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On The Road
They traveled on in various ways through all the days, and as near as they could manage it each stop was also a destination, not just a break for rest or food but another town or city with a motel. As he drove she did the calculations and called ahead to reserve a room at some scenic spot or whistlestop along the way, often in the next state while they were in the northeastern US, more often at arbitrary spots along the Interstates, and occasionally in a rest area or scenic overlook. Whether catnapping in the car or getting a proper rest in a motel room bed, they reached out to hold hands through the night.
In the morning after each stop, usually as first rays of sunshine streamed through the curtains or past the car’s sunshield, they made their ablutions in a perfunctory way, not speaking to each other. After a silent breakfast, they would venture out by foot and seek a small hill near a stream, often in a local park, sometimes by trespassing in farmlands guarded by dogs or industrial installations stained by smoke.
Then he would take out a small jar, walk to the stream’s edge, and open it there. She would take up a spoonful of the gray contents and toss them into the water. They would watch as the dust left its pattern in the flowing waters and slowly diffused as the waters drifted off. They would stand together and watch, with her hand holding his wrist and his hand in his jacket pocket, holding a box with a ring inside.
They had had the same conversation so often that they could recite it in silence, reading the other’s glances.
Did it feel any different that time?
No, no, just the same as all the others.
Then they turned slowly, taking their time together, until they reached their car and resumed their travels, remaining in silence until one or the other of them thumbed on the radio.
Over and over they performed their ritual, traversing the long roads and great plains and wandering across the entire country, seeing the grander sights and tourist ways but not troubling to stop long anywhere.
There came the day that there was not enough left in the jar for a spoon to catch, and he simply upended it over the water and watched it flow down in a cloudy drift. He tapped the bottom, then rinsed the jar in the stream water to be sure.
It was the last possible stop, and so he gave it a try. Again so much lay between them that no words needed to be said, he simply sank to his knee and offered the box to her with the solemn intensity of a bird offering an interesting stick to its mate.
She wanted to laugh and scream at the same time, but with a glance she confirmed it to him, and took the ring onto her finger.
The sun seemed to shine in a new way as they stood together, and he thought for hopefully the last time of the deathbed words his father spoke almost two months before:
“You will not have my blessing, however far you go, until there’s nothing left of me. And however hard you try, however thin you try to spread my attention, still I will be watching you.”
They walked from the stream and set out for home, their feet and future on a surer path, and as they went he tossed the jar into any old trash can.
In the morning after each stop, usually as first rays of sunshine streamed through the curtains or past the car’s sunshield, they made their ablutions in a perfunctory way, not speaking to each other. After a silent breakfast, they would venture out by foot and seek a small hill near a stream, often in a local park, sometimes by trespassing in farmlands guarded by dogs or industrial installations stained by smoke.
Then he would take out a small jar, walk to the stream’s edge, and open it there. She would take up a spoonful of the gray contents and toss them into the water. They would watch as the dust left its pattern in the flowing waters and slowly diffused as the waters drifted off. They would stand together and watch, with her hand holding his wrist and his hand in his jacket pocket, holding a box with a ring inside.
They had had the same conversation so often that they could recite it in silence, reading the other’s glances.
Did it feel any different that time?
No, no, just the same as all the others.
Then they turned slowly, taking their time together, until they reached their car and resumed their travels, remaining in silence until one or the other of them thumbed on the radio.
Over and over they performed their ritual, traversing the long roads and great plains and wandering across the entire country, seeing the grander sights and tourist ways but not troubling to stop long anywhere.
There came the day that there was not enough left in the jar for a spoon to catch, and he simply upended it over the water and watched it flow down in a cloudy drift. He tapped the bottom, then rinsed the jar in the stream water to be sure.
It was the last possible stop, and so he gave it a try. Again so much lay between them that no words needed to be said, he simply sank to his knee and offered the box to her with the solemn intensity of a bird offering an interesting stick to its mate.
She wanted to laugh and scream at the same time, but with a glance she confirmed it to him, and took the ring onto her finger.
The sun seemed to shine in a new way as they stood together, and he thought for hopefully the last time of the deathbed words his father spoke almost two months before:
“You will not have my blessing, however far you go, until there’s nothing left of me. And however hard you try, however thin you try to spread my attention, still I will be watching you.”
They walked from the stream and set out for home, their feet and future on a surer path, and as they went he tossed the jar into any old trash can.
This is a really cool piece, with solemn and grounded prose that carries the mood throughout. I'm not hugely sold on the ending? This piece kinda hooks the reader on a layered mystery that it peels back almost lovingly, one layer at a time, each answer revealing a new question. Once it's clear what they're doing, the next question that came to my mind was "whose ashes are they scattering?" The silence and lack of interaction between the two characters, plus the broad solemnity and subject matter, almost had me thinking this would be a piece about grief, that one of the characters was not literally present and was being let go one part at a time. Perhaps that's on me—the hand "holding a box with a ring inside" line is a line that should have conjured more hope than loss, in hindsight—but I also don't think the dead father's deathbed speech quite gels as well with their ritual as it could, and weakens the sense that the latter is a satisfying response to the former. It's the incongurence between his "attention" being spread vs his remains that doesn't quite feel like it follows—I think that weakens the impact of "until there's nothing left of me", which was a really good line. That plus his threat to still be watching, which hangs over the otherwise quite conclusive and final ending paragraph, leaves the ending feeling less firm than it should, I think. Still, the prose was gorgeous and I loved the story here so much, and I'm a big fan of how much you leave unsaid throughout, particularly in the first half.