I closed my eyes and held my fingers to my temples. Nothing. Just the quiet field. The two of us sitting in the truck cab, the summer sun still hot in the evening. She said anyone could do it but no one was like her. I’d known that right away.
I’d lost the keys somewhere in the field. I searched all over, running my hands through the tall grass. It’s not that important, she said to me, but I kept looking anyway, down by the river where we’d lain on a blanket, scanning the shallow water where a thousand stones resembled a thousand shiny keys. I imagined having to walk home, having to listen to the yelling. Really, don’t worry, she said. We can try something. Her voice was kind of cheery and I looked up at her. Kind of a game, she added.
When it was her turn she put her hand on the dashboard and closed her eyes. Almost like she was praying. She whispered to the truck. Or to something else, something really big or really small, somewhere inside. Watching her I imagined both possibilities, both futures: dead silence and the weight of the regular world rushing back into the car, or something extraordinary.
Within the dashboard something clicked. The engine gave a small chug, then turned and rumbled. I said something dumb like, whoa, or holy shit, and she smiled. We both laughed and I kissed her while she was laughing, our teeth hitting. I asked what else she could do and she said anything with an electric heart. I just looked at her, my mind a flood of questions I couldn’t articulate and something like joy. I must have stared too long, because her smile faded into an uncertain smirk. She turned to look out the window.
I’d been driving around aimlessly when I saw her that afternoon. The neighborhood a little shabbier than the other shabby neighborhoods. The house a little smaller than the other small houses. She was sitting on her front porch with a dog that looked really old. I stopped and she came over to the truck. We exchanged stilted hellos and then she asked where I was going. I said it was a nice day for a long drive. I knew she didn’t have a car; I’d seen her getting on and off the bus. She opened the door and got inside.
Now we sat together in a machine she’d just brought back to life. I put the truck in drive and we moved out of the field and onto the dirt road, then onto the paved two-lane, all the way to the gas station. We didn’t talk. I turned the radio on and after a minute she fiddled with the stations until she found something. She’d been here maybe six months. Assessed, categorized, and rejected by this place—the kind of place that works hard to make one kind of person and nothing else—in a matter of days. I’d watch people who couldn’t seem to blend in, couldn’t choke off their impulses to say or do something out of the ordinary, and feel pity. By the river, lying on the blanket together, she asked me what I was most afraid of and I said nothing. Fucking liar.
When we got to the Marathon I asked her what her favorite gas station meal was. She said a frozen Cherry Coke and Fritos. It was when I got inside and paid that I admitted to myself that my drive hadn’t been aimless. I knew where she lived. People had whispered about it. About her. When I came back out another car was just pulling away from the truck. I could hear the laughing, see the other girls’ hair whipping in the wind. Girls from here learn young not to cry. They learn to yell, to pull at each other. When I got back in the cab her face was calm. The sound of the car disappearing down the road. Sometimes I think about doing something terrible with it, she said. I don’t believe that, I said. Another lie. I could see it easily. Could imagine terrible things in vivid detail. She said she didn’t want to go home yet, then leaned back in her seat and took a long sip from the big red cup. No one was like her.
I drove us back down the two-lane, back down the dirt road to the field, parked the truck and idled there for a minute. Then I pushed the ignition, killing the engine. I’d have to make up a story about the key. But that was later. Outside was the sound of river water, a trilling of insects. Inside was the smell of heat and cherry sugar. She slid closer to me and then laid her head on my lap. She asked if that was OK and I said yes.
She closed her eyes and I watched her for a long time. I wondered if I could feel the pulse of something inside her, sense a hum of something kinetic. Instead I felt her get softer, her body’s weight relaxing into mine. I looked into the rearview mirror, catching my reflection, then back out at the field and the sky. Everything was so still—the truck, the evening, this girl. I was tired, too. And I wondered about quietness, stillness. I guess it had never occurred to me before. How sometimes things are resting out of exhaustion, and sometimes things are resting in preparation. That felt good. That felt strange for this place.
Jeffrey Hermann writes short fiction and prose poems in his spare time. One day when he retires he will write in his regular time. His work is out there if you look. His wife and two children and dog mean everything to him. He has two books forthcoming in 2027, from Unsolicited Press and Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
Okay Donkey 