Once, when he was crazy about a little druggie named Belle he’d met in college in Chicago. She’d moved away without warning, then, after weeks of silence, called to say she was in New Orleans. Jack was driving through Mississippi, straight through without sleep, in a rusted Ford he’d traded his Harley for, doing ninety down vaporish blacktop so he could tell her to her face he loved her. She didn’t know he was coming; he’d surprise her. She hadn’t mentioned her address; he’d find her. Everything he owned was in the car. The perspective a blazing glare, but a smell through open windows like a cellar door ajar, and from the slough bordering the road, a steady chirp that matched the chirp of worn brake shoes rose suddenly to a whine (did he actually hear it then, or only in retrospect?)—just before the swarm—a chitinous comet with a tail of glittering wings—hit head on. He braked instinctively, wipers swiping bug sludge across the windshield, and when the swerving, blinded Ford bounced the shoulder, Jack felt it lean up to flip, then, in a way that recollection turned mystical and fated, the car caught its balance, and on all fours plowed through cottonwoods into the quagmire.
“I’m happy to drive awhile,” Renee said.
“I thought your neck is tense, that it was killing you. I offered to stop when we saw the signs for massage.”
“It didn’t read massage,” Renee said, “it said rub down. That’s how you know you’ve crossed the boundary into the Midwest. When the signs for massage start to read rub down. Anyway, it’s better. I took a muscle relaxant.”
“Exactly, and you’re not driving when you’re on drugs. And, by the way, if we could smell the Midwest, we wouldn’t need rub down signs to tell us. Did you know smell is the quickest path to memory?”
“Are you angry I’m not driving?”
“I’m not angry. I don’t mind driving, I don’t mind not being able to smell summer in Nebraska, I don’t mind you screwed a cousin aptly named Willie. Or that you’d never mentioned that a year ago when I met Cousin Willie and shook his hand at the family reunion, a reunion I never wanted to go to in the first place. In retrospect, you and cuz sure did a lot of nuzzling as the night wore on, and, OK, I admit that once everyone started drinking Rheingold beer and singing in German, the question of inbreeding did occur to me. But angry …”
Renee hit one of the passenger side buttons and rolled her window down. Jack was doing over eighty although Renee had told him that driving over sixty-five made her nervous, even when the traffic was light, because if a tire blew the car couldn’t be controlled. She’d had dreams about vehicles out of control. Wind surged in and Jack raised his voice to be heard above it. “No, not angry. All I am is quiet, Renee, meditative even. You can take a turn driving tomorrow.”
She looked to not be listening, one hand holding down her hair, as she stared out her open window. Wildflowers—white, pink, gold, too blurred to identify except for the blue cornflowers—dotted the embankment. Her other hand clutched the opened box of animal crackers as if they might be sucked out of the car. She released her hair, and even at its new, more mature, in-between length, it whipped wildly.
Jack opened his window, and the enlarging smell of fertile earth and baking fields streamed through the car. And yet its fragrance couldn’t be fully inhaled, as if they were moving faster than the speed of scent. Their hair blew about as it had when they’d first met. He’d owned a Mustang convertible then. Renee bought him a pair of pink, fuzzy dice to hang from the rearview, and they’d drop the top and joyride at night along moonlit two-lane back roads; her nipples would show against her blouse and sometimes she’d unbutton it and ride with the breeze fanning her bare skin. Once, she slid off her black panties and draped them over the dice and rearview mirror, and Jack told her, I hope we don’t get a ticket. For driving with no underpants? Renee asked.
For not being able to see where we’ve been.
“I’d have loved seeing you at eighteen in that bikini,” Jack said in a normal speaking voice that was lost in the roar of wind and rumble of the semis they were passing. Renee turned, looked at him, and shook her head to mean she couldn’t hear, then raised her window as they bore down on another truck. Jack raised his window, too. Beyond the trucks, he edged into the right-hand lane and slowed to a legal speed.
Renee yawned as if to equalize pressure in her ears. She took a long drink of water and passed the bottle to Jack, who took a quick swig and passed it back. “Want a cow?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
“What do you want?” Renee asked. “Do you even know?”
“A kangaroo would be nice.”
“Do they make them? I don’t think they do. Why does it always have to be something exotic?”
“Look, you’re the one who asked what I wanted. So I tell you, then you criticize my choice.”
“What’s your second choice?”
“I don’t have one. If there isn’t a kangaroo then I’m just as happy with nothing but water. But please don’t let me stop you from enjoying the whole menagerie.”
“Wait … here’s one! I found a kangaroo!”
“You’re kidding,” Jack said. “Thanks.” He held it up over the steering wheel so he could study it without taking his eyes off the road, then, apparently satisfied, bit off its head.
“The monkey is perfectly fine. How’s the kangaroo?”
“Sometimes nothing’s more lovely, I think, than animal crackers and cocoa to drink. Is that it?”
“Those could be the words, but I don’t know if you have the melody. I’m not sure I remember it or only think I do.”
“Someday we might not be sure whether we drove eating animal crackers or only imagined we did,” Jack said.
“But we are really driving and eating animal crackers, Jack, together on a beautiful afternoon. Sometimes all one needs is a bit of nourishment to change the outlook of the day. Feel better?” Renee asked.
“I do,” Jack said. He took another munch of kangaroo. “There’s nothing on a long haul like a little taste of down under.”