....With no clouds anywhere in sight, our skin was now starting to bake and pulse under the glaring overhead sun. I was hoping for more cars to drive past. Cars, and especially trucks, would always fly by fast and so close to the shoulder, in a jolting blur, to stir up just enough of a breeze to give some relief to the sweltering heat radiating off the black asphalt on this lonely curving turn. I found myself constantly listening for the oncoming engines in the distant, most of which faded as they continued north or south on Interstate-35, just a mile east from here.
Adapting to the heat by waiting and hoping for cars to pass for relief, was no more than a kind of evolution of survival in itself, but also made it easy to ignore the apposing paradox and the danger that came with this stretch of road and speeding vehicles, which became ever more present and clear all around us, especially when within every fifty yards or so, we would come upon a road kill on one side of road or the other on the gravel shoulder. We would know beforehand by the familiar stench that would intensify the closer we got, and with the sighting of one or more lazy turkey buzzards sitting up high on a telephone pole. Sure enough, when the smell couldn’t get any more ripe, we would look in the distance or ditches to see a portion of some hairy carcass, usually an opossum or bloated raccoon. The squirrels and frogs were always flattened right in the center lane like pieces of cardboard that we sometimes would fling in the air like a Frisbee. We actually saw one dead dog today with its collar still on. I didn’t recognize him, and couldn’t bring myself to go down through the long buggy weeds to read the tags. It’s sad seeing someone’s pet like that, but all too common. Nothing ever stood much of a chance crossing this soulless road. Cars raced as fast as they could along these stretches. Often at around midnight, on any given Friday, you could always see two or more fools drag racing this exact quarter mile of FM 1626, that went from the baseball ball fields, and down to the first turn in the road which was measured exactly to the sign that read, ‘San LeAnna, population 210’.
This day felt like it was not ending no time soon enough for any living thing, but you have to do what you gotta do to get to anywhere around here. It was becoming more still and silent along the road the further up we got except for the mesmerizing familiar sound of the summers end, echoing in the distant from the rarely seen cicadas that seemed to buzz and shrill from all directions in a synchronized harmony that, at times, escalated to a piercing level that eerily seemed to surround and follow us every step of the way. I found it amusing that I could momentarily silence them all at once for miles around with a single hollering yelp and loud clap. It was almost like magic, and I did this several times to be sure and convince myself I was the one controlling it....
All along the way, I helped pass the time by swatting the flower tops off weeds with a long willow branch i picked up. I was so good at it, I could swing the stick with a precision slicing motion, lopping off just the tops, exploding apart their dusty yellow, and white balls of pollen, like bursting fireworks. Each time I did this, a dozen or more grasshoppers would always zip up in the air like little rockets flying in a zooming blur, with the buzz of their wings rapidly clicking and whistling in all directions. Meanwhile, Billy would momentarily stop and search for perfect rocks that he would throw half-heartily, trying to hit telephone poles or the butt of the unassuming, silent, cows, standing motionless just beyond the fences. After several lame misses, he would laugh hysterically when he finally hit anything, especially a cow. We both had reckoned that if Johnny would have been here with us, he would have hit everything he threw at, dead on, bulls eye, first throw, every time. I once saw Johnny hit a flying swallow out of the air, which is next to impossible to do, even with a shotgun. A gifted talent, that had more than one scout coming to our baseball games to see Johnny pitch with his crazy left handed side arm, that was the closest thing to being an underarm pitch that i had ever seen. You couldn't teach a pitch like that, and you damn sure couldn't fix it. Even crazier, is that Johnny also never had a right hand glove. He couldn't afford a new glove and no one had one to borrow, so he used a lefty with just his thumb and two fingers holding it on. Strange as it looked, it never once got in the way of stopping a hard hit ball. It really was a little sad and comical to watch, but also pretty amazing thing to witness.
We were heading over to see Johnny, if we ever get there. It seemed to be taking forever. it didn't take long before we had barely gotten out the door that we were already wishing we had ridden our bikes instead of walking in this heat, and we would have most likely been there by now, but of course they all had flats that no one took the time to fix for weeks now. We sometimes would ride our horses between houses, but it was way too hot to try and chase down any of Billy’s old stubborn ass horses, that were shading somewhere deep in the backfields, and besides, they were way too smart to come running to us for the old 'gravel in a bucket' trick, which left us in a situation that annoyed me now enough to try his patience by telling him,” I told you once before Billy, if we were at my house I could have simply whistled for my horse, and she would come running and wagging, like I was calling my dog. We should send that old mare of yours to the glue factory."
About that same moment, before i could say anymore, from far across the field, i actually caught a glimpse of a lone figure on a horse, unlike either of ours. "Check it out Billy" Even at a distance, all I had to see was that beautiful dark wavy hair that flowed with the smooth timely gallop of her impressive pristine perfect horse to know it was one of the Carter sisters.
There was a freedom in their synchronized movement which begged not to be disturbed or halted.We were too far away to do either anyway. It didn't actually matter. She could have been just across the road and wouldn't have noticed us.
The Carter girls were not only a little older but way out of our league and from a world of a different class, or so they seemed. Perhaps they were not that at all but I envied them as if they were. For now they remained a mystery
Even their Colonial country style house with towering eaves and hedged white picket fences, like those on polo fields, seemed remotely out of place although i think theirs was the oldest house around here.
My family, though well enough off, were cut from such a broad liberal cloth bordering on being hippie civil rights activists and reformist intellectuals that demonized anyone believing in social ranking that instilled an insecurity that intimidated me in such a pesence.
The truth is I, or anyone else that I knew, had really no idea at all what the Carter family were about. To me, their untouchable nature seemed more alluring than arrogant, maybe even shy. They had a beautiful refined elegance about them, especially Sherry, who I could tell was riding now. I had seen her several times in the same way at a distance along these same roads on one of her quarterhorse thoroubreds. Once, by chance she had , most likely by accidental curiosity, ended up riding through our property where she passed me close enough on our road to relinquish only a simple apologetic smile and then road off in a hurry but her smile lingered long after she was gone. For now, they were still a mystery as I watched her again ride away, in the same way, disappearing in the tree line leaving me with overwhelmed curiosity...
No comments:
Post a Comment