5. Creosote
Dad died six weeks ago and soon school would be out. Mother was preparing for the farm sale. I think she wanted me out of the way, or maybe she wanted me to start living again, like a normal kid, or maybe Raymond had just invited me over and I finally felt like it was time. I don’t know. I was living in a fog. In any case, on Friday I took my sleepover bag with me and didn’t come home after school. I got off the bus with Raymond, his older brother Norman, younger sister Odette, and youngest brother, Joel. I recall that the bed I slept in had a thick mattress on spongy springs that I sunk into. It was not flat or firm like my own. It was nice, and not uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I had trouble sleeping. I was caught between this new comfort and what I am used to, which is, I guess, another sort of comfort. I also felt guilty. I shouldn’t be doing sleepovers and having fun when my Dad had just died. It seemed to me I was betraying him; I was not being sorrowful enough and here I was on this sleepover. It was a restless night.
I awoke the next day with no joy, no enthusiasm for a day with my friend. I had nothing. I was still overtaken by Dad’s death. How was I to live on now? This could not be like it was before. It wasn’t like before. It couldn’t be normal. Sleepovers were for fun, for playing; I didn’t feel like fun or playing. I began that day in fear. Afraid I would disappoint. How could I be fun to be with? I felt obliged to Raymond and very certain I could not be what I needed to be.
After breakfast we, Raymond, Joel, Norman, and I, headed out to play. We went to see the secret fort they had made. The entrance to the fort was the white enamel door of an old dryer on the side of a big mound of sand and dirt. We opened it and crawled down a tunnel in the sand which lead to the interior of an old car that had been completely buried in sand. I was awestruck. Norman had a flashlight so we could see. We hung out there for a while. Did they have club meetings here? Where did the car come from? Did you find it here, or… Oh, so how did you get it buried in the ground? I was impressed that their dad had given them this old car and let Norman drive the frontend loader and bury it. When my questions dried up, when we all ran out of things to say, when we tired of sitting in the dark in an old car buried in the sand, we crawled back out to a sunny, hot day.
Peter Scotchmer3 years ago
This is a moving and heartfelt evocation of a time of sorrow and dislocation, but with the compensation, however small at the time, of the discovery that life can and must go on despite bereavement, and that the natural world can still surprise us all when we re-establish connection with it, as happens in the final paragraph. What is especially powerful is the vivid use of descriptive detail– the piety of the family’s faith, the devotion of son for his father, the workaday world on a prairie farm, all as seen through a boy’s eyes– to make the story especially memorable. Great stuff!