpa?" his grandson said to him when he was seated in his usual spot on the sofa. "The Simpsons" was on TV.
"Yes."
He didn't want to, he just wanted to sit here, be with them, but batting a balloon back and forth was part of it.
His son brought him photos his granddaughter had sent from London. His daughter-in-law brought him a glass of coke, the only sin he allowed himself these days, one coke a week, and then she brought them each a plate of pasta with meat sauce and salad, then later a half cup of chocolate non-fat ice cream, and he batted the big yellow balloon back and forth to his squealing grandson, and they watched "Desperate Housewives" --
"Got to go. 10 o'clock," he said finally. They all hugged him at the door, smiles, love swimming in their eyes, in his heart, and then he was outside in the darkness.
A half moon sat low in the now cloudless sky. He felt the fatigue descend into his legs. He stepped carefully into the darkness, moved slowly down the long driveway with its innocent honeysuckle blossoms and poison oleanders hiding in the shrubbery, the breeze mildly chilling, and he felt as he had felt once long ago when he was a young man reading Erskine Caldwell's story, the same beauty, sadness, power, heart burst of life -- and this feeling was enough, the meaning of life.
For a moment he felt almost young. But even if this was his last night, these the last hours, it was a wonderful way to say goodbye.
Biographical Information:
Grant Flint was born in a Nebraska at the beginning of "The Great Depression”. His short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in "The Nation", "Poetry", Poetry New York” "Weber", "Amelia", "Slow Trains", "Common Ties", and other print and online journals. He was memoir winner in the 2007 "Soulmaking Literary Contest", and will appear in the 2007 "Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition Collection". He has recently finished a series of seven memoir/novels, collectively called, "The Innocent Sensualist", the Great American Novel. Shy, he does stand-up comedy.
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