West of Independence
My 1rst Place Winning Essay (Non-Fiction Category) in the
2011 Seacoast Writers Association Writer's Contest
The seedy motel was far behind us. I had driven our little black rental car through the dark without stopping. Michael was a restless passenger beside me, alternating between fitful naps, passionate conversation, and acrid cigarettes.
We were headed westward, completing the unfinished journey of our brother Jared. Months earlier Jared had jumped into his car and driven west from New Hampshire, with a plan to gaze upon the beauty of the Grand Canyon before driving his car over the edge of it. He had made it to that sad motel in Independence, Missouri, before running out of gas money and the will to live.
Michael and I had spent a solemn hour in the motel parking lot before merging onto the highway. It was hard to drive with tears clouding my eyes and one arm across Michael’s trembling shoulders.
We had planned this odyssey to honor Jared’s memory, and at its end we would scatter his ashes into the Grand Canyon. Determined to uncover caches of joy along the way, we had compiled a road trip bucket-list. The pocket notebook that I kept with me at all times listed sights and adventures we hoped to experience before declaring our work finished.
And so we sped down the long, straight highways of the west, along the way stopping to pick cotton, pose for photos with road kill, and climb atop welcome signs on the side of the highway in order to moon entire states.
Sixteen hours west of Independence, we were well into New Mexico. The sun was dropping into the other side of the afternoon, when I saw a cluster of abandoned buildings off in the distance. I thought of our list; sandwiched between "windmill" and "oil well" I had written "abandoned building."
I was climbing through the fence before Michael had even stepped out of the car. As I slipped between the wires, my pants caught on one of the rusty barbs. It took me a moment to pull my leg free without injury. By the time I was on the other side, my brother had caught up to me.
"Ranchers mean business in these here parts. Their barbs are sharper than an Arkansas toothpick. They also pull the wire tight, just the way they like their jeans." My southern drawl was barely passable.
Once through the fence, we raced each other across the red dirt, leaping over bunches of sage and tufts of tall grass along the way. At the edge of the abandoned town, we slowed to a walk, surveying the area. Several of the buildings stood quiet and strong, boarded up tight as if against a hurricane that would never come.
Michael and I headed for the front steps of a little house with a sagging porch and broken windows. The wooden clapboard had been stripped of its paint by years of weathering sun. To one side of the house we could see an ancient truck, yellow paint of the cab mottled with rust. It had long ago settled comfortably onto flat tires that dug into the red earth beneath them. Michael entered the house, but I remained outside on the porch, fascinated by that yellow truck.
I imagined the family that had lived here long ago, a husband, his young wife, and two little girls. The young couple, I thought, had spotted each other across the floor at a dance hall in Albuquerque. He had been too scared to ask such a pretty girl to dance, but his friends and hers had pushed them out onto the dance floor. They were married three weeks later. Soon a baby was on the way, and he had moved them out here to their own little house far away from the pressing matters of the "big" city. They had been happy here, a second baby girl adding to his joy, and his modest trucking business providing well enough.
His weeks were long, but coming home after a long stretch was the greatest feeling in the world. He would honk his horn as he drew up, and his girls would come running out waving and laughing with joy as he parked his bright yellow truck next to the little house. He would leap from the cab, scoop his daughters up in his arms and spin them around, kissing them and loving on them, their laughter and adoration renewing his will to live.
As he put them down and they spun away in dizzy circles, his wife would step out onto the porch, an apron tied tightly around her tiny waist, a smile on her face. He would approach the porch, stopping on the top step to look into her happy eyes before kissing her deeply. This was their heaven on earth, their own private eternity. Everything they could ever want was growing within the shelter of these walls.
"Matthew, check this out." Michael’s voice cut my dream right down the middle, but it was just as well, because I was sure to imagine something bad happening to that happy little family, something that destroyed them. Turning from the truck, I walked inside the little house, which now seemed haunted, to see what Michael had discovered.
"Take a picture of me on the floor, like an addict passed out in a crack house." Michael laughed, breaking open my somber mood.
I looked around the room. It was littered with broken furniture, trash, and a generation of dust. It looked as though some bad calamity had indeed befallen the little family. They must have left in a heartbroken instant. I kicked at an old toaster that appeared to be full of straw. "It does look like a crack house," I marveled, turning on the camera and taking a few photos of Michael lying on the floor with a clouded Mason jar in his hand.
We spent a few minutes exploring the inside of the house before heading out to the back yard. An old water tank sat atop a crumbling concrete shed. Michael scrambled up the side of it and peered inside to snap a photo. We worked our way around the house to the truck, and I climbed into the cab. There was a large hole in the windshield, and Michael took a picture when I stuck my head through it and made a nasty face, as if I were flying out onto the road.
"We should get going," I said with great reluctance. I could have explored the little town for the rest of the afternoon, waiting for dark when all the ghosts would appear.
"Wait," Michael said, running over and picking up a long, narrow piece of shredded tire. He leaned back, spread his feet in a powerful stance, and held the piece of tire up into the air like a bow, his other hand pulled back against his chest as if pulling on its string. The tire arced like a longbow made from black wood, adding to the effect.
"Hold it, don’t move, you look so cool right now. Let me get a picture!" The sun cast a long shadow on the road, of Michael pulling back on his bow, reminding me of the Native American petro glyphs that I had seen on my last trip to Arizona.
Back at the car, Michael drew a line through "abandoned building" on the bucket list. While he did, I took a moment to check on Jared. He was right where we had left him, a neat little package resting on the back seat, wrapped carefully in what had been one of his favorite tee shirts. I thought about the many times Jared had told me that he wanted nothing more out of life than to know the happy comfort that comes from true love. I reached out and touched the soft grey cotton fabric of my little brother’s tee shirt, wondering how many years it would take for the color to fade, like the once bright yellow paint of that forgotten truck.
"Keep your eyes peeled for a windmill and an oil well," I reminded Michael as I climbed behind the wheel.
"Will do." He replaced the notebook and pulled out a cigarette.
I rolled the windows down and puzzled over the owner of the yellow truck. What could have brought such an abrupt end to his living dream?
