GODS OF THE NEON AGE
by Vincent C. Martinez
Copyright ©2014 Vincent C. Martinez. All Rights Reserved.
This short story was corrected and revised July, 2015.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, names, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
GODS OF THE NEON AGE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GODS OF THE NEON AGE
At night, borders become a blur.
We'd been driving for three hours, maybe four. The road narrowed, widened, sometimes marked its intention with lines, sometimes marked its direction with signs. It's possible we were in New Mexico. We'd been in New Mexico hours before at a diner that served cheese sandwiches inside and gasoline outside. It smelled of road tar and bleach, depending on where they were serving you. We'd shared a cheese sandwich and a bottle of Coke before moving on, Mom paying with coins that Dreidel danced on the counter.
We'd shift direction, the truck twisting with the road. There'd be a landmark of some sort visible under the moonless sky. A sharp mountain. A water tower or ranch windmill. Barbed wire strung over tilting fenceposts. The landmarks shifted left, right, then disappeared.
Sometimes I slept, rattled around in the cab of the Dodge one-ton as it hit cracks, seams, and heat ripples in the pavement, their sound a comforting white noise, a regular rhythm like the steadiness of wind racing over the windows, making my eyelids heavy.
The headlights built the landscape: existence from nothing, then nothing again, our world comprised of dim spotlights and patches of gray road, brown sand, and desert scrub. I asked Mom where we were, and she cleared her throat before replying, "Arizona, Baby."
Arizona. Hot. I knew that much about Arizona. Mom smiled and looked at me, dashboard light sculpting soft shadows into her tired face, long black hair unwashed and windblown. We'd been unable to stop long enough to rest and shower, but Mom promised we would once we got closer to Uncle Daniel's somewhere deeper in the darkness.
"You know the Grand Canyon's in Arizona?" she said.
I shook my head. I knew about the Grand Canyon, but it was alien like airbrushed rockets in school science books, familiar but unworldly. I knew my multiplication tables, my cursive, a handful of other things. My grandfather said I didn't need to know much more to work the anthracite mines like he did and that I'd be able to earn a good living—like he did.
Mom kept me away from my grandparents, the black mountains of waste coal overlooking the Susquehanna River, and the soot-smeared brick and clapboard homes around the county. She'd grown up in a "patch," a cluster of buildings not big enough to be a town, not significant enough to be a village. Most patches were clumps of coal miner homes, small clumps in walking distance of the mines.
Mom had a brother, Uncle Daniel, I called him. When he stopped by the small Scranton apartment that Mom and I had occupied for a couple of years, Mom would open the door a crack, keeping the chain lock engaged and Uncle Daniel out in the hallway, his body a wedge in space, his hair slicked back, parted down the middle, bottom front teeth separated, his lips lisping as he whispered.
After one particular visit, Mom shut the door, engaged the deadbolt, and said to no one, "No more. Enough of him."
She spent that night staring out the apartment window at railroad tracks and the huge Army munitions plant where she worked. She smoked cigarettes and drank water while bathed in blue neon from a back alley bar in the next building, her eyes and hair becoming blacker, the cigarette smoke forming ghosts in the electric blue. I slept on the couch, blue mother in the window, thin blanket around my body.
***
I had a father once.
I remember his eyes, green and sad, eyes like those of someone who knows that you're dying.
I was his son for four years until the night he sat on the couch where I was sleeping, brushed his hand over my hair while whispering, "Everything is so cold," then walked out, climbed atop a light pole along Lackawanna Avenue in downtown Scranton, attached one end of an electrical cord to a hook at the top of the post and the other around his neck, then fell free.
His name was David.
***
The dark road pushed the one-ton side to side. Mom gripped the steering wheel with stiff hands, fighting for control whenever we hit another unseen seam. She slowed our speed, closed her eyes, and took a deep, ragged breath. "Let's stop for the night, okay, Baby?"
I nodded. "Okay."
She surveyed the roadside, squinted, looked left, right, front, rear, then slowed the truck off the road. The one-ton rattled violently, but Mom eased it onto a dirt road. Mom had a good eye for resting spots. Forest, city, lakeside, desert, she could survey a location, pull us into the deepest shadow, and button us up for an entire night. She had the wisdom of wandering stars, knowing exactly where to go. This night, it was a hollowed-out cinder block building with empty window and door frames. It sat squat and blocky in the dark like Indian ruins. We pulled around the back, and Mom shut off the engine. The near silence startled me, hours of windsound replaced by breeze whispering through yucca and dry leaves rolling over sand.
Mom pulled the blanket from behind the seat and spread it over our bodies. "Make sure your door's locked," she said, voice as soft as the breeze. The door was locked. It was always locked. She'd taught me well. "Here, Baby." She tucked the blanket around us. "You need to go to the bathroom?"
I had to think about it for a second, but my bladder seemed empty. I shook my head, the coarse blanket scratching my skin.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Okay, then." She pulled me close and sighed. She'd left her window open an inch, and in spilled desert air, cool and clean.
"It's quiet," I whispered.
"It is," she said, looking at the building. "Looks like they couldn't finish it. Window frames but no windows, walls but no roof." I could see through to the other side, over the road, past the desert brush, straight at the horizon where stars floated skyward.
"Mom?" I said.
"Yes, Baby?"
"What do you think it is?"
"Someone's dream. Someone started building it and ran out of money. It's how dreams are, Baby. Sometimes you walk away from dreams before you sink more money into them." She ran her fingers through my hair, and I dozed to the sounds of Mom's breathing and the desert's whispering.
***
The next day found us in a high desert Arizona town where mountains were covered in pine and where twisting roads seemed clogged with families on their way somewhere. Mom said they were on their way to "the canyon." We pulled into a gas station lot, and she pulled out one of her bags from the truck bed. "Stay here, 'Hon."
"I will."
"I mean it, Baby. Stay here." She stepped into the station's restroom and emerged twenty minutes later, face washed, hair pulled into a bun. She changed out of her pale jeans and blue blouse into a one-piece green dress. She walked back to the truck, feet adjusti
ng to the low green pumps on her feet, and handed me the bag. "Put this in the cab, Baby." She straightened her dress, smoothed it with her hands, and looked up and down at the roadside diners, stores, and motels. The air was dry and chilly, and the chill made her hands pale, her cheeks pink. I was thankful she'd told me to take out my windbreaker before we left the cinder block ruins behind. "How're you feeling, Honey?"
"I'm okay."
"I'm glad," she said, brushing my cheek with her hand. "I really am."
***
We'd left Scranton on a Sunday night.
Mom had asked Grandpa if she could use his one-ton on Saturday. We loaded the bed with our clothes on Sunday morning and pulled out of town as the sun dipped below the Poconos that evening.
We bounced to Pittsburgh, then Ohio, Mom pointing us in a new direction every week like a dowser walking the desert for water. She looked for secretarial work, mailroom work, waitressing work. She typed in Cleveland, memoed in Akron, served in Chicago. We lived in short-term motels, month-by-month apartments, rooms with kitchenettes, and parking lots behind department stores. She'd leave for the day, return in the evening with money, enough for food and gas until the job ended.
She kept a large mason jar behind the seat, wrapped in a green towel. We kept it close, guarding it. Every night, she'd drop her spare coins and bills into the jar, then tighten the lid. Every other day, she'd empty the money on a blanket and count it, tracking its progress. "One day closer," she'd say.
"Closer to what, Mom?" I asked one night.
"Home, Baby."
Once at a Chicago diner I sat on a stool as her Wednesday night shift ended. Mom counted her tips, one coin at a time, her frown deepening and deepening. I knew to keep quiet when she frowned, that her mind was sorting, arranging, re-arranging to make things work, whatever those things were. She'd often look at me, say something like, "A good day," but her eyes would be wet, her lips tight.
At the end of the counter sat an old man, wrinkles tightly folded into his skin. He wore a red and black checkerboard flannel shirt and gray work pants. He mentioned to someone earlier about "working up the line," and all I could think of was things in lines. Power lines. Rail lines. Clotheslines. He sat there into the end of Mom's shift, sometimes sipping from his half-finished Coke, sometimes picking at his dry, thick-skinned hands. In the kitchen the cook talked on the telephone, whispering: "No, Jesus, I didn't say that. Will you just listen?"
"Isn't it something how we all end the day?" the old man said.
Mom turned to him.
"How we all wind up counting what we got in our pockets. It's like pulling out rosaries and doing Hail Marys without thinking about it, you know?"
Mom nodded. "Yes." She looked back at the pile of coins. Quarters. Dimes. Pennies. "Why do they leave pennies?" she said.
"That's their being generous," he said, laughing. "My payday was yesterday. Damned right I counted out my coins and bills when I got home. Everyone does it." He sipped some Coke. "Have a good day or a bad one?"
"Bad one."
"I know those. Yes, I know those." He pointed at me. "Your boy?"
"Yes," she looked back at me, smiling tiredly. "He's mine."
"Heading out?" he asked. "Don't mind me asking?"
"Don't mind," she said, scooping up the coins and pouring them into her purse. She handed me the brown paper bag that had been sitting behind the counter. "Here, Baby. Go have your dinner in the truck." I headed to the door, bag in hand, Mom continuing with the man: "It's just me and my son, you see. . . ."
I ate the cheeseburger in the truck and waited. Mom and the old man were no longer at the counter, leaving the diner empty. Minutes later, the man walked out the bathroom, slowly and deliberately. He stepped outside, hands in his pockets, and disappeared into inky shadow. Mom followed soon after, frowning, eyes on her feet, arms around her chest, yellow sweater wrapped around her shoulders.
She got in the Chevy, quietly closed the door, latch clicking, lock engaging. She rolled the window down and rested her elbow on the door, chin in hand. She breathed deeply, watching cars speed by and traffic lights flash green, yellow, and red. We both sat in a pool of electric pink from the diner's entrance sign.
"Let's go to our room, Baby," she said, handing me a small, tight wad of dollar bills.
***
I spent most of the day near the truck, waiting for Mom as she went from shop to shop, motel to motel. One shop owner told her she might have a position opening up the following week and to come back then. A motel owner told her a cleaning position would be available in two weeks.
Come back then.
Her bun was becoming frayed at the edges, but a quick adjustment pushed everything back into place. After a few hours she pulled us into a motel where we stayed for a few days and where she'd change into her blue dress and blue pumps, then her red dress and red pumps. She'd walk off, pulled into the orbit of neon signage around motels, night diners, midnight bars, and return with food or cash. Enough for another day. Then she'd disappear again, swallowed by the darkness and the buzz of excited electrons, returning only when I was in bed either sleeping or looking out the motel room window at the neon landscape, tubes bent into green cacti, twisted into red running Indians or blueburst stars or fire-topped Tiki heads or spinning wagon wheels, or shaped into the pink V2-like rocket lifting off from the parking lot of the Sky Rider Motel.
Mom sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at me, her frazzled hair glowing pink in reflected parking lot light. She watched me as my eyes traced the rocket's long pink thrust of fire. She ran her hand over my face. "You must be tired," she whispered.
I nodded.
"Me too, Baby."
"Maybe we should go home," I said.
"We don't have a home, Baby," she said. "Not yet."
"But—"
"We never did." Her voice dropped, soothing but firm. "We've never had a home. Not you and me, but we'll get one."
The rocket buzzed and flickered.
"It's a big rocket, isn't it?" she asked.
"It's pink," I said. "Are rockets supposed to be pink, Mom?"
"That one is. That's one very pink rocket." Fingers running through my hair, she said, "And it's heading right up to the sky. Far, far away."
***
We drove north, crossing canyons and passing mountains until we came to an electric city that burned like oil on an ocean: red, yellow, golden and bright, wavering in evening heat. To the west, the sky flickered purple and blue, which I thought erupted from the city until I saw it was lightning passing on the horizon.
Another motel, another neon rocket—The Starfire, a sounding rocket sleek and blue, slipstreamed and aiming straight for the sky. The room had one bed, was warm and smelled of stale cigarettes and simmering mold. Mom showered, then I did. By the time I got out, she was already in her blue dress, her flat pumps, and her plastic pearl necklace, angrily drying her hair, violently snapping the towel about her head before she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She dropped the ponytail over her left shoulder, smoothed it, then turned to me. "Looks pretty, doesn't it?"
"Are you going?" I asked. She atomized a cloud of perfume and stepped into it. Of course she was going. It was the ritual by which we lived: new motel, new apartment, new highway, new city, new neon, a process that was concrete, set, and automatic.
"Just for a while, Baby," she said, adjusting her arm straps. "I'll get you something to eat at that place next door, okay?" She walked past me, kissed me on the head, and examined herself in the mirror. I know she wanted me to complete the ritual with "okay," "all right," or "sure."
"I want to go home," I said.
She turned around, "Baby. I told you we don't have a home."
"But—"
"No, Honey, look, we never had anything close to a home. I never did," she said. "We only had places to pass the time. Home's not a place to pass the time, waiting unti
l you die. It's where you feel safe, not worrying who's coming to the door or if you're going to be kicked out that door the next day. It's where you can be you and not worry about anyone else."
"Then why're we seeing Uncle Daniel?" I asked.
She stopped as if shocked by carpet sparks. "What do you mean?"
"You never let him in," I said. "You were afraid of him. So why're we seeing him?"
She looked away, maybe at the neon rocket in the parking lot, or maybe she wondered how she could grab a hold of its electric fire and have it lift her into the sky, over the city and moon and stars. "Well," she began, then swallowed. "Sometimes you cut through a town you don't want to go through just to get you where you want to go even faster. And sometimes you have to deal with people you don't want to deal with if it can get you what you need. Sometimes people are just short cuts." She brushed lint off her dress. "Your uncle owes us money and then some. If he doesn't have money, he can let us stay for a while until we get the money. He owes us that much."
Minutes later, she walked to the door, opened it, and bathed herself in neon blue. "Keep the door locked, okay, Baby?"
"Okay." The final movement to the ritual. The final amen.
***
He pounded the door a second time. I could see his figure through the window. He wore khakis and a maroon button-up shirt, tail hanging out the back of his pants. When I opened the door, he looked down, eyes wide with surprise. "Your mother or father here, son?" His skin was pockmarked and blotchy, and he smiled, but it was a tired smile, a smile that seemed to say that he'd seen me before and that, someday, he'd see me again. I recognized him from the previous night, the man from the motel main office. "It's—" he looked down at his watch "—11:37. Checkout's at 11:00 unless your folks want the room for another night."
I knew Mom had come back in the night, thinking I'd been asleep. She'd leaned over and kissed me on the cheek before stepping out again as another figure, dark and silhouetted by the parking lot rocket, stood in the doorway. She whispered to the figure, closed the door, and walked past the front window, her body dissolving into dark morning.
"Mom just stepped out," I said.
"Uh-huh. Tell you what, we'll get all your things, take you back to the office, and wait for her there. The cleaning lady needs to come in and straighten the place out."