Joey’s Vacation

After breakfast, Roy rinsed the dishes, put them in the dishwasher, and slammed the door up with his foot like he always did when he suspected his wife of being comically over-cautious. Cigarette lit, he smoked in the mahogany and glass three-season room where the 2,000 chemicals wouldn't bother a soul. He stared at the statue of a fawn that stood, mid-scamper, in the middle of the backyard. Linda walked around the house and checked on last minute things -- she unlocked and re-locked the front doors. She checked windows and closed the curtains in the upstairs bathroom. She was about to shut the gate to the three-season room but avoided the smoke and Roy, whom she assumed “better damn well do it” when he was through in there. Joey, their eight-year-old son, hiked up to his room after breakfast, sat on the edge of a rocket-shaped bed with purple sheets and put on his tennis shoes. He chanted, “ladee-dadada-aquaman-dodo,” -- a catchy bit of nonsense he heard on the morning's cartoons while his mom and dad were in the shower.

Heat rolled through the cracked window and dampened the walls with humidity. After Joey laced up his shoes, he stood and walked over to the windowsill where he kept his smallest toys. Looking them over, he tried to decide which of them he wanted to take in the car. He passed over a Transformer (that metamorphosed from bus to boll weevil to robot) and his one chipped Lincoln Log (conductor's baton), and opened up a tackle-box full of Matchbox cars. He evaluated each car, truck, and service vehicle carefully, weighing their qualities of speed, style, and overall efficiency, and reached into the case. He pulled out a red tow truck and a green Volkswagen, and hid them in a large pocket on the front of his overalls. He was just about to close the case and leave his room when he heard Roy yell, “Okay, son, let's tar the tarmac!”

Joey closed the door to his room and bounced quickly downstairs and  into the kitchen. Roy had changed into a blue short sleeve shirt with white buttons down the front. Linda had donned a pair of reflective sunglasses. The two stood next to each other by the back door, contrasting each other in color and disposition.

“The luggage's in the car. Let's get a move on,” Linda said and adjusted an earring.

Joey walked through the open door and his parents followed him out. Linda locked the door from the inside before slamming it shut and jiggled the doorknob. Roy sighed at this. Joey found his way into the backseat of the Mercedes behind his dad who got in the driver's seat. He put on his lap-belt and moved his feet back and forth in the air. He thought about the sandbox and how he might make little roads and vales with a garden shovel for his tow-truck and Volkswagen to drive on. He would build a racetrack and scrape his cars around to see who would win. It would be the race of a lifetime, the young driver in the lovebug, the favorite, losing at the last second. Joey knew that he would have to let the tow-truck win because it had more a lot more horses under the hood. He remembered just then that his cousin Gabriel liked to steal other kids' toys after sitting on them so that he could coolly wipe a dangly snot on their lip.

Linda slid into the car just as Roy turned the key in the ignition. He pressed a button attached to the sun visor and the garage door opened. The car, shiny blue and shifted into reverse, rolled slowly out of the garage and into the summer heat.

“Here we go a-gain,” Linda said, “High-ho yon up-country.”

She sank down into the velvet seat and pushed the sunglasses back up her nose, hoping to Holy Jesus the air-conditioner would kick in fast enough so she could fall asleep without sweating to death.

After an annual conference, when seeds were planted and business curtailed (Roy worked for a lawn and garden products developer), Roy Miller and his family went on vacation. The family always went to a small town in Michigan called Union, even though it was the divorce capital of the Upper Peninsula.  They stayed at Roy's sister's place (who Linda thought was a sleaze) not only to save money, but also to enjoy the tan sands of Lake Superior. She, Betsy, rarely seen in on the make without a brown suede skirt and fishnet stockings, had a small two-story beach house (inheritance) with a red-painted deck that was, she would moan, just perfect for lounging around, getting ripped on Special Ex Light, and cooking brats on the old black grill.

The drive from Oak Park, Illinois up Highway 441 to Milwaukee was gray with too many black buildings and billboards with hotels and lions on them. Adversely, the stretch between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac was a great deal greener, with plenty of hay bails, farms and an occasional adult book store. The sky was partly cloudy and light blue. Joey pretended that he was the cartoon character, Speedy Gonzalez, and wiggled his limbs mouse-like and Mexican. He pulled at his seat-belt to give himself enough room to lean up and look through the window at passing vehicles. When she paid attention, Linda would turn around and say, “Sit back, Joey,” but whether or not he listened to her was immaterial for she would open her eyes, speak in a low voice and then nod discretely off. She did this intermittently for about an hour-and-a-half. Joey played with his shoe-laces.

They stopped in Appleton, Wisconsin for gas and a bite to eat. Roy and Linda debated, on the way up the off-ramp, whether or not southwestern food would make Roy “flat-u-lamp”. They ended up to a restaurant just off the highway called Cheese Pepper's. It was a Mexican franchise with a bar shaped like a scorpion and lots of fake plastic cacti and sequined sombreros on the wall.

“How come you have that green there,” Joey said and pointed at his mom's plate.

“It's guacamóle,” Linda replied.

She chewed on a tortilla chip and Roy took a drink from his bottle of Molsen Ice beer, his face mustached and pale.

Joey laughed. He thought the word “guacamole” sounded weird. He thought it sounded like the name of someone from Bolivia.

After they got up and paid the check, the three of them went to the bathroom. Roy and Joey entered together. They had to wait for the urinals because two older gentleman in multicolored suits were using them when they walked in, talking about a waitress's uniform.

“Right up the ‘ole wazoo,” the left one said.

“Wump,” said the other.

When it was his turn, Joey took the lower stall. He watched his dad urinate next to him. The old men laughed and blew their noses by the sink as Joey wondered when his “dinger” would have as much girth as Roy's.

After zipping up, Roy washed his hands and dried them on a brown paper towel.

“Me me,” Joey said and held out his hands.

Roy picked Joey up at the waist and held him near the faucet. Joey put his hands under the water and shook them dry, splattering the mirror with droplets of water. Roy gave him a paper towel and Joey wiped his hands thoroughly.

Roy pulled the door open.

“Two points,” Joey said and jammed the towel into the garbage can by the bathroom door.

 They exited the bathroom behind the old men.

“All set?” Linda asked when they met her in the lobby.

“How longer?” Joey asked as they walked out into the sun and toward the car.

“How much longer,” Linda corrected.

“How much,” Joey repeated.

They got into the car. Roy peered at Joey from the rearview mirror and used his best cockney accent to say, “Forever and a day, young Chappy.”

Joey pressed his feet into the back of the driver's seat.

“Chapa-chapa-chapstick,” he said, “chapa chap chapa chapchapchapchap--”

“Joey, stop it.,” Linda said.

“Chap,” Joey replied.

The sweeping “S” of road from just north of Appleton, Wisconsin to Union, Michigan became increasingly wooded. The trees thickened and darkened as the day passed on. For about an hour after lunch Roy and Linda talked in metaphors about Betsy's new boyfriend and whether or not he “played rooster to more than one hen”.

“She's gobblin' all right,” Linda said, “cluckin' out for boys boys boys. And the old funky chicken.”

“Please,” said Roy.

Joey took out the toy cars during this time, and drove them on his legs, screeching aloud when they skirted the cliffs of his bent knees. At one point he even drove them sideways on the window but stopped pretty quick when Roy seemed to narrow his eyes at him through the rearview mirror, though Roy regularly narrowed his eyes in general at everyone and everything.

“Seems to me Betsy tills one hell of a crop up there,” Linda said, “and pretty young beans to boot.”

“Fluty booty,” said Joey.

Linda peered through the trees. Roy lit a cigarette and cracked his window to vent the smoke.

“Listen, Linda. She does what she wants. She doesn't listen to me or anybody and never will. If she picks bad beans what can I do?”

“Beaner wiener,” Joey said.

The car passed between an open section of field between the trees. Joey arched forward to look out at far-away twin silver silos of a dairy farm. He leaned left as the car went into a sharp right turn.

“If she's going to be such a green thumb--” said Linda but was interrupted.

Wind, which came through the open window had blown a long ash from Roy's cigarette into his eye. He yelled “F-whoa!” and pulled the steering wheel hard to the left. Linda yelped, too, as the car hopped the high outside shoulder, and flew over the shallow ditch like a hydrofoil. Joey was exhilarated -- it was like being on a jet plane during take-off. He sat forward to see what was going on. The inertia threw him to the right, and the edge of the vinyl seat-belt cut his stomach diagonally through his clothes.

With one eye closed and one hand on the steering wheel, Roy piloted the Mercedes Benz, its tires spinning in the air and the engine running high, through the cool forest air and into the trunk of a maple tree. Linda fell down toward Roy at the last moment and was crunched between the front seats and the dashboard. Joey broke two ribs and an ankle (snapped from the force of impact alone) but remained in place in the back seat. Roy was thrown through the windshield and soared like an attack helicopter through the dappled dark green of the leaves.

The front of the car hugged the tree, which had partly fallen and nearly split in two. Oil ran from the engine and soaked into the bush-covered turf while smoke rose from cracks in the crumpled hood.

Joey had trouble breathing. He sat up and tried to undo the belt buckle, which squeezed him like a jungle snake. He noticed that he had vomited on himself and on the back of the driver's seat which was six inches in front of him, torn and bent. Pain throbbed in his ankle. He finally found the buckle-button and released it. He looked at the throw-up on his hands and started to sob.

Both of Linda's legs were broken in more than four places, her head was bruised with skin scraped away from one cheek and she bled internally. The parking break had pierced the flesh of her lower back, the metal skeleton having broken through its thin rubber casing. She gasped in the front seat, and opened her eyes. At first she saw white, then blurred color, then Roy's key-chain, a little bronze hedge-trimmer, dangling near her nose.

“Joey,” she said faintly and coughed up blood.

She tried to ask him a question but found herself caught in a blizzard of coughs.

Joey poked warily at the corners of the laceration on his diaphragm. He perched on soar knees to look over into the front seat, which was snug against the glove compartment,  speedometer, and dome-light. The rear window was dotted with water and antifreeze.

“Mom. My foot hurts. Mom.”

Linda cried and laughed and sniffed blood back up her nose.

“Jesusgod. Joey you okay? Joey, are you hurt.”

Linda moved her head slowly and, seeing that it was safely mobile, craned around in every direction. She noticed that the driver's side door was gone, and that a clump of raspberry bushes outside, to the left of the car were steamed, wilted and covered with dark liquid.

“Can you get to the front?” she said, “come through the front door. Come around the side.”

Joey scooted up onto the back seat and screamed as he pressed down on his ankle.

“Joey? What happened.”

He scrambled to get out, stepped onto the side-door which rocked beneath him on a patch of mud. He hopped on the grass with his good foot, wobbled around on it, and pulled at Linda's hand which hung out from the small tunnel of air in which she lay.

She yelped and moved her fingers.

“Don't pull me, son, I'm stuck. Joey, stop. I'm stuck. Are you alright? Come here, let me see that foot.”

Joey knelt down and put his head under the steering wheel and hugged the upper half of Linda which was the only visibly accessible part. Then he laid his foot next to her face.

“Where's Dad,” he said.

Linda touched his foot with her fingers and scratched it. She looked up, her forehead wrinkled, and attempted a smile. Her cheeks puckered as blood poured into her stomach.

“You're okay, booby,” she said, and pushed him weakly, “Go now. You have to stop a car and I love you to get help son please I'll be okay then. Stop a car.”

She blinked, and the world went pink. She could make out the tiny red capillaries in her eyes just before they rolled upwards and she passed out.

“Wait,” Joey said, and touched her shoulder, “what?”

Then, thinking she had moved on, Joey shouted at her and squeezed her hand. He stopped to gasp some more, drooling strings of saliva on his overalls, and heard her faint, crackled breath. He fell on his backside backing out of the car, and stood up fast.

The tree guillotined by the car was a youthful one; it had cracked through the base of its trunk, the meat of the wood torn apart, and it leaned into other tight branches, held aloft by an amiably patched canopy. Joey saw black smoke spewing from the hood. He hopped by it toward the road.

Birds warbled in their nests, spooked by the sound and the smell. A chipmunk stood frozen on a log, twitching and wary. All at once, Joey tried to run but as he exerted full pressure on his ankle, he fell down.

He stood and his lungs were on fire. Tears streaked the circles under his eyes. He hop-sprinted back through bushes, his bum leg almost completely numb to the knee, and the cut on his stomach stinging at the corners. He fell again, got up again, his clothes soiled and ripped open, hopped some more, shot out of the woods, and galloped like a young mare with new shoes across the ditch and the two skid marks in the gravel near the road. Birds fanned out across the open sky, disgruntled by the breach in routine. Joey listened to the wind and looked right, then left. He limped down the road, squinting, and his head felt dizzy. He hobbled but kept on. He navigated the turn in the road, keeping low and to the left, concentrating on the painted white line. Finally, his view was free of trees. He stood in the yellow sunlight and looked across a broad field of tasseled corn. He raised his eyebrows at the twin silos which stood next to each other, tall and bright. He stared at them; they were rockets almost -- a series of windows down the side reflected the green and brown of the field and Joey thought of outer space and comets and Titan, the moon with an atmosphere.

“Kid. Hey, kid,” said the man.

A tractor had pulled up along side Joey and, seeing that he moved in tiny hops with his arms folded across his what-was-left-of-a-shirt, the driver had applied the brake.

There was an explosion of birds behind them who squawked as they rose from the forest, giving up their vigil at last. The rusted blue tractor exuded a plume of dark smoke, which spun in the air, clinging to itself like ivy.

Joey didn't turn to look at the man, a farmer with white hair and spectacles, but only the silos and how they gleamed against the white of the horizon like shepherds, how they were marched toward him by the platoon of care-free cows that lounged in the field beneath.

“What happened there?” the man said, leaning out the window of the tractor, coasting alongside the boy, “Where's your folks?”

“My father back there,” said Joey, and his eyelids fluttered, “My.”

He tripped on his own foot and rolled toward the farm into the ditch. The farmer put the tractor in park and scurried down from it.

“My father has died,” Joey said.

He lay on his side and, glazed, saw a bunch of dandelions that sprouted near his face amongst long spears of grass. With one hand he reached into the front pocket of his overalls and ran a thumb along the wheels of the little green Volkswagen. With the other he grabbed at the yellow flowers while the farmer jumped from his car and ran to him. Joey uprooted a handful of the shortest of the weeds, some not yet in full bloom, and rubbed their fiery manes across his cheek.