| FALL 2002 |
flashquake Fiction |
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Rick had promised himself to wait until he got to Phoenix before placing the call. The hum of his tires on the highway was the only sound, had been for the last fifty or so miles. Cold night air filled his lungs, but did nothing to push out the weariness creeping through his body. He reached over and picked two strawberries from the box on the seat of the pickup, popped them one at a time into his mouth, and switched on the radio. 
"By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be risinggg..." Glen Campbell's plaintive voice blasted him right between the eyes. "Sheeyit," he growled. He snapped the music off. It was close to midnight, and but for a couple of stops to eat and stretch, he'd been driving since 5 a.m.. His eyes felt gritty, his back ached and all his joints had gone stiff. And try as he might, his mind kept returning to her, to home. The only lights visible on the flat, open highway belonged to a Texaco station up ahead. He slowed when he reached it, then pulled off the road and parked along the side of the building. Turning off the engine, he pulled the keys from the ignition, and sighed as he stepped down from the cab and headed for the men's room. When he came out again, she was sitting on the rear bumper, wearing his cowboy hat. He did not speak as he took her in his arms, though his head was full of questions. Where had she come from? There was no one around but the station attendant, inside the building, head bent over his newspaper. She had to have been there, in the bed of the pickup all day, under the old green tarp. Waiting, while he ate and walked, quietly waiting until this time, the midnight hour when she climbed out of the truck in her wrinkled blouse and jeans, without a sweater to ward off the chill of the early spring north Texas night. Cradling her 9-year old body, his heart spoke. "I've been missing you more than you'll ever know," he told her, knowing she could not hear him. She never had, and never would. And he had refused to learn to talk to her, to talk with his hands. He was too old, too tired, too ashamed of her to try. But on this particular midnight, she understood him. The surprise, relief, and love on his face told the child that the canyon of silence between them had been crossed. She was glad then, that she had run away with him, glad that she had seen him walk out to his truck at dawn, duffel bag and bedroll in his arms. With big, gentle hands, Rick slowly placed his daughter on her feet, took her hand, and led her to the telephone on the wall. "It's me," he said when Sarah answered. "I got Grace, and we're comin' home." At that moment, the full moon slipped from behind a cloud. An owl hooted softly, and Rick's nose caught the smell of honeysuckle. "Funny how that works," he thought. "It's like I'm more alive now, more awake." Most of all, though, he felt lighter. The burden of his guilt was heavier than the burden of his shame. It was time to lay them both down. It was time to play the hand he was dealt, like his daddy used to say. It was midnight, the precise time when the old day ends and the new begins. He gently took her hand in his. "Come on, Grace, your Momma's waitin' on us," he said. "The girl can't hear ya, never will," Rick thought sadly. But she turned then, and smiled up at him, and he wanted more than anything he had ever wanted before to know what she had to say, to him and to the world. He wanted to tell her things, too, to teach her what little he knew that might be useful to a girl child. "There's ways to hear without the use of ears," Rick told himself, "and you oughta know that by now, ya damn fool." He smiled back at her, and at himself. Leading her back to the pickup, he opened the passenger door.
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