From the collection, Blue for Pints by Sarah Leamy.

     NIGHT DRIVING

Dad drove us through the Jemez Mountains, his eyes clear despite the bottle half-drunk. Junipers, Cottonwoods, pinon, and ponderosas lined Highway 4, branches hovering heavily overhead, creating a tunnel of dark shadows and loitering figures, highjacked in the truck’s high beams as if in a foggy dream. Wonderful.

Dad shrugged his shoulder and cracked his neck, left, right, he’s always doing that after a day’s work at the lumber yard. Mom told me he’s a better driver at night than she is so he’d been the one to pick me up from the afterschool program, his turn for once she said. I reckon she didn’t just want to get cold in the snow. A right girly she was, not that I had the words for that then.

He drove. I fidgeted. A seatbelt held me in the front seat of his old Ford truck with its broken heater, a small bundle of coats and hats and scarves and nerves. Flashes of ghosts in the trees and then wide eyes stared out from the dark winters’ night, a hint of danger and power, an elk stepped out. We drove past. I’d not seen one in person. Television. Stuffed toys. Movies. That’s all. You see, we were new to the area, we didn’t have elk at home in Florida, but we’d moved west for his job, his career, and Mom had to give hers up to keep us together as a family.

Dad slowed down, lights still on high beam, and with a quick check he pulled a three-point turn and took us back uphill. He slowed down, the heater was cranked up uselessly and the news on the radio bugged me, so I reached over, off. We crawled to a halt at the passing lane. The elk had disappeared. Dad turned off the lights, then the engine, and glanced at me uncertain for once but then grinned, a wide naughty smile like he used to before we came here. He grabbed his rum and took a gulp. Opening the door softly, he didn’t let it slam. I copied my dad. Clutching the denim jacket, I shuffled and slid my way over the hood and onto the roof next to him. We didn’t talk, just sat there, together. Clouds drifted overhead, and the night was chilled, October in New Mexico. Dad pulled me against him to stop the shivers. I leaned in and smelled dirt, wood smoke, and rum. His chest rumbled deeply, a lingering reminder of the pneumonia from last month, a scare. I didn’t want to lose him, my dad. I wanted this and snuggled in, safe, cozy, drifting in the warmth of being in the woods with my dad. Then he touched my shoulder slightly, whispered for me to open my eyes, saying, don’t move, you’ll scare him, Joey.

In the middle of the empty caldera stood the biggest animal I’d ever seen. That bull elk still stood there, a real live one with those cartoon furry antlers and honking chest, thick neck, and standing taller than me. He stared at us in our bundle of coats and hats on the roof a metal box in the middle of his domain. We didn’t even breathe properly. He rooted around in the snow and huffed a few times softly. I stared, taking in the softness of those antlers, wanting to reach out. The elk didn’t move and snug as I was, I had to fight to stay awake, but drifted off.

Dad woke me when we pulled up at the cabin and Mom came down the steps in a rush. She held her old house-coat tight and yanked open the side door, giving Dad the Look. He didn’t explain. He didn’t do anything but wink at me. And now as my own kid asks to drive through the forests in a snowstorm, I always say yes.

Photo by Sarah Leamy

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