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Everything is orange outside but it suddenly looks like it’s cold, even though it’s summer, and the sun is bright red and slowly going down on Dad’s side of the truck. There’s just empty space around us, just posts stuck in the ground like there’s supposed to be vegetables or fruit growing, but the posts are all bare. There’s funny-looking clouds in the sky, and lots of those metal towers that look like wire people behind the empty fields, but that’s it, and as we drive I keep trying to find at least one thing that’s green but everything is dirt, and it’s starting to get dark. I watch our shadow sweeping across the fields, and across the other freeway heading back home to Napa, waving like a giant black sail. The radio’s on, but I can’t tell what anyone’s saying, since it’s in Spanish. All I can think about is finding a bathroom and some food. I don’t even care where it comes from. I’m starving. Dad doesn’t say anything, and neither do I, I’m just hungry and I have to go to the bathroom. I watch the speedometer and even though he’s speeding I don’t say anything because I know the faster he goes the sooner we’ll get to wherever it is we’re going. Someplace with a bathroom and some food.
First published in California Northern Magazine. 3% of full piece excerpted.
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The Flying Dutchman