ROUTE 66

You gotta understand somethin’, Pea. In your sister’s reckonin’, men ain’t nothin’ but a vehicle to motherhood. Ya hear me? She never did see them boys, not-a one of ‘em. All she seen when she looked in them big, dumb eyes was an auto-mobile with a baby inside.
That’s not fair, Gran, and you know it.
You think she loved them boys?
(She spits a laugh between her two remaining teeth. They are yellowed with tar and move loosely in their sockets. She is the grandmother, old and knowing, occasionally harsh, but rarely unfair. She rocks in her chair, onto the heel of her foot, and back onto her toes. She keeps rocking in this way, heel-toe. Heel-toe. The old chair makes the hollow noise of wood pressed deeply into wood.)
I know, I know. You think I should mind my business. I may not see the way I used to, but this old pony ain’t blind. You remember when that old Ford of hers broke down? She was just outside’a Gilbert when that rusted old box just coughed and choked and stalled on out. You remember that? She was just outside’a the rez. Stranded. Ain’t nothin’ out there, just snakeskin cooked raw. She kicked at it, she swored, she got on out of it and pushed at its bumper, and that damn thing wouldn’t budge. A dead horse got more life than that old Ford had.
Gran, I don’t know what that has to do with anything. Can we please change the subject?
(The two chairs rock in unison, matching each other’s rhythm and pace. The sun begins to sink over the western horizon. The two women stare off into some void behind that great orange light. They squint and their eyes change from a sloping almond shape, to nearly closed. Gran pauses, as if trying to find her place again, and she continues where she left off.)
So she just left it. Lit a match, held it right to that gas tank, watched it light up like the fourth of July. She’s been treatin’ men the same way ever since, like she don’t know the difference between a man and a car, as long as they bring her where she wants to go, she don’t think nothin’ of it. The second they stop workin’ for her-
(She gestures like she’s striking a match. She flicks her wrist downward, like she’s sending it into an imaginary gas tank).
BOOM!
That’s not fair, Gran. She knows the difference between men and cars. Nothing is guaranteed, and you can’t blame her everytime something happens and it doesn’t work out the way you think it should.
Ha! You remember that fella? That man who picked ’er up in his shiny red mustang? You remember the one.
(The petrified skin of her index finger pulls tightly over her burled knuckle. She points straight into Pea’s chest with the gnarled branch of her old, arthritic fingers. They twist to tell the truth of her story, the story of all the women she knows; the ones who came before and all the ones to come after.)
Now that man, that man was supposed to drive her straight on to maternel bliss, ya know. That spit-shined, black-haired bastard with his searsucker suit and his wing-tip shoes. He talked real smooth, that one. Had too much-a nothin’ ta say, if ya ask me. Your grandaddy always did say, ‘don’t you never trust a man who ain’t got dust on his boots.’
(The depth of her brown eyes shows as she fixes her gaze on some far off point. She searches the far off mountains for answers, or memories, or a speck of insight blown along from our ancestors. The wind alights sand which scurries across the porch. The sun is nearly set, the brown land turns burnt orange, the sky a dark azure blue.)
Come ta think of it, I never did see such clean loafers- not a speck of dust on ‘em, not the shoes and not them pretty mustang tires...
Ya know, that bastard never once got out of that car. Not-a once. Not to ring the doorbell- not even to meet your daddy. Them fancy shoes never once stepped a heel on that front porch. Not-a once, you hear me?That bastard would just sit in that damn driveway, blowin’ that horn- like he was rattlin’ his tail. It’s a-wonder it didn’t make your daddy go stark mad...
(She looks tired. Deep in the lines of her sun-leathered skin all of the stories and all of the secrets of her eighty two years stay filed. The arroyos that carve her cheeks deepen in the last glow of the day, they are the long valleys carved by tears. A deep current runs at the bottom of each of each fissure. A strong river of blood connects them, like the mighty Colorado at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the uterine artery of the west.)
… You know, I seen your daddy kill a rattl’r with nothin’ more than a spade and a mean temper-It’s a-wonder he didn’t do the same to that ol’ bag-a wind. Damn girl prob’ly shoulda known. What’s the bible say? The writin’ on the wall? Yeah well, I’m guessin’ your sister never learnt ta read like that. She ain’t smart. Not like you.
Smart or not, how could she have known? Huh, Gran? She was just doin’ what she was always told. She was just doin’ what you had done. What mama had done. She’s no stupider than...
A new coat o’paint and a wax job don’t say a damn thing ‘bout what’s under tha hood. You remember that, Pea. You remember I told you.
(She looks west-straight down route 66, the mother road of the country. She spits onto the dry land, it drinks from her mouth.)
When you was away gettin’ that fancy education in the East, you was missin’ a real important lesson ‘round here.
I don’t have those kinds of problems, Gran. You know that. Boys never chased me the way they chased Miriam. Besides, she’s married now. She’s doing well. Let’s leave her alone.
(Gran stops rocking and looks into the face of Pea. There’s a hurt in her eyes, a hurt that’s been there a long time. Gran remembers when Pea left for college, the day the family crowded into her one room casita to offer their goodbyes. Miriam showed up with Tim, her small hand tucked inside of his, as if together they held onto the announcement of their intentions.
Pea had loved Tim since the day he blew into her life like dried sage. She was sixteen, working at the one market in town. She could tell you exactly the day the string of metal bells that hung on the glass door announced him. She looked up and saw his hand on the doorknob, and watched the first step of his dirty boots track manure onto the white linoleum floor. She can tell you exactly the magazine she was reading, leaning over the dusty rubber of the register belt. She can tell you the stale taste of her gum, exhausting her jaw, the slow pop of the bubble against her pink lips. She could tell you exactly, the wild bramble of his auburn hair, or the blue of his deep set eyes, his weather worn jeans. She could tell you his smile, his broad and callused hands that brushed passed hers as he handed her money in exchange for farm raised eggs. She could tell you the car he drove and the diner where he ate his rye toast and ham. She could also tell you how in just four months of his moving there, her deliciously feminine and coy sister could be seen riding in the passenger’s seat of his little car, while she closed up shop, locking the door behind her to the distant ring of those haunting metal bells.
Pea’s sister road in the passenger’s seat of any car she wanted in that town, a different car every night. And every once in a while when Tim came through to buy his canned coffee or his loaf of bread, her deep chestnut eyes would lock into the sea of his blue. Her finger tips would linger along the raised beds of his tired, calloused hands, slowly collecting bits of change meagerly scraped from all he had left in this world. A knowing smile would cross his face. She would blush. To her, he was the first choice. Before a four year college in the East, before any boy who came sneaking around, leaving her small gifts of hand mined turquoise or Apache Tears, knocking on the dried wood of their front door, and running off, leaving the gifts on the hand woven welcome mat, a cloud of dust kicked up behind them as they would tear up the driveway, all testosterone and fear. Before a promise of a new life, a better life, a life more free and less hand-sewn, she chose him. To her sister Miriam, Tim was so much further down the list. Pea knew she lacked a certain lightness, an air of absolute femininity. She was harder to pin down, more awry. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t the effortless beauty of Miriam. She wasn’t grace. She was solid, like oak. Where Miriam had a predatory nature, a nightstalking certainty of step, Pea was like a sea sponge that absorbed the good of whatever passed over her. But sea sponges don’t survive in the desert.
Miriam had just been dumped hard by the rich man in the mustang when she and Tim meandered into Pea’s going away party, hand and hand. Pea had seen it coming, because not a lot escapes you when you do more watching and listening than talking. She told herself it was better. She used this as another weapon of self hatred, another place to stab herself. Pea went to college. Miriam married Tim in a quiet ceremony.
I guess she’s doin’ alright now. The new fella seems nice, real dependable-like. Not much to look at, but I guess he never was.
Gran, don’t say that. He’s fine.
(Pea says, and behind the words she thinks, “He is more than fine. He is perfect.” Gran sees what cannot be seen, she is keen to the hurt that radiates from Pea’s furrowed brow. She is determined to coax the truth from her. The one that has settled into her being, the weights attached to her shoes, the ones that won’t let her move forward with anyone else.)
Well I’m just sayin’ he’s wracked up some miles, by the looks of him. He ought to stay outta the sun. You seen him yet, since you been back? They don’t come ‘round here much no more. She says it’s too far out- guess they got some car trouble. No matter. She sounds like she’s settlin’ in alright. All in all, it seems like he’ll do. She says she’s havin’ that baby come January. Not too far to go now. I don’t think she quite knows what she’s in for. But I ain’t never been able to tell that girl nothin’. Now you, you I can talk some sense to. But not her. Nope. She just gonna do it her own damn way. I just don’t understand that one. But, like I says. She got what she wanted from him. She got that damn baby. I don’t understand it myself, forevers a long time to spend with somebody you can’t hardly look at. Trust me, your granddaddy couldn’t die fast enough, you ask me.
(Gran shakes her head at the past, and then she shakes her head again at the present, and then she shakes her head one more time at the future, because it all looks the same, over and over again. Miriam will have a daughter, and the daughter won’t make it too far down route 66 before she turns around heads right back. She won’t make it as far as Gilbert. She too will hop into the passenger‘s seat of her own life, like her mother before her. She too will hand over the keys to a man, and maybe that man will be as good as her daddy, but more than likely he won’t.
Pea picks up the pace of her rocking. She sinks into the great sand dunes of thought. She considers the past that disappears in her rearview mirror. She looks at the wide open space of her future. For anyone who has traveled west down 66, you know that great stretch of land that lays flat in front of you. You know how easy it is to bury the pin and still feel that you’ve gotten nowhere. You know how you never catch those mountains that loom in the distance forever away. She whispers into the wind that has picked up from the east)

Of course I couldn’t understand
Because I never felt that way.
I never once looked upon the form of the man I loved
Only to see the way his spine curved like a road-
His body, a vehicle.
The round calloused tread of his hands-a patch
For the air that was leaking slowly-surely-
From the cracks in my life.
To me, he no more resembled the gravel that could begin to fill in the empty spaces
Of that vast and hollow and desolate road-
Than he did the tourmaline blue of sky-vast and unreachable
Just beyond the black horizon
Or his skin-the sandstone and amber desert-
Where some highway was built for travel.
I never once looked upon him and saw fertile soil-
Or the tiny germinations of everything I’d dreamed.)

Of course she didn’t understand.

Gran, (Pea says out loud. And this is the moment Gran has been waiting for. This is the labor and the birthing of the truth that has hung heavy at the waist of this family since the day Tim got down on his knee, those crystalline blue eyes filled with hope and love, only to be met with the cool dark stone of Miriam’s eyes. The granite color, hard and untouchable, of a woman who wants a ride out of her uninspired life, and who wants someone to blame when it all breaks down a couple of years down the line.)
Gran, (Pea starts again, and there’s a quake in her breath as she inhales deeply. She has to say it, and it has to come out all at once because if she stops, she won’t get it going again. And so she points her voice straight down the highway and she floors it, the gas pedal to the floorboard, and this is what comes out:)
I only ever saw him-blue eyed and fleshy. He moved like wind across the main street of that small town. We were ghosts in the dead of winter, on a Sunday morning, alone in the desert cold. I watched him cross the street, a bramble or a desert sage. In his large hand, perfectly balanced in the crook of his arm, was a borrowed glass coffee pot. I watched as he held it with such care-his steps were slow and calculated-practicing for the baby that was to come in January- holding it with that same gentleness that he held all of our breakable things. He disappeared into the church, the place where he and she married. And I stood, kicking dust on the toe of my dirtied boots-waiting for a taxi or a stagecoach or a mustang to get me out of here. This is their town; the town that he and she had broken down in-the place where nothing grows.