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I wrote this story a few years ago for a writing contest. I never heard back (many of you know how that goes...) so I thought I'd post it here. Hope you like it.
A View Of Cedar
“Dad?” James looks at the digital clock on the car’s radio and notes the
time when his son’s meek question signals that the six-year old has awaken from
a sound sleep in the back seat of the car. It’s 4:25 a.m. and James had hoped
the boy would have slept longer, but this will have to do.
“Dad,” the boy stirs and sits up. James sees the boy’s spiky blond hair
more disheveled as usual as his only son peers out the fogged rear passenger
window. “Where are we?”
James hears the innocent question and contemplates his answer. “Just
driving, son.” He knows the answer lacks specifics, specifics his inquisitive
son will need in order to satisfy his ever-expanding brain. The boy’s reaction
surprises the tired driver.
“Oh, okay.” James cranes to see the boy in the rearview mirror and is
pleased when he sees his son lay back down in the small back seat and pull the
blue blanket over his body. Please sleep! James silently prays as if sleep will
erase the events of the past 24 hours—will erase memories that James hopes his
son never remembers. He checks again and sees the bundle of straw-colored hair
poking out of the blanket. The bundle doesn’t move and James knows his son
sleeps.
James continues driving. The hauntingly straight road extends for miles,
though the car’s lone working headlight illuminates nothing beyond a few feet.
If it weren’t for an occasional headlight traveling parallel to him from the
opposite direction the moonless night would completely swallow everything in
James’s world. The road could suddenly disappear 20 feet from the nose of
James’s aging import and James wouldn’t know it until it was too late. James
imagines the car not being able to stop in time and the car would plunge off
the edge of the world, infinitely falling, and the nightmare that is James’s
life would never end.
These and other thoughts swim through James’s mind as the car continues
forward. The road on which father and son travel is still foreign to James, he
having taken this particular strip of tarmac only a few times in a quest that
consumes the man behind the wheel. James again looks in the rearview mirror.
His son still sleeps.
The darkness remains as the car heads east, but James sees a thin uneven
line as the mountain range in the distance separates earth and sky. James knows
the sun will soon lighten both the celestial and telestial forcing the black
cloak of secrecy to disappear for another day. Hopefully, I’ll be 200 miles
from Vegas by then, James thinks. The further from Nevada’s most populated
city, the better. Thoughts of the modern-day Babylon and what remains behind in
Vegas sparks a nervousness that runs up James’s spine. James depresses the
accelerator closer to the car’s floorboard and the tired Toyota lunges
reluctantly forward into the morning dawn.
The world rotates and beams from the stationary sun spike through a dip
in the mountain range and hit the cracked windshield as the car continues
driving atop the cold desert road. James grabs his sunglasses and puts them to
his face as the yellow glow rises in the white morning sky. The glasses and the
lowered visor help in allowing James to see the road, but only so much. James
engages the car’s windshield washer lever to clean the dirt and grime and bugs
long since dead. The wipers dutifully begin swiping back and forth, but James
does not see the magical cleaning agent squirt from small rubber nipples on the
car’s hood onto the windshield. James curses as he remembers the washer fluid
reservoir has been long since dry due to other more important tasks that needed
doing. The wipers continue to mix the dried dirt and the carcasses of unlucky
insects which creates arched streaks across the windshield further impairing
James’s vision.
The sunlight brings with it an increase of fellow commuters traveling
both with and against the father and son. After many miles James looks into the
back seat and sees the blue blanket move. James thinks of his sleeping son and
remembers something. He remembers something he forgot—something important.
There is no child seat in the car. Suddenly James scans the no longer straight,
but curving road for any hint of a police car. The thought of being pulled over
causes the blood in James’s hands to retreat leaving his appendages cold. James
grips the steering wheel harder as he unconsciously reduces the car’s speed.
The drive continues uneventful until James again hears his son’s voice.
“Dad?” the voice filters to the front seat followed by the sounds of a
child stretching. James’s thinks only of a car seat and where he can buy one.
“Hi dad!” James looks in the rearview mirror and sees his son’s
brilliant smile as the boy patiently sits in the middle of the back seat, a
deep red line imprinted across his son’s cheek where a vinyl seam from the back
seat met his son’s face. The boy’s sleepy eyes convey a tired, but contented
look eager to experience the wonders that fill the child’s world.
“Well, good morning,” James says a little louder than he expected. The
father looks at the son and all the planning, the worries, and repercussions of
his actions over the past week disappear. “Did you have a good sleep?”
“Uh huh,” the son hums.
“Dad? Where are we?”
“We’re driving home,” James replies and the worries begin anew.
“Where’s mom?” the son asks.
James stares ahead. The drone of the semi-bald tires revolving over the
road fills the car’s interior space. James prepares to give one of several
answers he’s rehearsed thousands of times in his mind. Somehow all his planned
answers evaporate from his mind.
“She’s not coming with us this time. She’s at home—her home.”
“Oh,” says the son and he looks out the window. The silence makes James sweat.
“Cows!” the son yells as he spots a herd of large black and white animals
lazily grazing in a mountain field by the side of the road. A startled James
wonders what his son will think about once the little car crests the upcoming
hill and the meadow and the quadrupeds will forever vanish in their rear
window.
“Daddy, I like cows—they look so cool!” James looks in the mirror and sees his
young son kneeling on the back seat, his hands perched on the vinyl strip just
underneath the passenger side window as he soaks up the visual treat the cows
offer. The son makes several sounds, doing his best to mimic the moo of a cow.
The sounds make James smile, but only temporarily. The need for a child car
seat jumps to his foremost thought. James knows there’s a city 20 or so miles
ahead and they will need to stop to make their commute more legal.
The car reaches the exit, the first of three for the medium-sized town. James
takes the business loop frontage road and searches for a store. The child spots
the universal sign for fast food and says, “Dad, I’m hungry.” James is hungry,
too.
James pulls into the restaurant’s drive-thru and orders off the breakfast menu.
James directs the car to a parking lot next door; the appliance repair shop is
not yet open for the day. The two eat their food and say little.
As they eat, James spots a large supermarket store and he knows two things—that
the store is open and has what he needs. He also realizes that he lacks the
adequate cash needed to buy the car seat outright. He could put it on his
credit card, but the thought scares him. He knows the second that card is
scanned anyone looking for him or his son will immediately know his location,
and after that, well, it’s only a matter of time.
James wonders if he can make it to Colorado without the seat. After all,
they’re about halfway home. But if he’s pulled over between her in Utah and his
home in Colorado Springs, his journey—and his quest, will be over. As James
scans the city’s layout from his vantage point atop a slight slope, he notices
a Salvation Army sign. The sign (faded and in desperate need of either a new
paint job or replacement) stands above a small building (also in desperate need
of a new paint job or replacement). James checks his watch and wonders if the
thrift store is open. He wanted to be somewhere on I-70 by now, but things
happen…
“You done?” James asks his son. A nodding toe-head answers the father’s
question. Wrappers gently fall to the car’s floor as the reliable Toyota merges
into the morning traffic and James drives to the second-hand shop. Before they
exit the car James pulls out all the available cash he has on hand. He quickly
does the math and thinks they might have enough money for gas and food if he
can find a car seat under $15. If he can find a seat, he could stop and get
some bread and peanut butter at a grocery store as they leave town. That would
have to feed them both for the next 8-10 hours, but that’s do-able. If a seat
costs more than $15, he couldn’t buy it and he’d have to have to risk the rest
of the drive without it.
James and his son get out of the car and enter the store. Exactly seven minutes
later James and his son leave the store and get in the car. Before they drive
off in search of a grocery store, James secures his son into the new (to them…)
car seat they found because some mother decided that this particular car seat
would not adequately protect her child because it was more than two years old.
James doesn’t care how old the car seat is as long as it makes any cop between
Utah and Colorado ignore them as they drive by. James smiles to himself as
climbs into the driver’s seat and cranks the engine, an engine that never—ever
failed to turn over for him, even in the Colorado’s coldest winter. With the
price of the car seat lower than even he expected, James thinks maybe he could
pick up some candy along with the peanut butter sandwiches as a treat for his
son. If anything, the little boy deserved at least that.
The car eventually finds its way to the Interstate-15 on the city’s third exit,
or the city’s first exit if coming in from the other way. The two resume their
trip. James looks at the clock illuminated in red on the car’s radio. All
things considered, James thinks to himself, things are going pretty well. He
turns on the radio and hits the SCAN button. After finding a rock music
station, a talk radio station, and a lot of static, the radio finds music James
prefers. The country music fills the car as James continues driving. The son in
a search for more cows happily looks out past his father to the open road
ahead, the car seat lifting the child and giving him a higher perspective,
which affords him the opportunity to see a panoramic view of his new life.
* Photo used without permission from: http://blog.udot.utah.gov/page/25/
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