On The Ride Home

I was half an hour late getting my son to his mom’s. It was around noon; I was supposed to be there then. I find it hard to hurry when I have to do that; but it was raining when we got to the parking lot so we ran to the car.

I held his hand more than usual on the way.

The rain stopped when I got there for a moment; I hugged him outside her house. Told him I loved him, missed him already. Told him I’d see him on Sunday. That shit never gets easy.

I headed back the way I came: through the city. It started to rain again - hard. I adjusted the wipers almost to the highest speed. The Drive soundtrack was playing on my stereo: favorite movie, favorite theme song.



I’m a good driver. I see everything: potholes that could cause sudden hydroplane if you hit them wrong, stupid drivers who think they are Vin Diesel on their way back to their desk-jobs, debris. I was driving down a busy two-lane road that connected the west end with the city when I saw them: a mother and her three kids, one in a stroller. They were running while the rain poured down.

“Give them a ride,” I thought.




I didn’t slow down. There were wannabe Fast ‘n’ Furiouses behind me and it didn’t seem safe. I thought about how weird it would be for some random guy to pull over and try to give them a ride in his car.

I passed a turnaround, and then another one. “I don’t need to,” I thought, “I can just go home.”

But at the same time, my nerves were shooting through my body: “Gotta turn around; gotta go back.”

When I got to the next light I took a right, fast. There was nobody on the side streets. I went quick but safely, my foot over the brake. I knew those streets well.



I didn’t see them when I got back. The rain was still coming down hard and it blocked my vision. Then I saw them: they were huddled under a tree in the park, a hundred feet from the road. I pulled into the left lane to the curb and put my hazards on.

I rolled down my window.

“You need a ride?” I yelled to the mother. I got out of my car.

She said some street name that they were trying to get to and I said I could get them there, though I didn’t know where it was. The three girls lined up on the curb in front of a giant puddle. Traffic had stopped in the left lane. No one was honking their horns either: they knew what I was doing.

I had my Batman sweatshirt on. The youngest girl must have been two or three, the oldest couldn’t have been more than 6. I picked them up, one by one, while standing in the puddle, and put them in the back seat. I took the stroller from the mother and put it in the trunk. They all were wet. I could tell the mother was embarrassed. They were poor, very poor. She smelled bad; they all smelled bad, like they never took a bath and everyone they lived with smoked.

I turned off the hazards and pulled out from blocking the lane, carefully.

The music changed to “Where’s The Deluxe Model?”




I punched the address she had said into my GPS. God knows how many people I had driven in this car at night.

I could tell they were a little scared, the kids: a strange man picking them up.



“I’m Joe,” I said, “You guys like gum?” It was all I had. My son likes it. I passed it to their mom. I could hear the happy sound of wrappers crinkling. One of the little girls passed it back to me.




The GPS said 4 minutes, which was probably 5 times as long walking. Their mom said something about how they had to change their clothes when they got back.

I let them out. They all said "thank you." I said “don’t worry ‘bout it.” There was a time I didn’t have a car.

I drove back to Liverpool. Felt like I was floating over the road. Sun came out for a second on the way back.

Afternoon

I get up late on Mondays. I get my son Sunday through Tuesday and every other Wednesday, and while he’s gone I put in about 50 hours at two jobs in three days. It pays the bills but it catches up with me every Monday morning.


It’s worth it, though.


We go on “bentures” half the week together. Yesterday we went to a film shoot I was in and I took him to the movies after. He’s really my best friend.

Mondays I wake up with Harrison sleeping next to me. He arrives at some point of the night, most every night, half the time without me remembering exactly when. We have three or four long, most one-sided conversations before 10 AM, myself horizontal the whole time, my eyes half shut.


He’s five now, but smarter than many kids twice his age, I feel. The things he knows, the imagination on this kid. He is so my son.


I get out of bed four or five times, to change him, get him breakfast, get snacks, and help him set up his toys or whatever he wants to do. I have this supernatural ability to be completely aware of what he is doing at all times, even while laying down in the other room. It’s a single parent thing: a sixth sense that is a combination of all the senses.


He comes over to hug me every so often and tell me what he’s doing. He’s so proud, it’s so cute. I ask him what he wants to do today. He says, “I don’t know.” I tell him “I just wanna be with you.” He says the same.

We are alone together.


Later on we will leave the apartment and do something fun.

He goes back to the living room. Certain moments of my life run through my head, back and forth, and intertwine. This lasts for an indefinite amount of time.


I clear the notifications on my phone (and in my head) and put on some jazz. When I finally get up and make my bed, the words “this is what depression looks like” run so hard through my mind they come out my mouth in a whisper.

I put on my robe and turn off the A/C.


I put on hot water for tea and start making some health food shit in the blender.


He is perched on the edge of the couch watching cartoons; not sitting, his butt is on the very edge, his leg holding himself up from a coffee table. He’s smiling and laughing at the skit.

I look at him for a long moment, then I go over and hug him and bury my nose in his long “I don’t want a haircut” hair. I tell him that he’s so smart and he’s my good boy and that I love him more than anything, just in case he didn’t know.

 

Rain

Went for a run on the parkway, mostly because I knew not many people would be there. There were the LARPers by the parking lot, the seniors playing bocce as I warmed up, the skateboarder I triumphantly passed before my knee went to shit, the one or two romantic couples walking closely in their early stages, the one or two not-so-romantic walking far away from each other in their later stages; the Middle Eastern lady and her daughter with their shawls, the one or two dog walkers. A storm was coming.


(Photo by Sheirel Mordaunt)


Huge dark grey clouds, like titans, loomed over the edge of the lake as I passed by the road markers I had flown over when I ran this for the Marines. I knew every bench, and the ones I had sat on with her.

Suddenly it came - all at once - like someone had opened a bay door in the raincloud above. There was no invitational sprinkle, it just dumped. In moments the road was a river that ran through my socks. I felt a rush of adrenaline from whatever song played next in my headphones and from the lightning I could see hit not so far behind me.

Visibility lowered to a few paces in front of me. Scared 20-something girl joggers hid hugging tree trunks. I stared at them as I passed by as if to say, “go- lightning is coming-“ which they heard, trailing behind me as I ran towards the finish. There was nothing more I could do for them.

I crossed the zero-mile mark, watched by the bocce players hiding under an awning, and I began to walk, unflinching as kids that had escaped the playground stared from their parents’ cars, as the water came down like a power hose.

It couldn’t phase me; because after all, I had been through so much worse.

Snow

By Joe Cunningham

I had a strange dream the night before last.


For some time now, I’ve been only having two recurring “nightmares,” one might say. A psychologist would tell me I have post-traumatic stress. I would not disagree.


The first dream consists of being trapped in the seminary I was in for seven years. Again. It’s a mental prison. The doors are always open. One can, very easily walk off the lawn to the world outside.


But you can’t. I cannot explain this to someone who has not experienced it. There are no invisible electric fences involved. It is a prison of the mind. One feels so compelled to stay there, one would, actually, murder his own son, if he had one; or in effect, murder the possibility of one, just to stay.


When I have this dream, I forget I have a son, in the real world. I am afraid of nothing, except losing my son. I can tell you this is the most terrifying nightmare I can ever have. When I wake up, every time, I am shaking.

The second dream is like it, but in a different sphere. The form of it changes, but the essence always remains the same. I am usually somewhere familiar. Somewhere that means a great deal to me. Usually in present times. And then she is there: maybe in passing or as confrontational as we will ever get. She is sad. She feels, it is so strong I can feel it too. She knows I love her and she, though cares about me deeply, does not love me too, not like I do.

There are never any words; just this, telepathic understanding.

And even though I understand this dream more than I have ever understood any, it never gets any easier. I think this dream is only slightly less painful than the first dream; but I would not classify it as a nightmare. It is something beautiful. But it’s an ending I keep living over and over and over.


I have these dreams every night that I can remember. Sometimes both in the same night. Sometimes they alternate. Sometimes they mesh together.


Two nights ago I did not.


I was standing in a snow covered field. It was dusk or dawn, I do not know. I suppose it matters.

Lawrence was there. Lawrence Gabriel, the Native American boxer who I contacted to write a book about after he got shot saving the patrons of a bar on the West Side of this city I live in. She is Native American.


Note that.


I couldn’t see him. But I was trying to get into someplace in front of me, when I was stopped by the natives there. Like it was a place only they could be, not white men.


After meeting Lawrence for coffee that fateful day, I began my research on him, his culture, his life, his sport, his everything. It became my life and it became overwhelming for me. Like a chore at times. I paused the project, the way one wishes you can do to a giant of a term paper in college.


But I had already gone so far, our lives had intertwined so much, I ended up having a significant role in the book I was going to write.

We see each other rarely now, because of me. I changed the book to be about me with the subplot to be about him, as a contrast of our lives, one symbolizing the other, and so forth. Typical writer shit. Earlier in my life, in the seminary I was trained to renounce all things: to be detached from all things.


I have been unable to hold onto any friend or family member or significant other since. Except my son.


Recently Lawrence and I reconnected, even if it was only for a moment, even if it was on Facebook Messenger and then after, without talking about the heavy stuff, for a second in real life. In passing.


In the dream, it was only a moment, but the natives changed their mind and I passed through the blockade into native land, where I felt white men had never been. There was Lawrence sitting in the snow, the sky purple and orange, saying to them, as if I had passed some great test, and as if the words had been stuck in time, he said-


“He can come in.”