smoke. Like he’d been in a whole other world, was just climbing back up to this one. For me.
The way he was breathing, too, it was wrong, and it was almost dark already, and I was about to cry, I knew, even though I was twelve and all my friends were there.
But then he smiled, his teeth the only thing on him that could reflect light.
I never understood quite what, but the tank he’d just dropped off out on the Rankin Highway, it had hot oil in it, or oil that had got hot in the sun maybe, or out on the interstate, and some seal or line had burst, spilling that oil all over him, cap to boot laces. He was burned—burning—but not bad enough that he couldn’t still smile, show us not to be afraid.
The reason he was there, though.
This is the part I hate.
He knelt, the rocks and broken glass sticking to the knee of his jeans in a way that made me pull my lips away from my teeth.
“I need—need you to drive,” he told me, there in front of everybody, and then swallowed so that I could see the effort it was taking him to control his voice here.
I opened my mouth, didn’t have any sound.
He’d let me do it before, him working the complicated gears, the steering wheel like a huge bowl I could lean too far over, fall down into, but this, this was different.
“
Drive
,” he said, like I wasn’t getting it. Like I didn’t understand the urgency. What this hot oil was doing to him. How hard it was to even be standing still.
It was the closest he’d ever come to raising his voice to me.
“I—I can’t,” I told him.
My excuse that night at the skating rink would be that I didn’t want to go to jail for not having a license, and I’d try to say it like that was the only thing I could have done. Like I knew enough not to want to go to jail. Like I didn’t need that kind of hassle, not on a Friday night, when the cops could keep me all the way until Monday if they wanted.
It’s dark at the skating rink, too. Whoever you’re couple-skating with, she usually can’t see your face.
I didn’t get in any fights that night. Probably even won the limbo again, I don’t know. It was always mine for the taking. My friend Bryan—the one who lived by where Prairie Lee used to be—drank all the vinegar out of the gallon pickle jar and then threw up in the parking lot, had to beg his way back in, but that was nothing new.
Hours before that, though. It was skating around and around in my head, like maybe if I looked close enough at the rail there would be a hand to pull me back, give me another chance. Let me do it again, right this time.
But it only happens once in your life, a thing like this.
In the parking lot, dusk all around us, Jackson cocks his head over, maybe not sure I’d really said that, that I didn’t want to drive, then looks to the rest of the sixth graders behind me. Not for someone else to drive, but like seeing them for the first time.
“Just down to your dad’s, man,” he says, reaching for me, his arm almost straight. “C’mon, dude.”
I flinch back. Have my favorite shirt on.
“No,” I tell him, taking another step away, and he stays there on one knee for maybe ten more seconds, just staring at me, then nods, says it in a way that there isn’t any disappointment in his voice, “Cool, man,” and climbs back up, locks his left leg against the clutch, and, and—
And the first novel I ever sketched out, that years later became my first novel except all different, the key moment is when this underage kid’s driving a cab-over rig by himself, trying to make it to these ancestral carnival grounds but he’s already late, so late.
Then, because the world’s against him, has been the whole time, the bridge he’s about to duck under— I’d seen
Terminator 2
by then— it collapses. But he keeps on driving, shears the top off his rig, then sits up, lines that big steering wheel back into place and reaches down for a taller gear, twin plumes of black smoke chugging up
The way he was breathing, too, it was wrong, and it was almost dark already, and I was about to cry, I knew, even though I was twelve and all my friends were there.
But then he smiled, his teeth the only thing on him that could reflect light.
I never understood quite what, but the tank he’d just dropped off out on the Rankin Highway, it had hot oil in it, or oil that had got hot in the sun maybe, or out on the interstate, and some seal or line had burst, spilling that oil all over him, cap to boot laces. He was burned—burning—but not bad enough that he couldn’t still smile, show us not to be afraid.
The reason he was there, though.
This is the part I hate.
He knelt, the rocks and broken glass sticking to the knee of his jeans in a way that made me pull my lips away from my teeth.
“I need—need you to drive,” he told me, there in front of everybody, and then swallowed so that I could see the effort it was taking him to control his voice here.
I opened my mouth, didn’t have any sound.
He’d let me do it before, him working the complicated gears, the steering wheel like a huge bowl I could lean too far over, fall down into, but this, this was different.
“
Drive
,” he said, like I wasn’t getting it. Like I didn’t understand the urgency. What this hot oil was doing to him. How hard it was to even be standing still.
It was the closest he’d ever come to raising his voice to me.
“I—I can’t,” I told him.
My excuse that night at the skating rink would be that I didn’t want to go to jail for not having a license, and I’d try to say it like that was the only thing I could have done. Like I knew enough not to want to go to jail. Like I didn’t need that kind of hassle, not on a Friday night, when the cops could keep me all the way until Monday if they wanted.
It’s dark at the skating rink, too. Whoever you’re couple-skating with, she usually can’t see your face.
I didn’t get in any fights that night. Probably even won the limbo again, I don’t know. It was always mine for the taking. My friend Bryan—the one who lived by where Prairie Lee used to be—drank all the vinegar out of the gallon pickle jar and then threw up in the parking lot, had to beg his way back in, but that was nothing new.
Hours before that, though. It was skating around and around in my head, like maybe if I looked close enough at the rail there would be a hand to pull me back, give me another chance. Let me do it again, right this time.
But it only happens once in your life, a thing like this.
In the parking lot, dusk all around us, Jackson cocks his head over, maybe not sure I’d really said that, that I didn’t want to drive, then looks to the rest of the sixth graders behind me. Not for someone else to drive, but like seeing them for the first time.
“Just down to your dad’s, man,” he says, reaching for me, his arm almost straight. “C’mon, dude.”
I flinch back. Have my favorite shirt on.
“No,” I tell him, taking another step away, and he stays there on one knee for maybe ten more seconds, just staring at me, then nods, says it in a way that there isn’t any disappointment in his voice, “Cool, man,” and climbs back up, locks his left leg against the clutch, and, and—
And the first novel I ever sketched out, that years later became my first novel except all different, the key moment is when this underage kid’s driving a cab-over rig by himself, trying to make it to these ancestral carnival grounds but he’s already late, so late.
Then, because the world’s against him, has been the whole time, the bridge he’s about to duck under— I’d seen
Terminator 2
by then— it collapses. But he keeps on driving, shears the top off his rig, then sits up, lines that big steering wheel back into place and reaches down for a taller gear, twin plumes of black smoke chugging up
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