Chapter 38

Like the touch of the leather covering on the steering wheel - you can't explain that. An effect entirely exclusive to the senses, comprehended by the senses and unexplained by reason. The low drone of the ancient engine tore through the dusty street and I stuck my head out the window and squinted against the force of wind blowing my hair awry and my cheeks back against my ears. Air, for all I knew, was stagnant. It was the moving car that stirred it up. And then it recoiled in anger and exacted revenge by ruffling my hair and making my nose numb. The reward is liberating when you brave the force of nature and squint and smile in its wake.

"Put your head back in," he said, tugging me by the collar gently with his finger. I didn't comply. His voice was gruff, familiar. It probably had something to do with the way the loose and wrinkled skin around his neck shook when he exerted his vocal cords. It made words reverberate as they left his lips, I always figured. His words had a quality weighed down with age and slurred with spit. He was old, it's true. The baggy flesh around the eyes all puffed up and wanting for sleep, the hint of crow's feet at the edges tracing down fine lines that may have made him look old when he was young and now irritable when old. A tuft of thinning grey hair had survived on his scalp, and a pair of antiquated, horn-rimmed spectacles at the bridge of his nose, both having stood the test of time, were the only things that made for notable features on his face.

"Put your head back in, it's not safe," he growled once again. He coughed and it shook the phlegm in his lungs and he spat and I drew my face back in reluctantly. I always did that. Ignored what he said the first time round. Maybe just to see how far he'd let me have my own. It was warm inside and as the blood rushed into my cheeks, it stung a bit. I pursed my lips and squeezed the air out, making a sticky, kissing sound. He pretended not to mind. It was an old ambassador, this one. A ton of sheer muscle, a diesel-guzzling dinosaur that he had managed to salvage from the mesozoic era and now decorated his garage, if all it did was look a pretty baby blue. The thing I liked about this car was the numerous compartments he had installed, tinkering with his tools in the middle of the afternoon - there was the glove compartment, the compartment for his tools, the little opening for the first aid kit and a hole near the dials to hold his cigarettes. It didn't seem to bother him that the car shook every time the engine was fired up, or that the leather seats could get heated up enough to scorch one's bottom when the car was left out in the sun long enough, as long as it could hold a cigarette, it was irreplaceable.

I found the loose sheet of paper I'd been looking for and stuck it in his face. It was a caricature of a smiling lizard I had drawn last night, in the light of the tiny bulb above the dashboard.

"What are you doing? Get it out of my face," he said, taken aback.

I took it away and looked at it for some time, traced the jagged lines of the pencil lead with my eyes.

"Here, let me have a look at it," he said now, gentler this time. I handed him the sheet and he smiled when he saw it.

"Is he a friend of the turtle?" I'd drawn the turtle the previous day. I nodded.

"It's good." He handed me back the sheet and turned his attention back to the road. It was a warm day, the kind you don't feel slip from morning to afternoon and then melt into evening, inducing a phlegmatic lugubriousness that resists the urge to step out and walk around even when you're jetlagged and haggard after a two days' journey. The trees drifted past in the distance, flowing fields blocking out the horizon and the orange sun casting coloured rings as it dipped in the darkening sky. Things seemed so placid, as if undisturbed, almost serene. And yet, far away, the noise still persisted, pervading the city, engulfing it in a haze of burning smoke and bleeding into a hundred streams and blowing the winds that made the flags flutter on rooftops and freezing the warmth of the day that made the kites fly over the fields and dogs lie sprawled in the grass. I knew it would follow us.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked, my stomach was grumbling.

“Check behind. There might be some of those biscuits left from yesterday.”

The backseat was packed with a carton of utensils, a few bags of food, a blanket and a pillow, and a pile of musty books, brought down carefully from the loft.

“Hey,” he said suddenly as he turned to me. I waited, accustomed to the word being followed by something meaningful. But nothing followed. His eyes had a peculiar glint to them, one of sorrow and abject resignation and fortitude and affection at the same time. It was the wordless contradiction of having opened your mouth, but failed to find the right words. He drew a deep sigh and set his eyes back on the road. The word lingered, sometimes you don’t need to speak for someone to listen.

I looked at his face and in the diminutive reflection of myself in his glasses, I saw how small I was. For all the strength one could muster from having weathered the ways of the world, mine was a scintilla of hope that I'd derived from reveling in nature, engaging my whims...being just a boy. And as it is with those who are strong, his actions were guided by an immutable sense of responsibility, one that could match the fury of the storms or stand, unscathed as life bled out of him. Neither age, nor frailty could take that away from a man, that which is born out of a responsibility to protect. And I knew he would. As far as I was concerned, he was indestructible.

“Are we going to be alright?” I couldn’t find the strength to raise my voice above a whisper. I hoped he would find it for me.

“Yes we are,” he said, as if wishing it to be true.

The sun had set and the moon had risen, scarred and scabbed from behind the trees that etched the horizon.

“Are we going to be alright?...”

The bumpy road rose up to hug the tires of our rickety ambassador that droned on into the night, with the hissing of unseen denizens of the woods around and the chirping of the crickets by the lakes. The cones of yellow headlights cut through the gathering fog, into the eternity beyond and a heavy silence hung limp in the air.

And I really, really hoped we would…