Dust Devil (2 page)

^{*Poem
adapted from
The
Lotus-Eaters: Choric Song
by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson}

Does
the road wind uphill all the way?

Yes,
to the very end.

Will
the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From
mom to night, my friend.

Up-Hill

—
Christina
Rossetti

Like
one that on a lonesome road

Doth
walk in fear and dread,

And
having once turned round walks on,

And
turns no more his head;

Because
he knows a frightful fiend

Doth
close behind him tread.

The
Ancient Mariner

—
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge

A
Country Road, The Midwest, The Present

Once,
a long time ago, he had thought that if only he ran fast enough, far
enough, he could escape from the past, could leave behind in the
dust, weary and defeated, what it was that chased him, and that then,
turning to gaze back at it, he could laugh again, because finally, he
would be free. But now, when all his roads were run, he knew the
past
was with him still, and always would be, because at last he had
learned that no matter how long and hard you ran, the one thing in
the world you could never outrun was yourself.

He
crested the rise before him, and the old road—the one that had
been the first and was now the last road for him—stretched
ahead, narrow, wending and unpaved, its hard-packed earth as red-gold
and sandy in the hot summer sun as he remembered. Time had dimmed
many things in his mind... but not his memory of that road: the
daunting sight of it unwinding interminably before him, the dusty
smell of it in his quivering nostrils, the gritty taste of it in his
parched mouth, the rough feel of it beneath the callused soles of his
bare feet, the sound of it in his ears...a sound that had been the
silence of aloneness and desolation, which he had already known so
well when, his thumb uplifted in the hitchhiker’s age-old
gesture, he had first set his feet upon the road.

That
silence, like the road, haunted him still.

Years
ago, there had been no highway leading to the town that lay at the
road’s end. But although the state had long since built one—a
two-lane blacktop now cracked from the heat of summers gone by, with
a patchwork of light and dark macadam where potholes had been filled
in—still, he had chosen to come this way, the long way, by the
old road. He’d had to prove to himself that, finally, he could
face it. That it was not, in reality, some monstrous, gaping-mawed
snake, coils slithering and tangling as it lay in wait for him, as it
did in his dreams, the nightmares from which, over the years, he had
awakened in a cold sweat far more often than he cared to admit.

For
a long moment, he paused on the rise, staring at the road, faintly
incredulous at the sight of it, not quite able to believe that what
had tormented him for so long was only an old, dusty country road,
empty and forlorn, not much used anymore. Then at last relief swept
through him, and he almost laughed aloud at his foolishness, at the
fear that had made his mouth taste as acrid as the fine layer of
grime that clung to his wind-tousled black hair, his lean, bronzed
face and his muscular, bare forearms, damp with sweat in the sun that
had beaten down on him as he had driven for countless miles in the
classic red roadster he had bought some years back and painstakingly
restored.

It
was hard now to believe that when be had fled from the town down this
road, he had been the proverbial poor boy from the wrong side of the
tracks, with the law hard on his heels, and nothing more to his name
than the clothes on his back and a few dollars in his pocket.
Sometimes, when he remembered that frightened, desperate young man he
had been, it was as though he stood outside himself, watching his
life unfold through the eyes of a stranger, as though it had been
someone else who had lived those wild, bittersweet days of youth that
would never come again. Those days might have broken a lesser man,
but now he knew they had been the making of him. Whatever lay ahead
for him, he was ready and willing now to meet it.

At
the realization, sharp-edged anticipation rose suddenly within him,
and with it, a rush of adrenaline that made his pulse race like the
roadster’s engine as he depressed the accelerator. Trailing a
cloud of dirt that was like a dust devil in his wake, he abruptly
bore headlong down the road toward the town that waited at his
journey’s end.

After
more than a decade, Renzo Cassavettes was through running.

He
was going home.

Youth,
what man’s age is like to be doth show;

We
may our ends by our beginnings know.

Of
Prudence

—
Sir
John Denham

Though
nothing can bring back the hour

Of
splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We
will grieve not, rather find

Strength
in what remains behind.

Ode.
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

—
William
Wordsworth

A
Small Town, The Midwest, The Present

“
Alex,
hurry up, please,” Sarah Kincaid called up the steep, narrow
staircase from the foyer of her old Victorian farmhouse for the
umpteenth time that morning. She waited expectantly for a long
moment, then sighed with both anger and exasperation when her son
neither appeared on the landing above nor even bothered to answer
her. “Alex, I’m going to be late for my hair appointment!
If you don’t come on, you’ll have to stay here.” If
her son heard her, he continued to ignore her. “Alex, if I have
to trudge up these steps to get you, you’re going to be sorry!”
she finally threatened futilely, at her wit’s end with the boy.

Every
day, it seemed he became more withdrawn, more sullen, more difficult
to handle. Since birth, he had never been a particularly easy child.
But at least when he had been younger, smaller, there had been a
child’s inherent sweetness and curiosity in him. It had been
easy to forgive him for his stubborn temper tantrums when, afterward,
he had crawled up into her lap and laid his dark little head upon her
breast, his big, thick-lasted, molasses-brown eyes fluttering shut as
he had drifted to sleep in her arms.

But
now that Alex was eleven years old, it seemed to Sarah that her son
had become a stranger to her, that somewhere along the way, she had
lost the child so precious to her that she had often lain awake at
night listening intently to the sound of his breathing, her heart
lurching with fear at the thought that he might die in his crib while
she slept. She remembered all the times when, in the wee hours of the
morning, she had crept to his bedside to check on him, to kiss his
incredibly soft, chubby cheek and to marvel at his very existence.
And it did not seem possible to her that these days, she frequently
felt nothing but a sense a relief when his bedtime rolled around and
she could spend the remainder of the evening alone, in peace.

At
last, sighing heavily again, dreading the thought of yet another
confrontation with her son, Sarah slowly climbed the stairs and made
her way down the hall to Alex’s room. Involuntarily, she
shuddered at the sight of it. The place looked like a war zone, a
disaster area, with dirty dishes stacked on the desk and equally
dirty clothes strewn all over the floor, despite the laundry hamper
that stood in one comer. Posters held in place with pushpins
haphazardly jammed into their edges covered practically every inch of
the walls. Unmistakable traces of Kool-Aid had dripped down the
closet door to puddle on the hard-wood floor. An assortment of
colored felt-tipped markers, notebook paper, comic books, trading
cards, action figures, stuffed animals and Nintendo games cluttered
the room. Her son himself perched on the unmade bed, glued to his
small television, a Nintendo controller in his hands, his thumbs
quickly and expertly manipulating the arrows and buttons. On the TV
screen, a parade of otherworldly warriors and humanlike creatures
moved and leaped, all appearing to pummel and kick one another in a
battle for supremacy.