Incident on the Drive Home from Myrtle Beach, SC, 1964
Burned almost beyond recognition,
three brothers—Solarcaine streaks like contrails
on their sun-poisoned faces— raised frogs
on each other’s blond forearms in the backseat—
the twelve year-old half-dreaming of the afternoon an ocean breeze
blew open a door, revealing Aunt Krystal to him
as she stepped out of her one-piece spacesuit.
He felt a high desert-like blast of hot air flowing through
the family sedan, imagined the voices of his parents obliterated
by sonic booms, gazed across the optical illusion
made by row after ragged cottonfield row
until his eyes crossed and suddenly he was going nowhere—
caught between old atomic bomb sites,
secret Defense Department airstrips, and giant sombrero billboards
announcing, SOUTH OF THE BORDER FIREWORKS
IS STRAIGHT AHEAD, AMIGOS!
More feelings of otherness invaded his imagination—
drew him on to meet for ice cream businessman Kenneth Arnold,
who vividly recalled June 24, 1947, when he saw
nine bright objects fly across the face of Mt. Rainier—
to greet with surprise at the local hobby store George Adamski
and a tall blond Venusian named Orthon— to listen between laps
at the YMCA pool as former astronaut Gordon Cooper offered
to show him confiscated negatives of flying saucers
intercepted on May 3, 1957. Yes, he had the feeling that behind
everything lay something else.
In the rear-view mirror, the robot-laser eye
of his old man angrily monitored a foreign sports car
overtake and pass them on the two-lane state road—
damn teenagers impatient with the bumper-to-bumper line
of station wagons, campers, and trucks towing boats— not caring
about security risks, but gathering speed,
gathering nerve, hooting and hollering as they passed car after car—
They’ll let us in—those slow fucks don’t wanna’ die!
imagining their plodding parents in each car they passed,
laughing as their road rocket—a red-lining blur—
disappeared in the uproad glare.
He witnessed no orange sodium vapor
or xenon glow from this close encounter, no cigar-shaped craft
tracing a rectangular pattern above Joshua trees
and abandoned Quonset huts in the Nevada desert
to show him they were shadowed by perils—
making you think he was pretty good
at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do them in,
but you’d be wrong. At twelve, he worried more
about alien abduction than death by motor vehicle.
The G-force of sudden braking caused his sleepy head
to rebound against the car seat. Traffic backed up in the middle
of nowhere, and flashing lights from an unseen source
froze in time the rural South Carolina tableaux:
a ruined tobacco barn in an overgrown field,
farmers leaning against their trucks at a gas station,
tv screens flickering in open-doored trailers,
an old black woman feeding her dog chained to a tree,
the wreckage we crept by eventually,
as uniformed technicians threw tarps over the evidence,
took photographs of something dead.
three brothers—Solarcaine streaks like contrails
on their sun-poisoned faces— raised frogs
on each other’s blond forearms in the backseat—
the twelve year-old half-dreaming of the afternoon an ocean breeze
blew open a door, revealing Aunt Krystal to him
as she stepped out of her one-piece spacesuit.
He felt a high desert-like blast of hot air flowing through
the family sedan, imagined the voices of his parents obliterated
by sonic booms, gazed across the optical illusion
made by row after ragged cottonfield row
until his eyes crossed and suddenly he was going nowhere—
caught between old atomic bomb sites,
secret Defense Department airstrips, and giant sombrero billboards
announcing, SOUTH OF THE BORDER FIREWORKS
IS STRAIGHT AHEAD, AMIGOS!
More feelings of otherness invaded his imagination—
drew him on to meet for ice cream businessman Kenneth Arnold,
who vividly recalled June 24, 1947, when he saw
nine bright objects fly across the face of Mt. Rainier—
to greet with surprise at the local hobby store George Adamski
and a tall blond Venusian named Orthon— to listen between laps
at the YMCA pool as former astronaut Gordon Cooper offered
to show him confiscated negatives of flying saucers
intercepted on May 3, 1957. Yes, he had the feeling that behind
everything lay something else.
In the rear-view mirror, the robot-laser eye
of his old man angrily monitored a foreign sports car
overtake and pass them on the two-lane state road—
damn teenagers impatient with the bumper-to-bumper line
of station wagons, campers, and trucks towing boats— not caring
about security risks, but gathering speed,
gathering nerve, hooting and hollering as they passed car after car—
They’ll let us in—those slow fucks don’t wanna’ die!
imagining their plodding parents in each car they passed,
laughing as their road rocket—a red-lining blur—
disappeared in the uproad glare.
He witnessed no orange sodium vapor
or xenon glow from this close encounter, no cigar-shaped craft
tracing a rectangular pattern above Joshua trees
and abandoned Quonset huts in the Nevada desert
to show him they were shadowed by perils—
making you think he was pretty good
at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do them in,
but you’d be wrong. At twelve, he worried more
about alien abduction than death by motor vehicle.
The G-force of sudden braking caused his sleepy head
to rebound against the car seat. Traffic backed up in the middle
of nowhere, and flashing lights from an unseen source
froze in time the rural South Carolina tableaux:
a ruined tobacco barn in an overgrown field,
farmers leaning against their trucks at a gas station,
tv screens flickering in open-doored trailers,
an old black woman feeding her dog chained to a tree,
the wreckage we crept by eventually,
as uniformed technicians threw tarps over the evidence,
took photographs of something dead.
posted by John A. Blackard at 7:10 PM
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