Daren Dean

Mercury in Retrograde 46

Ruby

Air bubbles like rosary beads jogged in the whiskey bottle as Cyrus drank from it. Ruby refused to allow Jessie to drink a thing stronger than beer since he was the one driving. He drove better when he was drinking beer anyway. A lot of alcoholics she knew said they drove better drunk, but Jessie was one who actually did. The bucolic scenes flew by like pictures on a sidewards movie screen. Ancient cars sat on front lawns in southern Missouri. A Studebaker sat propped up on blocks with a missing headlight and grill like a troubled boy who had been in a fistfight. A symbol of the owner’s hope and faith that the past had meaning and through the car invested hope in the future in a moment of clairvoyance when the hull of the motor vehicle was searched out in a junkyard, money changing hands, and finally it was hauled to sit in that lumpy yard near the gas station as a testament to a life remembered.

Ruby did not like to travel. She never left home anymore except to go to work or a 4-H event in the summer at the fairgrounds. She went to St. Jude’s for Mass on an almost weekly basis. Home was where she belonged and it was where she wanted Jaelyn.

Jessie and Cyrus talked together. They told every old joke they had ever heard before. They listened to a ball game that seemed to go on from here to eternity. Everything those two did annoyed the hell out of her, but it was only intensified by being stuck in a car

with them. She just wanted to get to Baton Rouge, find her baby, and go home now. Jessie and Cyrus still talked about going to Mardi Gras, but with less enthusiasm as the trip wore on.

May 3, 2010