by David Athey
"Hmm. Are you sure that's a good plan?"
"I'd love to buy a hot Italian, but I'd settle for a chilly Russian at half price."
"Grease, maybe you should pray about this."
"You know, Danny, a two-for-one Mormon special would be nice."
"Shut up, Grease."
We climbed into his truck, and he hauled my wreck away, down the gravel road. "Strangest thing," Grease said, rubbing a dirty hand across his stubble. "This is the second accident today. First one was a hog truck. Something weird is going on in the world."
A few minutes later, when we drove past Saint Isidore's Church, I could have sworn there were swine eyes peeking sheepishly through a stained-glass window.
That night, after showering and brushing my teeth, I put on my Sunday best and sat in a chair beside the bed. My neighbors turned up their TV. With guns and bombs and missiles, the McCuskeys' TV slaughtered soldiers and civilians all through the night, while I sat on the chair in my blue suit, waiting for my date.
Everyone knows the human heart keeps a sort of time with its beating, slow and steady, and sometimes more quickly, and always desiring to be stopped by a sudden moment of love breaking in, that grace-shocked moment outside of time that we all wish would last forever.
My heart did nothing special during that night of waiting, never stopping or skipping a beat, just slowly, slowly aching. In the light of late morning, with my face so tired of tears, I stood and went inside my closet, which doubles as a chapel. I lit a candle and contemplated the icons that I'd painted of my family.
Mother is white-robed and perched on a harp, her black hair flowing in the wind like wings. She's about to fly away.
My father's icon shows him fishing in the far north. Something is pulling his canoe toward the sunrise. He's shining.
Grammy Dorrie is rocking on the porch, holding the family Bible. Musical notes flutter from the Scriptures. Grammy's wrinkled face is becoming smooth and childlike while she sings.
Holly, my little sister, was the hardest one to paint. Every time I held the brush, she was an angel in my mind, invisible, nothing but a perfect thought. Eventually, I was able to re-create the honeyed hair, the freckled face, her slim figure dancing on the water above where she'd drowned.
That's how I prayed in the closet. I stood for an hour with the images of my loved ones, remembering their suffering and hoping that I'd helped them.
I blew out the candle and came out of the closet-chapel, and felt the need to go for a drive. I telephoned Grease at the garage and asked, "Is the old Chevy running yet?"
"Well, sort of," Grease said, clanging a wrench against somebody's car. "You know, Danny, you ought to shoot that truck and put it out of its misery."
"Is it running?"
"It's limpin'."
"I'll be right over to pick it up."
"Okay, Danny. Are you wearing clothes today?"
"I'm wearing my blue suit."
Grease paused, knowing the last time I wore my suit was at a funeral; and then he spoke in a serious voice. "Has Rachel called you?"
"No, not yet."
"She calls every year, right?"
"Yeah. Rachel calls every year on our shared birthday. She always says she loves me."
"But that was back in September. When the-"
"It was a real busy day, Grease."
"And you've tried calling her?"
"A hundred times. There must be a problem with the phone company."
"Danny, you must be worried sick."
"Yeah, I am."
Twenty minutes later, I was driving the backfiring pickup around the university. And near the library, I pulled up behind a red Lumina at a stop sign. Inside the car was a woman with green hair. I waited patiently for several seconds, and I was just about to honk when I noticed that the woman's shoulders were shaking.
I jumped out of my truck and walked up to the Lumina. The woman lowered her window. "Auggh, this car! I've missed so many classes already, and today is the midterm exam."
Vehicles honked behind us, and I motioned for the drivers to pass by. The woman with the green hair watched them take the parking spots, her shoulders shaking as if her very life were breaking down.
"Hey," I said, "I have a friend who can fix your car. His shop is just a few blocks away."
The woman snapped at me. "There's no time for a tow truck! I need to be in class right now."
In a rage she turned the key. Nothing. She pounded the dashboard. "Auggh! This is driving me crazy!"
"Pull the lever for the hood," I said. "I'll see what I can do."
She nodded with angry politeness and pulled the lever. I reached under the hood and immediately felt an amazing amount of heat, an energy beyond the engine. Vroom, the dead Lumina fired up. I leapt away while the woman hit the gas and squealed toward the one remaining parking place.
I waved, wishing her well. And my fingers felt strange, but not burned. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I was like the elder whose prayerful fingers had become all fire.
"Oh, pshaw," I told myself. "The green-haired student was just playing a stupid trick on me. She's probably doing research on idiots."
And then I felt the need to go shopping.
At the corner of Dubuque Street and Iowa Avenue is dulcinea, a women's fine clothing store. Minding the store was Jane Jones, my first girlfriend. Jane was a devoted fan of the Gospel Family and often came with her parents to our concerts. Unlike most of the other girls that followed us, she ignored Jon and fell for me. Plain Jane, as she liked to be called, had shoulder-length brown hair, a pleasant face, and a sad smile.
"Danny, what are you doing here?"
I grinned. "Does dulcinea have any good bargains today?"
Plain Jane's eyes brimmed with concern. "I'm worried about you, Danny. Everyone is worried about you."
I reached over to a half-dressed mannequin and rattled the gold bracelet around its wrist. "Worried about me? Why? I'm getting married on Christmas Eve. And today I'm buying a romantic gift for my lady."
Jane sighed, and I realized my stupidity. I shouldn't be prattling to a former girlfriend about the latest love of my life.
"Danny," she said, "my grandmother called this morning."
"Your grammy is great, one of the nicest on my mail route."
"Danny. Some of my grandmother's mail is missing. She thinks you stole it. Is that why you're not working today? Have you been fired?"
"I'm working today."
"Where's your uniform? Why are you dressed up in a suit?"
"Maybe I have a hot date. Maybe I'm trying to get kissed again."
Tears fell from Jane's eyes. "Danny, I know you're going through difficult times. But you've got to get help. Please, Danny. Don't cause trouble. If you stole some of the mail, you better give it back. You wouldn't survive a day in prison."
I drove away from dulcinea and out of the city, hoping the gravel roads would lead to that feeling of life beginning again. But after ten miles or so of random driving, I found myself approaching some gnarled and dying oak trees huddled around an abandoned farmhouse. The oaks had been planted a hundred years ago in a happy circle to block the wind and provide some shade. Now the breeze was moving through the tree limbs as if passing through bones.
I stopped the truck in the middle of the road and climbed out. This farm was in the vicinity of ours. I scanned the horizon, but I must have been in a slight hollow. There was nothing in the distance but corn and sky. And memory.
When I was ten, I peeked through a window into the living room. Grandmother was sitting upright in the loveseat, her face beaming, her callused hands nimbly opening a garment box that lay across her lap. My mother and my little sister stood at opposite sides of the loveseat, leaning in. Grandmother solemnly lifted a wedding dress out of the box. It was her wedding dress, and my mother's wedding dress, and someday it would be Holly's.
Holly was only seven and already she was a dreamer for marriage. She had been begging my mother
constantly for permission to try on the heirloom.
I inched closer to the window. My breath on the cold glass formed rings and halos around the women and girl. All three were talking excitedly, but I couldn't understand their words.
Grandmother handed the wedding dress up to my mother, who then held it for my sister. Holly danced, clapping her hands. Then she became perfectly still, her arms upraised. My strong mother, her face weakening, helped Holly slip into the dress.
And my little sister was suddenly gone, as if swallowed up by a great shimmering ghost.
Years later, on a rainy day in late October, my mother opened the garment box and showed the wedding dress to my new girlfriend. Rachel Golding had recently moved to Iowa City from New York. She had wild curly hair and wore outrageous bohemian skirts. She was smart and funny. And our love was crazy; already we were talking about marriage and children and normal happy things.
Mother had been drinking too much wine since the double funeral for Grammy and Holly, and she was smothering Rachel. "You have no idea what a blessing you've been! Rachel, sweetie, as soon as you finish your degree, you marry my little boy!"
Rachel smiled politely and reached for the dress.
Mother said to me, "Get! Outside and find your brother."
"But I wanna see Rachel-"
"No. You're not seeing anything until your wedding. Understand? Now go find your brother."
Rachel nodded for me to go, so I slouched outside and followed the trail of smoke that led to Jonathan. He was sitting on the porch, watching the rain.
"You look cold," I said.
Jon took a deep drag on his cigarette.
"You look cold," I repeated.
"I'm used to it."
I sat on a rocking chair beside him. "Rachel's gonna try on the dress. We're getting pretty serious."
Jon flicked ashes on the porch floor. "Yeah, I heard something about a Christmas wedding."
I paused and let the subject drop, aware that my older brother should be the first one to have a serious girlfriend. It saddened me that he never seemed to find love among his many admirers.
"Danny," he said, his face dark with smoke. "Let's you and I sing."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Let's sing your song."
"My song?"
"You know. `This Old Time Religion."'
"Yeah, sure. In harmony, or call and response?"
Jon tossed his cigarette out into the mud. He cleared his throat, smiled, and put his arm on my shoulder. "Harmony."
"Oh, this old time religion. This old time religion. This old time religion. It's good enough for me...."
Perhaps, I thought, gazing sadly through the gnarled oaks, I should get in my truck and drive over to our family's farm and see if the buildings are still standing. Perhaps I should go over there and say a prayer. It's been years.
Suddenly a gray Volvo came speeding down the gravel and almost crashed into me. I stood frozen, holding up my arms. The Volvo swerved and spun in a circle, and sputtered and stalled. A bald-headed man, wearing a green shirt and brown khakis, climbed out into the dust. We exchanged awkward pleasantries. One of us used profanity, and one of us didn't.
I said, "Do you realize your words float in the air forever?"
He said, "Listen. I work at the Fermi Lab in Illinois. I know what is in the air."
I asked, "Are you a meteorologist?"
He said proudly, "I am a physicist. I work with atoms."
Atoms. The word struck me like Scripture, and I remembered how my science teacher in fifth grade, Mr. Stratford, had made me dizzy by proclaiming that his wood desk was not actually solid, despite all appearances, but was more like "a spinning series of invisible events in the guise of a desk, with enough potency in its tiny movements to energize the whole world. Or destroy it."
Meeting a physicist on a gravel road in Iowa is a neverin-a-lifetime experience for most people, so I wanted to make the most of the situation. I wanted to ask him a really good question, but instead I blurted out, "You smash atoms just to see what will happen."
He stared quizzically. "That is sort of what we do."
I looked into his eyes. "Aren't you afraid?"
"Why should I be afraid?"
"What if," I asked, "you smash the wrong atom? Aren't you afraid of all Hell breaking loose?"
The physicist rubbed his bald head, making his bushy eyebrows lift and lower. He looked surprised, and then angry, surprised, and then angry.
"You know," the Atom Smasher said, "I knew a man like you in Chicago. When he got on the proper medications, he got better. Maybe you could get better, too."
"Why should I get better when I'm already charged?"
"Charged?"
"Yeah, full of heavenly fire. Watch this."
I stepped back and then sprinted forward and jumped on the hood of his car, and up to the roof. "I'm lighter than air, light as an angel! See? I can't be as dense as you think."
The Atom Smasher picked up a large rock. "Get down from my Volvo."
"On one condition," I said.
He let out a sigh. "What is your condition?"
Actually, I didn't have a condition. And I really liked this guy. But I felt the need to scold him for some reason. I said, "Mister, from now on, you leave the atoms alone."
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Lightning flashed. The physicist dropped his rock. "My colleagues warned me about coming to Iowa."
"Oh, you'll grow to love it here," I said, jumping to the ground. "Maybe you'll even find your soul mate here. Iowa's very romantic, a good place for a guy like you."
"Romantic? I've been divorced three times."
The wind was singing and wailing from the west, with a large black thunderhead following.
I wasn't sure what to say to the physicist at this point. The possibilities were infinite. So I asked him, "Do you think fireflies are miraculous?"
"Hmm," he said. "No. Absolutely not."
That made me laugh. And that made him laugh. I think we both thought the other one was the crazy one.
I climbed into my pickup and turned the key. With a spark and a backfire, the truck inched forward, slowly built up speed and eventually began flying over the gravel. I drove toward the oncoming storm, eager to lose myself in the deluge; but when I came to a crossroads, I felt a tug to the north-as if magnetically pulled by some old prayer-and lit out for the clear skies of Minnesota.
Driving away from my home state, with a rainstorm in the rearview mirror, I remembered splashing the sky with colors, making a rainbow while watering Grammy's rosebushes. The garden hose sprayed a fine mist into the speeding spectrum of light that just a few minutes earlier had waved away from the sun.
While I journeyed northward, every glow and flicker caught my attention. The delicate flash of a goldfinch in a shrub. The glimmer of a red squirrel swimming through the branches of a lone oak. The momentary halo around a floating leaf.
Further up and farther into the north, the ocean of corn became smaller, and the islands of trees became larger. At dusk, crossing the border into Minnesota, the first thing I saw was a lake. The sight of it was so powerful that I had to pull over. The blue reminded me of a canoeing trip I'd taken with my father to the Boundary Waters when I was eleven.
The wind had shifted that first day of October, changing the weather from warm to cool to freezing. My father, in green fatigues, paddled furiously across the lake as if pursuing or escaping something. We had no idea that this was where my sister would someday drown, but the colorful leaves around the lake were bursting with death.
"This is far enough," my father said.
Finally, he had stopped striking the lake with his paddle. His voice became as soft as a child's. "Look at those beautiful birch trees. I wonder how long it took God to think them up. Or maybe `think' is the wrong word. Maybe everything was sung into being. Isn't that how it happens in one of your books, Danny? A great lion sings the universe into existence?"
A flock of geese f
lew over, huge Canadian honkers, piercing the sky with their cries and triumphant V.
"Look," I said, pointing up. But my father hung his head, staring down at the water.
"Well, we've seen enough," he said, blowing steam. "We better get back to the farm. There's a lot of work to do before harvest. And the band needs to practice."
"What? We just got here! Aren't we going to make camp? Aren't we going to see the aurora borealis?"
"Maybe next time," he said, paddling furiously, turning us around. "If there is a next time."
An hour later, while securing the canoe to the pickup, I noticed that my father was crying. I refused to look at him or show concern in any way. How could he be so cruel when the miracles of the North were just beginning to show themselves? I caught a glimpse of a black bear trudging through the leaves, probably seeking her winter den. Father didn't notice the bear, even though she must have been a sign. I gnashed my teeth at the thought of spending the night in the truck, passing over mile after mile of boring cropland.
In the middle of the night, somewhere in Minnesota or Iowa, my father poked me in the ribs, waking me from a nightmare.
"Danny, look," he said, pointing at the rearview mirror. "There's your aurora borealis."
"Where? I don't see her. Oh, now I do!"
Blue, red, and green streamers were flowing down. The aurora seemed to be following our pickup from a playful distance. My heart pounded and ached. "She's so beautiful."
My father drove to the side of the road. "Let's get out and have a better look. I wish we had a camera."
"We don't need a camera," I said. "We'll just remember everything."
He laughed. "You'll have to remember for the both of us. My brain is on the fritz."
We scrambled out of the truck. The streamers grew brighter and closer. My father whispered, "The sky's really taking shape."
I smiled and reached up.
The light faded and disappeared.