JB
September 17, 2009
Fiction
Tags: Fiction, Jason Ward Boyte
by Jason Ward Boyte
This morning I was baptized. Now I’m lying stretched out in the backseat with my legs up on the black vinyl. It’s hot. My calves and the back of my neck stick, but I don’t have the energy to move. Pastor Sherwood said the next flood would be fire. That makes sense.
Through the window, I can see the fig trees go by. Acres and acres of fig orchards stretch for miles. That’s all that grows on this side of town. On the east its grapes, because there’s a river that comes down from Yosemite, and there’s better irrigation. Here it’s dry. Rows and rows of trees, spread out across the plots in a grid, their trunks whizzing by the window like the blades of a fan. At home I’ve got a card clipped to the spokes on the back wheel of my bike. Speed can blur things to where they look solid. Like running by a chain-link fence. If you run fast enough, it looks like a solid, silver wall.
In the front Dad mutters, “Too hot to mow the lawn.”
The church is still ten miles from anywhere in town, but the town is catching up to it. The windows are rolled down, the hot wind cooling the sweat from my hair. A chill goes down my neck. It makes my stomach turn. I’m so tired, I could dissolve. Songs are going through my head, but I don’t know the words yet. There are times that I feel like I can just separate from my body, float above myself for a while, but I always come back, even when I don’t want to.
Continue Reading
People shouting. Dad pulled the car over and went to see if he could help. Mom told me to keep looking forward—not to look. But I did. I saw the frame: metal sheets, peeled back, reflecting the sun. Waves of heat rising from the asphalt. A little later Dad came back to the car and got in. Said there’s nothing he can do.