LJ Idol 10: Week 7: Where I'm From
Stories About the Jersey Devil
You're three thousand miles away from where you want to be so you decide to get drunk.
You wander through the back-streets and back-alleys of San Francisco with the bottle in one hand and the stub of a joint clutched between thumb and forefinger of the other.
You circle the blocks not really paying attention to your turns but it would be pretty hard for you to get lost in this city anymore. You know the neighborhoods by the architecture and can navigate by the weather. The sidewalk never ends here.
You're trying to find a story, chasing an idea:
An old woman passes peacefully in her sleep. At the gates of heaven she's greeted by her husband who had gone ahead of her eight years earlier.
“What took you so long?” he asks, leaning against a chrome and black motorcycle.
She's too awestruck to answer but when he calls out to her again using a nickname she always claimed she hated in life she feels herself laugh and is surprised when it doesn’t become a shuddering, rattling, rasping through her chest.
She leans on her tip toes to kiss him on the cheek, inhales the scent of pomade slicked through his hair.
“One of these for me?” she asks tapping on the pack of cigarettes rolled up into the sleeve of his white t-shirt.
He tucks his aviators into his pocket and pulls out an engraved silver Zippo holding the flame out cupped between hands.
She blows out the smoke asking, “So where's this boat I've been hearin' about for so many goddamn years?”
His grin lights up his eyes and he swings a leg over the motorcycle kick-starting it to life with a growl.
“This road trip's just getting started. It's still miles until we reach the ocean.”
The sound of the engine fades and you find yourself with your forehead against red brick; fist clutching bottle pressed into the wall.
You push yourself up and start walking again, fishing for the Bic in your pocket.
You decide you can't remain objective when recounting the tales of your grandparents who raised you on National Park Stamps and Highway Atlases, gave you a nickname to use over the CB radio, a taste for greasy spoon breakfasts and retro roadside attractions, and the bittersweet curse of wanderlust, that would one day give you the courage to live on your thumb and a prayer.
She was only fourteen when they met in a boarding house and he used to knock on the floor to signal he was home and they should sneak out together. Eventually, there was a shotgun wedding and four more children.
He had a heart attack when he was thirty-six and lived on disability for the rest of his days. He became the neighborhood handyman and an avid fisherman.
They liked to scare you with stories about a woman who gave birth to a monster that still lurked in the Pine Barrens and an eccentric heiress who was so convinced she was haunted that she never stopped adding rooms to her mysterious house in an effort to confuse the spirits.
To you all they ever seemed to do was fight but after he died suddenly and unexpectedly, while patching a hole in their roof, at the ripe old age of seventy-three she was never the same; and you learned that for them “leave me be,” meant you're mine forever my darlingand “why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier,” was I still love you so much my heart might burst from the saying of it.
Three thousand miles away from New Jersey you mourn her death in your own way and hope she knows all the stories you never got to share and stumble drunkenly through through the city of San Francisco thinking that maybe, just maybe, when your grandparents threatened to leave you on the side of the road for the Jersey Devil they were saying: be brave kid, we love you.
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675 Words
Dedicated with love to Robert and Mary (who is not a horse)
*You can take the girl out of Jersey but you can never take the Jersey out of the girl*
Edit: Here's the link to the poll and other entries for this round: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2062272