Traffic is a bully on 94w, and it’s a relief to exit at the Johnson’s Creek Outlets. Jefferson is still ten plus miles away, and just like Whitewater, where I grew up, but also just like the moon.
Flat asphalt right into the sun. The road curves at the foot of the granary. To submit to the silo, broken skull ruins. Organic, rotten artifacts of the countryside. The sun beyond the cornfield. The scene of an almost certain drunk driving rollover. Before we reach the theater, I pull over so my oldest, Theodor, can take a piss on the side of the road.
The marquee is the same as the first time I visited twenty years back, yellower maybe. I went on a date to the Jefferson 18 Drive-In. Jurassic Park 3 and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Sarah was older than me (maybe too much older for her), a bridge of freckles making a galaxy across her nose. What is it? To want something so bad? To get it but never fully get it? It wasn’t a date, someone unrelated to the situation told me weeks later out of anger.
Just after sunset. The screen lights up, and here we are together at the edge of the world. The boys in their pajamas. In their tiny lawn chairs. A popcorn tub stretching the definition of “Large” in Theodor’s lap. The national anthem cartoon. The warbling cry of this country. The animation still has the scratches. A space shuttle splitting the fire. The freedom bell swoops towards us. The song ends and a woman a few rows up says, “God Bless America.”
Sawyer comes to sit on my lap. “I’m scared. This is too scary for me.”
The movie hasn’t started. I smell his hair. The lights on the snack bar are yellow, red, and purple. A woman with long bone legs swats at mosquitos, popcorn splashing from the bucket in her arms, down to the gravel. Smashmouth’s “All-Star” starts in. Theodor looks over his shoulder at me, eyes saying, “Oh baby, here we go!”
We’ve seen Shrek a million times, know every word. A few cars over, a man smokes a Swisher Sweet. Wine-flavored. The back window of his T-Bird, just a black bag, bows out with the rising smoke. A comet hangs on a tree in the sky. I watch it all night, while the kids watch Shrek and recite the lines. The comet doesn’t move.
Recommended reading: Welfare by Steve Anwyll; “Warp and Weft” by David Ryan; “The Mother of Reckoning” by Tracy O’Neill; “Angel of Death” by Brian Evenson; Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard; “Shakers” by Daniel Orozco
