J.T. Warren: Remains

When she got up to leave that day, she asked me if I’d be there the next day. I said I didn’t know and she said that, if I was, she’d bring cookies. I was stunned. I had a job changing oil and rotating tires at the time. It was pretty thick-knuckle work, and I didn’t want to tell her that I might not be able to come out that next day because I might have to work overtime to make rent. It was pretty hand to mouth back then. I was embarrassed and I didn’t know what she’d think. She was obviously a college girl.

It got close to time to meet her that next day, and there was still a Chevy waiting to be serviced. I faked sick all of a sudden. Because I almost never got ill, my boss let me go. “That Mike fella,” he said to someone else on the telephone one day the next week, “he’s one helluva horse. When he ain’t here, I don’t get nothin’ done.” It was true, too. That Chevy was still there the next morning when I came in.

When I left work that day, though, I rushed to my place. I got cleaned up as best I could. No matter what I did, there was some grease that would not come out from under my fingernails. I shaved, put on a clean shirt. I wanted to be nice for her, even though I didn’t know her name. The whole time, I still fully expected that she wouldn’t show.

I thought about that the whole drive down to the park. I thought about how she wouldn’t show. I thought about how she would show, but then it’d turn out to be some sort of recruitment scheme like “have you found Jesus as your personal savior?” Something was going to go wrong, I could just feel it. My Pontiac shuddered the whole way there, too. I knew it was going to fall apart. The woman I might marry someday was sitting in the park reading her college books and I was going to break down on the side of Market Street with no spare tire.

She was there, though. The ducks were all gliding smooth on the surface of the water. I shut the car off and prayed it wouldn’t diesel on me. It didn’t, and that I took as a good sign. Not a single duck took off.

I walked up and she was on a huge blue and white checkered blanket. She had a basket with her. As I got closer to her, I saw she had grapes and strawberries in small containers. There was also a bottle of wine. I walked up and stood for a moment while she finished reading the page she was on. She looked up and the sun caught in her hair and I felt like I was in a movie. She was perfect.

She sat up right then, and put her finger in as a place Marker. She set the book in her lap and extended the other hand out to me to shake. She said “I’m Susan.” I shook her hand softly and then she said, “I’m really sorry about the other day. I should have introduced myself. I’m usually not that rude.” I told her I didn’t think she was rude at all. “Your name is Mike,” she said and I froze. When I asked her how she knew, she said “You worked on my car a week back,” Her face didn’t look familiar to me. I was in panic: she knew, she knew. I didn’t know what to say. “Dark blue Chevy truck?” she asked and then I remembered. “Your CV boot went bad,” I said, and she smiled as if I’d just noticed how pretty she was. “Yep,” was all she said.

I sat down and she offered me fruit. Her and me together like that felt like freedom. I remember thinking that. Me and her on that blanket with no problems to solve, no outside things to take care of: just us, and this thing between us. It was huge but not scary. I kept thinking that I wanted to tell her about things in my life. Things from when I was little. Then I thought about Randy. I didn’t want to tell her about that.

“What was it like for you as a kid?” she asked me just then and my eyes got huge. It was like she was reading my mind.

“Ordinary, I guess.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Did you play a sport in school?”

I nodded and told her about football, then soccer. I told her about all the guys I used to know and hang out with when we were kids.

“Why did you stop?” she asked.

“Just didn’t like it anymore.” I wasn’t lying. I didn’t want to lie to her. I just didn’t tell her all of it. I don’t think I could have at that point.

She nodded. “I bet you were really outgoing as a boy.” That struck me as odd. I don’t think someone looking at me now would think that.

“No,” she said, squinting a bit as if looking at something far away, “no, I take that back. I bet you were the quietest boy you knew, weren’t you?” I couldn’t look away from her eyes. You hear it all the time, someone talking about how it seems like someone else is reading their mind. It didn’t seem like that. It seemed like she was in my mind.

“I rode my bike a lot,” I said. It seemed to make perfect sense to say that to me. She nodded as if it did to her, too. Looking back on it, though, it seemed a pretty nonsense answer.

I used to ride my bike all over the town at night after I was supposed to be in bed. After Randy disappeared, though, I stopped. Before that, I hadn’t ever gone very far. I don’t know why, but one night I did go much further than I ever had. I went out past the stop sign on Whistler road. I had no idea what was out there and, at the time, that seemed like a good reason to go.

I found a field out there that belonged to a nursery in Eukiah. They grew their plants out in that field, and trucked them away every week. I spent a lot of time there, daydreaming at night. I came to think of it as a place that was mine. I thought of myself as one of the people who took care of the place. They probably never knew I was out there, though.

The first time I went there, it was September. It wasn’t cold yet, but the crisp in the air said soon. The light made the undersides of the plastic sheet domes look like candles or something. I wish I was a poet, then maybe I could find a better way to describe it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, though. Acres of those domes, lit like Japanese lanterns. My feet seemed loud across the dirt.

When I got up close to the dome, I noticed the water beaded up on the surface. It was like a bottle of soda, slick with its own shed water. I put my finger on the plastic and traced a line. The tip of my finger came away wet. I put it to my tongue. The water tasted warm and fresh. The plastic was thick, though, and tough to see through. There were rows and rows of green inside.

That’s when I heard the music. It sounded warm. I looked back over my shoulder, and the road was deserted still. I crept around until I found an opening. The plastic was cut about six feet up from the ground. I pulled it back and found another flap of plastic underneath, with a similar cut, just further to the left. When I stepped inside, I figured out why: whoever built it was trying to keep the heat in as best they could.

Inside there were five rows of plants. They had barely shot above the ground, some still mostly just bulb-like sprouts. The smell was thick and sweet and good. I smiled and knelt down. and put my thumb and forefinger around the leaf of one. The dirt was dark brown with patches of lighter brown scattered throughout.

I noticed that there was a small transistor radio in the middle of the tiny field. I moved closer to it. It was playing classical music. I picked it up, and the reception went fuzzy. I set the radio back down. I noticed all the leaves that were sprouted already pointed toward the radio. They were growing toward it. The warmth felt nice on my skin, and the music was soft. I found a patch of ground near the plastic where nothing was growing and sat down. I daydreamed for a while about what it would be like to sprout, to grow out of the ground. I stretched my hands slowly out toward the radio.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I woke up and knew it was late. I didn’t want to leave that tiny greenhouse, but I had to. I carefully closed the flaps back to make sure the warmth stayed inside, saying “Goodbye,” out loud as I left. My bike was still where I’d left it, and I pedaled home, humming. I think it was Carmina Burana .