On the Road

Before and After
- Johanna DeBiase

Two photos, taken in the same location, almost exact except for the way in which the landscape was allowed to enter the frame and the the years of distance between them.

In the first photo, I am nineteen-years-old and on my first cross-country road trip with my best friend, Michele. We left New York two or three weeks earlier on our way to California. I am wearing an Elvis t-shirt, a souvenir from Graceland and black corduroys in the sweltering heat because I did not wear skirts until my twenties or shorts until my thirties. Standing on a sidewalk, on a bridge, behind me is the Taos Gorge, barely perceptible. I am smiling wide and squinting into the sun. Perhaps I am happy we made it this far without crashing our car or getting caught in a tornado or getting busted for any number of illegal contraband we were stashing in the glove compartment. Most likely, I thought of none of these things as possibilities. I was, after all, nineteen.

The second photo, taken ten years later, my fiance is behind the lens this time and, though we do not know it yet, we are moving to Taos, leaving behind the arctic tundra of Alaska we had called home. You can only see me from the shoulders up, my linen blouse has one button clasped and I am wearing a floppy straw hat and dark glasses. My arms are leaning securely over the rail and beyond my shoulder is the shadow of rock wall and the glimmer of a snaking stream below. Smiling, perhaps I am imagining my new life ahead, the home and family I will build, but, of course, I knew nothing of the future. All I remember is that after the photo, the flash, the smiles, I searched the railing for initials I had engraved in it years before.


Untitled
- Robin Powlesland

check board lighting strung
branches on high
but you have to bend
your neck
angle eyes and hair and cheeks
others can see you then
but so can you
the lights
the way someone stops and makes
something ugly
beautiful

I know I need to go
pack it all up again
unhinge myself from
the doorway
and go

tall buildings and small paintings
color dripping on moving water through
still streets
flower stalls and large women
angles

like coins falling out a hole
in your pocket
it’s time
to go again


Fiesta
-Charles Clayton

It was fiesta time, and the descendents of Conquistadors were honoring the patron saint of the village by praying in the adobe church and drinking and driving up and down the single paved road. Empty Bud Light cans flew like confetti, lining the road for months afterward, reminding everyone of that summer day and the pride they felt as they stood along Main Street and watched lowriders parade past abandoned graffiti covered buildings.

There were a few white folks in the crowd—in town for the month to take in the beautiful scenery from the patio of their vacation home—and they found the tradition interesting if a bit inauthentic. Pinatas should be handcrafted by pious Hispanic grandmothers, not bought at the dollar store, and why did they nail the electrical wires to the side of the church? Don’t they know how historic that building is? A good photo opportunity gone forever.

There were no Indians there—the commodities had just arrived and they were too busy eating American cheese sandwiches in squalid government housing to make it to town for a Spanish ritual. Besides, they only left the rez to buy quarts of malt liquor or to gather sacred herbs in the nearby mountains…herbs they used during sacred prayers that kept the Universe from spinning out of control.


Community Service
-Eric Mack

Still new to town and like a crazed, lost tourist I jogged through the freezing darkness, tragically underdressed in sweatpants, college hoodie, crew socks and cross-trainers designed to vent as much heat away from my feet as possible, making them horribly inept at preventing the subarctic air from sneaking between my toes.

A huge blue truck crept along side of me, its electric window slowly moving downward in jerks.

"Boy -- what in the hell are you doing, boy?" an incredulous Mayor Sweetsir shouted from the driver's side - he was trying to talk over the Rolling Stones in concert in 1979. A small video screen was mounted on the dash; a tiny liquid crystal Mick Jagger skipped across a strobing stage a few feet from the Mayor, who was fully bundled in a winter coat and heavy work gloves, despite the heated air pouring out of the louvers beneath Mick's frenetically galloping feet.

I leaned in to the open passenger side, disoriented by the 80 degree difference between my trickling nose and my glacial toes. I glanced at the 12-pack of Budweiser in the back of the cab before noticing that Russ was skillfully grasping on open can with two fingers on his left hand, leaving at least three fingers for the steering wheel. The mayor's three-finger drinking and driving technique, I would soon learn, also allowed for easier track selection on his DVD player with his free hand, and was complemented by the fact that he never eclipsed 15 miles per hour on his marathon weekend DWI sessions.

A Saturday night ride with Russ was not a brief outing. It could start as early as 7 in the evening and run until 3 a.m. - if there was a really good poker game at ol' Sid Huntington's house (the 90-year-old village patriarch) it might push on until 5. Part of the stamina could be attributed to the fact that Russ was both driving and drinking so slowly. The twelve pack of Bud would easily last the whole evening - the Mayor's body was actually processing all that alcohol, leaving him more or less sober the whole evening.

I would soon come to be proud of this first night cruising with Russ. We would make 5 laps around the village, buy everyone at Archie’s a few rounds, and chisel a frozen Lynx carcass out of the bottom of a friend’s freezer, before the Mayor called it a night and dropped me back at the bar for a few more solo rounds. I had outlasted the King – all hail youth!

The next morning, with little sleep and quite hungover, I was barely able to lift myself off my mattress to return to the bar and retrieve my forgotten wallet and gear. On the side of the road a few blocks from Archie's, Russ was attaching a winch to an overturned Volkswagen, pulling the debris of someone’s less-skilled DWI evening out of a deep ditch. It was his third tow and recovery before noon. He waved. I returned a reverent salute to the once and forever monarch of Saturday night in the bush.


Summer in Jersey '74
- Gary Feuerman

I know it’s New Mexico, but I’m in north Jersey in 1974. Rivervale, or maybe Tenafly, they always seemed the same to me. It’s the end of summer and we’re at Aunt Gina and Uncle Paul’s house. I’m walking through tall grass between weeping willows being trailed by a muscled black mutt named Ditto. The dog always barks menacingly when we get out of the brown and wood-paneled Vista Cruiser. He makes me stop in my tracks and then back up toward the car, but then Gina calls him over, a smoker’s clotted voice, smiling blue eyes, casually slouched as she walks from the porch with her legs out in front of her in purple slacks. She’s the picture of suburban cool, on the edge of the woods, could have been in a Kent ad in a magazine, could have been in the hills of Appalachia. After the first bark riot, Ditto’s my friend and he walks just behind me, head down like mine. I know I should be smelling sage, and pinon and caliche dust in my nostrils, but I taste thick grass and wet dirt and hear cicadas revving up to a high pitch that makes me think the trees will explode. I smell it in my belly and hear it in my feet. There’s a hole in the backyard chain link fence and it leads to an elementary school with groomed ballfields - baseball, football, and a blacktop basketball court. Nobody’s there, but I remember the family softball game the year before when I hit the ball over the kids that play against us and it rolled into the woods. It was a home run. I can see it but I can’t hear it. People yelled as I rounded the bases, I know they did, but I can’t hear them. Does memory have sound? I walk back through the fence and toward the house, a modified, 2 story, 3 bedroom colonial, white shingles with black shutters, and gray paint on the sides. I can hear my parents in the kitchen eating cold cuts with my little brother. Silverware plinks against porcelain, porcelain against wood, porcelain against porcelain. I can hear the TV in the living room where my grandpa, Bernie, is alone watching the Yankee game. Grunts and squeaks leak through the screened window on the side of the house where my dad’s younger cousin is screwing his girlfriend, the one with the curly blond hair and glasses, and perpetually red-tipped nose. I know she’s not Jewish, but I can’t remember who told me that. It’s not a big deal, but it’s known, a fact to tuck away in some list. Uncle Paul is out on the porch smoking a cigar. He moves slowly and has a soft voice. He looks older than Gina in his button down shirt with a black square pattern, and brown nylon slacks. There’s a tuna tartar colored birthmark on his left temple in the shape of Sri Lanka. Pointing to his chest where he recently had a pacemaker inserted after a second heart attack, he tells me he and Gina are moving to Florida so he can take it easy on his ticker. The Jersey winters are too cold nowadays. My uncle pulls up in a shitass brown 1972 Olds Delta 88. The radio is playing loud, too tinny to hear what it is. He steps out looking like a Beatle – more like a Beatle than the Beatles ever did – Sargent Pepper yellow corduroy bellbottoms, Lennon bifocals, coca cola brown hair fanning down his back to his ass, a thick handlebar mustache and a deep purple madras shirt. Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of one. Ditto doesn’t bark at my uncle. He’s just back from 5 years in Europe and India staying clear of Vietnam. I’m curious about him. I’ve seen others that look like him, but he seems real with the hippie thing. He laughs through his nose and quakes his shoulders. My dad and mom and brother come outside to see my uncle; then my great grandparents from Austria, Annie, 88, wiping her hands on her apron to clean the debris of walnut cookies, and Willie, 94, stroking his yellow-gray mustache, amusement in his eyes; and then my grandparents, Bernie, 62, with purple, varicose cheeks, and Flo, 63, her blond hair teased and curled up high and her arms crossed. Everybody stops what they’re doing. Even my dad’s cousin and his red-nosed girlfriend come outside. I stand to the side, near the garage and watch everybody watching my uncle. I don’t hear the cicadas anymore and there’s a tug at my belly that I want to run away, that my DNA is all wrong. I’m in a play with all these actors and I don’t know how to act.