Jerry Dennis ~ Three Prose Pieces

LATE NIGHT, WYOMING, 1972

Ten days out of high school I was on a Greyhound head­ed west with John K. It was his idea to ride bus­es and hitch­hike to California or until our mon­ey ran out. I’d been try­ing to decide what to do with my life, maybe go to col­lege, maybe join the Army, maybe trav­el the world and fall in love with girls in every nation, but on the bus I decid­ed there was plen­ty of time to think about it lat­er. For now I had two hun­dred dol­lars in twen­ty-dol­lar bills in my pock­et and a back­pack filled with clothes and thrift-shop paper­backs. I read nov­els one after the oth­er as we crossed the Great Plains. There was noth­ing to see on that end­less prairie but corn and wheat and sky from hori­zon to hori­zon. Nobody had told me there was so much lone­li­ness in America. I read every day and half the nights while every­one else on the bus slept, read so much that when I closed my eyes I heard a voice in my head whis­per­ing cas­cades of words that made no sense. Maybe it was mad­ness, maybe it was my adult self try­ing to break through. Late one night I was awak­ened by the bus slow­ing and stop­ping, the air­brakes releas­ing with a whoosh­ing sound. I opened my eyes—I had been sleep­ing with my head against the window—and saw before me the bright­ly lit main street of a small town crowd­ed with drunk­en cow­boys in chaps and big hats weav­ing with their arms around each oth­er and yahoo­ing some kind of rodeo tri­umph. I won­dered if I could be in rodeos some­day, ride bron­cos for glo­ry and cow­girls, or if it was one of those arts a per­son has to learn prac­ti­cal­ly from the cra­dle like con­cert pianist or pickpocket.

~

AFTER THREE DAYS OF RAIN

After three days of rain and no rides John and I final­ly got picked up by a hip­py in a van reek­ing of weed but he didn’t offer us any. He let us off on the out­skirts of Bozeman and we walked down the side of the high­way wet and filthy, lug­ging our sod­den back­packs, until we came to a string of motels. Clerks who saw us com­ing would switch off their vacan­cy lights. Finally an old Asian guy took pity on us and pay­ment in cash for a room with twin beds. Inside the room we stripped off our wet clothes and draped them over the wall heater and unpacked the drenched tent and spread it across one of the beds and took turns in the show­er until the hot water ran out. John was a lit­tle sick of me so he took off on foot to find a gro­cery store or a restau­rant we could afford. I locked the door behind him. Truck traf­fic rum­bled out­side and a man in the room next door kept shout­ing over and over to some­one named Mona that he had had enough of her boss’s dirty tricks. Our room was filled with steam from the show­er and very hot, so after I bounced on the bed in my under­wear for a while I had to take anoth­er show­er. I found a menu in the desk draw­er and ordered a piz­za and tipped the deliv­ery kid a dol­lar in dimes and nick­els. It was a pret­ty good piz­za. For the first time in three days I was warm and dry and when I found a base­ball game on tele­vi­sion I felt like the luck­i­est boy in the world.

~

GOOD IN A CRISIS

The bul­let that smashed the win­dow of my par­ents’ house in Flint, Michigan in 1956 as they sat beneath it watch­ing tele­vi­sion. My father was a cop so he assumed it was the work of an assas­sin. Turns out it was a stray.

The cries for help I heard com­ing across Long Lake late one night when I was a kid. By the time I woke my father the cries had stopped.

My 1969 Buick Wildcat falling off the jack while I was on my back beneath it try­ing to replace the dif­fer­en­tial joint and yanked too hard on the dri­ve­shaft. I hadn’t placed blocks under the axle because I was 19 and an idiot. I lay pinned to the con­crete while my moth­er ran in cir­cles scream­ing. Gail heard the com­mo­tion (we had just start­ed dat­ing), came out­side, sur­veyed the sit­u­a­tion, reset the jack, and lift­ed the car off me.

The neigh­bor kids run­ning into our house on Duell Road scream­ing that their old man was dying. We found him uncon­scious on the floor of his bed­room, still breath­ing but his face was so gray we were sure the kids were right. When the EMT guys wheeled him past on a stretch­er one of them looked at me and said, “He’s drunk on his ass but he’ll live.”

Rounding a curve one night in Kentucky and com­ing upon a sedan upside down in the road, its wheels still turn­ing. The dri­ver was crawl­ing through the bro­ken wind­shield with blood pour­ing down his face. I sat him on the edge of our back­seat and tried to stanch the bleed­ing with a beach tow­el but when I start­ed pick­ing glass out of his fore­head he swat­ted my hand away. All he want­ed was help throw­ing his emp­ties into the woods before the cops arrived.

Nick when he was in high school call­ing at three in the morn­ing, wak­ing us say­ing “Don’t wor­ry, I’m okay, but there was a fight at a par­ty and a guy stabbed my friend in the stom­ach. I drove him to the hos­pi­tal, don’t wor­ry I wasn’t drink­ing, I’m the DD. The doc­tors say he’s going to be okay. I have to go now. The police are here and they’re going to want me to tell them what happened.”

The old maple in our yard that blew over in the night and dragged the pow­er line down with, ignit­ing a grass­fire that threat­ened to spread to the house. I opened the door to shout a warn­ing to a fire­man I thought was about to step on the live wire, and he was annoyed with me.

You need to stay on your toes. You must. There’s no oth­er way to live. You might think you’re good in a cri­sis but you don’t know.

~

Jerry Dennis’s books have been wide­ly trans­lat­ed and have won numer­ous awards. His essays, sto­ries, and poems have appeared in many pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing New World Writing, Smithsonian, PANK, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Abandon Journal. He lives in north­ern Michigan.