The Twentieth Century

   We had the new Chevrolet steel Idyll, sky-blue metal with the salmon interior, A Sunset On Wheels.

   We had silver moving clowns, the most famous of which resembled our worst villain, which confused us. Little toothbrush mustaches.

   We had an abundance, for once, of chocolate and tobacco, and nearly everyone drank a sweet bubbly beverage flavored by a South American plant. It somewhat burned our nose and throat.

   My mood was sweet and even, the rain was warm driving down the road with the radio on. It played some lovely exciting tune. Then, an unctuous voice with news of war.

   You drove to work with your coffee between your legs, the line ahead pink near the tree line, your dashboard with serene green lights. In the back seat was a Wild Bill Hickock coloring book and a small sneaker. It read Red Ball Jets.

   You stumbled into the cold green sea, enervated, with a dry mouth, afraid you might step in a hole and drown. You can’t swim. The beach is ahead, some palm fronds wave. It’s beautiful, like Bali Hai, but there are planes descending ack ack ack, making filmic little fountains of sand where they strafe the beach. Finally, reaching the woods, and separated from your company, you all asleep.

   Some of your son’s crayons melted in the back window. Remember to scrape those up, or melt it with wax paper and an iron, as the newspaper instructed.

   Bring home the Butternut Bread, Fred.

   We each had Rangoon Night Market Noodles. They were salty, with pieces of duck. Then we went to a movie. Someone sat on my homburg. When it was over, we walked out stunned and embarrassed. Even mediocre films communicate with one’s childhood. The line of people waiting to get in examined us carefully. And for an hour after this, every little sound was delicious: the keys in our pocket, the creak of our seats, the bedsprings when we crawled into bed, effects in a soundtrack. Our sex was a little melodramatic, with a loopy grandeur. And afterwards we were so thirsty.

   We watched the solar eclipse in Dad’s welding helmet, his crusader’s helm, wobbling and blind.

   Our tongue always smarted with the astringent mint of the toothpaste when we moved to the bed, and she was always burning holes in her nylons with those goddamn Pell Mells.

   Sunday night you were alone in the farmhouse, near sunset. It had been a hot day, with cicadas humming in the corn, the sound rising into the hot blue silver. You took a bath, and when you walked into the living room, still a little wet, the curtains planed horizontal, and you could hear distant thunder. The radio was low, playing classical music. The corn leaves were active, but discreet. That night you sat on the front porch steps drinking your son’s Hi-C citrus cooler. A special events floodlight examined the horizon.

   Under a sky thick and like pewter, lying there reading with the window open, you heard a Brooklyn catbird imitate a car alarm, the series of warbles and chirps identical, and in the same sequence. The famous Car Alarm Bird.

   You like the way the brushes sound over the car radio when the drummer plays with a small ensemble. As the station gets further away, the sound of the brushes mixes with static, as though some small bright particles were bunched there at the end of his hands. You worry about the car when you leave the tarmac because the bottom pings with small stones from the hardpan. The red radio towers blink far ahead, and off to the right. Soon you move up under them.