Highway 1 stretches. Imagination creates 127 miles-long run-on fragments woven loosely as a novice quilt. Continual waving aqua blue backdrops resort, perfect palms, trailer park, ratty palms, keyside diner. Rinse mind. Repeat for hours on end.
Birthdays. Reid ran to two birthdays. This one special, that one defiant. Mindpops blistered defiance, permanently stuck on flypaper serving as memory, as it spun back around successfully seeking exposure. Remembering the last few miles before turning into a school parking lot situated near Mile Zero, he mused
Everybody has that kind of birthday. Everybody.
Birthdays are days. One day in the life of those enveloped in their glorious mist of temporary celebration. Next day, earth rotates, warms and begins anew. Only you are older. Maybe by only a day, but when you become an adult, the day becomes a year. A child looks beyond to the next birthday, another milestone. Eight. Eight-and-a-quarter. Eight-and-seven-eighths.
A nine year-old gets the pony, returning to that one birthday where everything seemed a dream. The pony made grandma’s store-bought cake, its icing hard as peanut brittle, taste better. No kid bloodied a nose playing Blind Man’s Bluff or caught a Frisbee with their face. Uncle Steve didn’t pick up the adult punch bowl and drink it down, showing off his non-swallowing mechanism and alcoholic tendencies.
At age 83, surrounded by friends, friends of friends, ex-spouses, or absolutely no one they recognize, the day wonderfully fat 74 years ago comes running back, a pony dripping with sweat from matter’s acreage. Not one detail – the state of this cake, special decorations, or if one of the other residents of their current assisted living facility has a heart attack as three of four layers are slit with the knife – remains. The pony never dies.
Everything, as much as humanly possible given the night’s entire events, had been remembered. Nothing gained by expanding upon it, nothing lost remembering the entire truth, Reid settled into the present.
The matchbook was tattered, worn from too much time in pockets, too much exposure to salted air, crammed into a kitchen junk drawer reserved for odd pens, recipe cards, magnets and long-forgotten striped Halloween candy no tongue desires. Its strike plate, grayed to a light ash, would need extra effort to aggravate the sulfur on the final match in the pack. Pre-determined destination? A boldly colored double-wide candle.
Pie sat on the temporary table on its temporary platter generally used for holiday meat. Snowy white-topped pie, golden yellow piping with birthday wishes scripted in red waited for flame to ignite the wick.
Looks like a pie you’d find at a St. Louis Cardinals convention to celebrate Stan Musial’s batting titles, less one… or the number of monthly shots McGwire took in his flank.
Reid’s comment preceded her light laugh. Everything – decorations, folding chairs, protective plastic tablecloth – was ready way too soon. Guests imminent arrival wouldn’t be for 90 minutes. Pie waited, protected by a slow, oscillating fan and cool air conditioning. Read the rest of this page »
Time for rest. As with any birthday dominated by games, balloons, mini-plates and plastic forks, there would come a severe spasm of activity immediately followed by sucrose sleep. An aggressive pre-emptive strike necessary for energy retention, Reid sought the sofa.
