Chris
I liked you better for your car more than anything
else at first when you asked if I wanted to come by
the house and drive around on some gravel roads.
Your dad was working the horses and smelled of sweat
when he stuck out his hand. His touch said everything
was meant for work as he took off their saddles
while they ate the alfalfa he’d thrown down. They looked off
in one direction and he in the other. I wonder
what was on his mind that day. It was sunny and you
both were still together. Your sister too, just home
from her part-time job, bringing groceries. Everyone
cooked since your mom died. That was the loneliness
I saw on your face and then your dad’s. Maybe why
I drove out all those times, to be near that, looking
over the spring planting like we did. Your sister saying
she’d make casserole and asked would I be staying.
Your El Camino was a 396, solid black
with a bench seat. When I asked to see the engine,
it was dirty with oil and dust, like your hands and your
teeth crooked, like your nose. You’d been in fights.
Styrofoam cups and crushed beer cans left to roll in
the footwells. I knew the type, seen others collapse them
into their foreheads with the flat of their palms.
I got in anyways. You started the car and something shook
loose between my lungs. We drove the mostly empty roads
that followed hills of pastureland. Scaring up cows grazing
and a few horses. Nothing ran out straight but zig zagged
like flies caught between a window and a screen.
We kicked up dirt. When you saw me smiling you drove faster
until your foot was to the floor. It was inevitable.
I knew we would fly out over the next hill but the hit
at the bottom still caught me.
There was an old gravel pit you knew, a place to go swimming.
Neither of us had suits so we waded in our underwear.
I left my bra on but you didn’t seem to notice, treading
water, talking, swimming out and swimming in, cooling off.
We sat on our jeans in the sand. I brought two nectarines
and this amazed you since you’d never eaten one.
They were perfectly ripe, barely giving way to the press
of my thumb. I smelled deep into the place where the stem
used to be and a sweetness filled my nose. You bit into
yours and juice plopped onto your chest.
I remember that time I dragged the garden hose lying
like a dead thing in your uncut grass and brought it into
the house shocking you and your dad by spraying you both.
He was in his easy chair and you thought he’d beat us
senseless but surprised you when he turned the hose on us
and later, got out the old wedding photos
and his snaps from Vietnam. He said how beautiful
the country was and he would like to see it
again and all that was ruined made right. Mornings,
we played euchre in our night clothes at the table while
we smoked and drank coffee. I was having nightmares,
sleeping at your place as much as I could. Your dad
always said how awful I looked in the morning and
I’m sure I did. I was going through it, back through
all the memories of my messed-up childhood.
Once I took off all the grape vine that had been let go
covering the side of the house. I made wreaths and hung
them on the fence posts. Your dad said it’d been that long since
sun had been at the window. I think now that I would like
to go back. Drive my piece of shit car after work
to your place and tell you about the time your dad came out
to find me lost in your back pasture, slick with sweat
and the heat of the summer, bare footed. He’d come quiet
like when he looked to the horses. Walked sideways when
he found me. Didn’t do anything else but light a
cigarette, handing it out to me, waiting for me
to once again know who I was.
JODY HARTKOPP frequently writes about growing up in Iowa and her Lithuanian heritage. She is an MFA graduate from Boston University. Her work has been a finalist for Kenyon Review’s Poetry Contest and can be found in the Briar Cliff Review, The Adroit Journal, One Art, On the Seawall and others. She currently lives in Saint Louis.
