Fade

(Canada Poems: Shades of Gray)

Rust in the Forest

I’m a ghost here. Flitting in. Out. No real life; no past.

No future.

I have subtracted everyone from my life. But I’m the one who’s gone. Somewhere in California, in a house she’s lived in since 1953, my Grandmother is living and dying; my Grandfather is stern and proud, watching and hating himself a little. Uncles, aunts, parents, sister, brother; they are living and dying, moving back and forth, in a web of people, a net spread across the country. Each string pulls a little on all the others.

I’ve extricated myself from the web, south of Victoria. About two miles from the border, the engine of the Renault starts to make a funny, scratchy, cough-like click. “I can’t stop,” I think. “I need to get my stuff, get back to the campground. I can’t break down here.”
I pushed on and ended up stopped in the customs line, little car getting louder by the moment. The gauges show no problems: temperature normal, oil pressure normal. By the time I got to the customs booth, the guard widened his eyes and waved me through. Clearly I was Not To Break Down in his lane.

I make it almost all the way to the town of Blaine, Washington — about another mile — before the engine seizes up completely and I roll to a stop on the shoulder. Dusty smoke rolls out from under the hood.

A good, long walk to the nearest pay phone (nobody had a cell phone, not even this one), then a chat with a mechanic.

We stared at my car. He said he could fix it, for twenty-five hundred. Maybe more. We stared some more (he was world-class at this; obviously well-practiced in staring at dead cars with grieving owners).

He said, “I have an old truck I could sell you. It was my Dad’s, and it sat around a few years, then I rebuilt the motor, synced the transmission. Body’s a little rough. Nine hundred, with your trade.”