The Maybe Memory

**When I attended the writing retreat with Tom Spanbauer in March our assignment was to write about a moment, after which, you were changed. I asked him at the end of the workshop if that was always the assignment he gave. He said that it was either that one or this: write about a memory that you think you have. In other words, fill in the details of a fuzzy memory. I decided to use that as a prompt today. Forgive the divergence. Perhaps you'll find the setting familiar though....**

Maybe just me, but maybe Chris too, in the backseat. Back of dad and grandma’s heads, faces forward with their history in between. I’m four. I know that much. Pretty sure the smell of mud and new green was coming in from cracked windows. Pretty sure it was the kind of early spring day that still scrapes my insides clean but for some deep longing. To go. To stay, to be something better. Something.

Dad I bet had a jacket on, kaki with a zipper, short sleeve button up underneath in case we got lucky. Grandma, I don’t know. Maybe a skirt for town, tan hose with those shoes that nurses wear, except dark so dirt doesn’t show. Their faces the same, fleshy. Cornflower blue eyes that water easy, lips that aren’t quite symmetrical. Thick, though, in a way that’s pleasing. Grandma had a mole on her chin. Everyone laughed when I put a little finger on it. She didn’t have a soft way, but I could tell she liked me. Could tell she liked to have me up there on her hip as she moved around the kitchen.

Don’t remember the drive that day, whether we took the Missile Road to the highway, past the cemetery or drove down by the Lanes’ place, past the big house with the longhorns out front. Don’t remember if I was kicking the back of the seat, chattering to no one in particular or if I was quiet and still, looking out as barns and trees and fields passed by. Don’t even remember the color of the sky. Not really.

What I do remember is pulling in to town. Dean’s restaurant there on the corner with the smell of fried chicken and gravy. Wide flat streets with little houses leaned into scrub trees. The rail station with its Spanish arches and yellow walls. Bumping up over the tracks and then the five blocks of downtown. The grocery, the five and dime, the what not store with those shelves and shelves of ceramic dogs.

Dad took a wide turn into a parking spot out in front of the drug store. I think maybe grandma had a hat on and when she turned to my dad that last time and said whatever she did, I saw the bobby pins that held it up there on her head. And when she turned back toward her door and opened it I heard the leather of her purse make that same noise Dad’s briefcase always made up against his crutch. That squeak.

And then she was out, only one foot up on the sidewalk when things seemed to slow down. Dad asked the question loud.

Mom?

She was still trying to walk, get that other foot up on the sidewalk, but her body wasn’t minding. Wasn’t minding at all.

Dad leaned over toward her window, his right arm up and over the crutches in between, his hand punched deep into the seat, and asked it again, maybe louder.

Mom?

Her body began to shake and the willfulness in her jaw went slack. Dad pulled himself back to straight and maybe looked back at me, at Chris if he was there too. Maybe not though, maybe the panic on his face was something I remember from another time, later on.

His thick fingers reach out for the door handle and the door pops open. Grandma's on the ground by now and out of my sight. All I’ve got to see with my wide eyes now is Dad, swiveling his butt around on the slick seat, lifting one leg and then the next, lowering them to the ground, pushing and sliding his butt to the edge so he can lever up against his legs, right hand on the dash, left on the arm rest of the door. The final push and the locking of the braces, then the long reach inside for his crutches. When he’s finally up, he looks toward the place on the sidewalk where Grandma is and then looks around until he found the man rushing out of the store.

Call an ambulance.

The man turns back toward the door.

Dad’s voice breaks and he asks the question one more time. This time quiet and to no one.

Mom?

I only remember seeing my father fall once but I wonder if he let himself fall down to my Grandma then. It would have been a lot quicker, that fall, than anything else he could have managed. Maybe he didn’t even try. Maybe he stood over her, just watching and waiting for the people that would come and kneel easily over her small body and lift it into the ambulance.

I’d like to think he fell though, scraped himself up, touched her hand and whispered something through his tears.

October 21, 2009

**There was a little confusion about the characters from a few readers so I added the following to be inserted between the first and second posts.**

Rawlins wasn’t Jasper and I’s dad, wasn’t even a real relative. He’d known my dad since they were kids, like brothers the way people tell it. Storming around, raising hell on hot gravel roads. I could make the two of them out somewhere behind my eyes, laughing quietly at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and whiskey, thinking Jasper and me were asleep. Can see Rawlins’ stiff grey face over the other side of the casket. None of it meant enough then, though, to forgive him. I was just a girl and he should have taken more care, care enough to not let things happen the way they did anyway.

I suppose it all started the day I first laid eyes on Rowdy.

**And this picks up after the second post.**

We bumped down the lane, summer grasses scraping the underbelly of truck, all of us letting our bodies limp and sway with the uneven movement. I slid my butt up further on the seat, leaned back and put a foot on the dash. Hot damp June air blowing back on my face. I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the road, or Nelson’s cornfield out past the fence. But even as I cursed myself for it, I turned my eyes back to Rawlins. He was looking straight ahead, right hand cupped up over the wheel, left arm curled out the window, fingertips up on top of the roof, tapping like they did. No give aways in his face.

Our first stop was Elsie’s place up on Missile Road. From the lane it was left down the hill past the Richards’ place, across the bridge, up just a bit with our place still hugging the left of the road and then right onto the smooth blacktop of Missile. Rawlins always took this stretch fast, pushing up against fourth gear so we could all hear the engine working. Despite myself, I hung my head out over my folded arm and smiled into the speed, skin pulling up against my bones. I looked down to the tall grass next to the road, tried to make my eyes fight the blurring and fix on one clump at a time. When it was too much and I started to get dizzy I brought my eyes up to the distance where things were still slow and easy, hills and trees moving even against the flat horizon.

Elsie was what people in town called poor country. When I was a little kid and heard someone say that, I’d asked my Dad about it. Asked him if we were poor country too. He’d pushed his John Deere cap up and back, scratched his forehead and looked at me long. He chuckled at something in his mind and then straightened his face back.

We’re working country, Jemma. That’s what we are. We work the land.

But aren’t we poor too? Just like Elsie and her boy? And don’t they work?

He’d struggled with a response, tried hard to find words that would catch up with his face. My Dad was like me, answered questions quicker and more honest with his eyes, his mouth, the set of his jaw. The words he chose were always a little less true. I don’t even remember what those words were, just that in his face he admitted to being every bit as confused as me.

the STAY banner yet waves

October 8, 2009

Rawlins pushed out of the house too hard like always, screen door banging up against the swing. I could see him mutter under his breath like it was the first time as he reached back for the door. And then he turned, tilted summer sun up in his grey hair, wind drifting it across his head. Mohawked and grim. He squinted out towards us, the two of us sitting like gumdrops in his Chevy, melting into the seats, hot thighs on hot naga hide.

The porch tilted to the right so Rawlins’ left leg was hitched up just a little. I could tell he didn’t see us, could see him grow furious with us even as we sat there waiting. Jasper wasn’t looking, kicking the back of my seat absent mindedly and chattering about Bay, the rooster, and his meanness this morning. I’m the one that’s always looking out for Rawlins and watching his moods same as Old Joe watching the weather roll in.

Rawlins stepped down off the porch, long legs bearing down, kicking up dust. From the waist up he was dressed for visiting, dressed for town. White button up shirt tucked in, the belt Dad gave him. But from there down he was still working, faded blue jeans running down to his worn out boots caked with summer mud.

Wasn’t til he reached out for the door handle that our presence registered on his face. He pulled the door open wide and stepped in. Rested his driving arm up on the wheel, right hand on the stick shift as he turned around in his seat to take Jasper in and then me.

Where you two been? Thought I told you eleven thirty.

I looked back to Jasper and saw his open mouth close, that little chord running down his neck tighten. Just that little flutter and then he relaxed, looked out the window to nothing. Said nothing.

I looked back at Rawlins, tried to wipe my face as clean as Jaspers.

We’ve been here since twenty after.

Rawlins’ was eyeing me, waiting for me to get hot, smiling just a little in his eyes.

Relax Jemma, I was just kidding. Reckon I’m the late one anyway.

He turned the key then and pulled the truck around from grass to gravel. My jaw and belly loosened with the movement. I’d been waiting for this ride all morning.

Rawlins, Jasper, Rowdy, and me. That’s how it was then. The four of us on that yellowed knot of land with its hedge rows and crumpling red barn. Rawlins was like the chief and the rest of us his scouts, always jumping around his moods and his words like it was dodge ball every day, all the time. Sometimes I even jumped out of the way of his laughter cause the look in his eye told me to.

Now Jasper, he didn’t jump so much as me. He walked right at those dodge balls and without even trying he’d duck away at the last minute and get up and keep walking with that smile of his, freckles spread out wide over his nose and his cheeks. I think Rawlins could see the day coming even then. Little Jasper still only eleven years old and scrawny but I always thought I saw a glimmer of fear in Rawlins eyes when Jasper would duck like that and keep walking.

Truth be told, Rowdy was my favorite. He was really only mine, not a scout at all. If anyone else were telling this story, Rowdy I bet wouldn’t even get a mention. That’s because Rowdy didn’t give two shits about dodge balls or when to duck. Rowdy was a relative of the wind and both Rawlins and Jasper gave him a wide berth. When Rawlins agreed to having Rowdy around, he’d said that he didn’t believe in keeping horses except to pull plow or take you somewhere you couldn’t go in a car. Said they were like women, changeable and mean. Then he’d looked me straight in my little girl eyes, sized me up from toe to head, and said, might be good for you. He’d turned on his boot heels then and walked away.

And that was the mystery of Rawlins right there. He’d say something mean to make you want to jump sideways out of the way, then he’d look you in the eyes and grant your wish.
I couldn’t ever figure it, how a person could be so mean with his words but somehow stay fixed in your mind as kind.