Graduating to Wet Stones

Inevitable, August 1969 apologies to Olds He is leaning over the engine of his 1967 yellow Corvair, with the non stock cam and high stall torque converter-- red grease rag in one hand, a ¾ socket wrench in the other. He is about to race in the state drag finals. I see my mother on the side of the track, in her crocheted halter top and hip-hugging bellbottoms-- the ones with the peace sign penned into each back pocket. She raises a hand to block out blinding August sun, searching for him among the dozen or so cars burning through pools of mirage on the blacktop track. After the race he will ask her to take off with him to California. All she knows is there is nothing else here for her. They are foolish, thinking there is nothing left of innocence after each has battled through wars, foreign and domestic. She is going to go with him and I want to go up to them and say, No, don't go-he is the wrong man, you are the wrong woman, you are going to do things you cannot believe you would ever do. he is going to love but never really care for you, she is going to care but never really love you, he are going to do bad things to you, you both are going to do bad things for your children, he is going to rage in ways he never dreamed possible, she is going to despair more deeply than she dreamed possible, he is going to fight to hold you, she is going to fight to escape you. I want to go up to them there in the mid-August sun and tell them, her sweet wide-eyed expecting something/anything face turning to look at me, his handsome overconfident/ignorant smile, but I don't say anything. I want to live. I pick them up pressing them together like two stones, trying to strike a spark. I tell them to do what they are going to do and someday I will write the truth about it.

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