Acre Under a Green Sky

My father was driving while I sat toying with the yellow reflector Will had given us to attach to the back of Joe's mud colored Mercury. We were looking for Joe's parking spot behind the Royal Grill. I had no idea what I was feeling. I was totally unaware of feeling anything. I only knew that I couldn't look at my father. For a long time, I couldn't even look at the road. I don't know why I was there in the first place except to finish something we had started together. He wanted us to be together –– to recapture what had been lost. There was a magnet at the back of the reflector, and I was trying to find different things inside the car to stick it to.

"I think this is it," he said, turning into an alley. And still I could not look at him.

The alley that led to the back of the Royal Grill had no name that anyone knew. It ran parallel to Main Street behind the Alhambra Theater and the First National Bank and the diner and the shops and offices; and of course, the Royal Grill which was about midway between Pine and College Streets. The alley was a one-lane red dog road running alongside the defunct railroad tracks with Collier's Creek a stone's throw beyond. The railroad and the stream had been instrumental in the making of this town, but Waterstop had long ago turned its back on both of them. The waters of Collier's Creek had been dammed or diverted in some way so that now it was just a trickle, and tall wild flowers and weeds grew between the railroad tracks nearly obliterating them from sight. My father drove slowly down the deserted alleyway. From this vantage point, it was nearly impossible to recognize buildings I had known all my life. It seemed to me that the architectural rules applying to the facades of buildings certainly didn't apply to the backs. The First National Bank with its majestic columns and its stately peaked arch was no more than a cinder block box from back here. Here, too, we found the guts of the town; its lungs and bowels belching and farting from ducts and exhausts with intestines of black pipe leaving unsightly shit stains to trail up the cinder block walls. Garbage cans overflow next to steel doors with no knobs. Windows are barred and black with no thought to symmetry. The back of the Alhambra Theater was a massive wall with one lone window high up and to the right looking as if its placement had been determined by the throw of a dart.

Earlier that same day, this thoroughfare was probably clogged with trucks making deliveries while others were carting off debris. Men with heavily laden hand trucks pound on these doors that only open out, and the real world of commerce goes on in dirty back alleys out of our sight. This particular alley was notched with indentations of various sizes; some just large enough for six or so garbage cans, others large enough to back a delivery truck into. My father was inching our gleaming red Ford down the alley; when suddenly, the wall he had been hugging on my side of the car opened onto a dark recess.

"There!" I shouted.

We had almost passed it. He put the car in reverse and pulled back. There; tucked away out of sight among the garbage cans and stacked cases of empty beer bottles, was Joe's mud colored Mercury. The smell of potatoes frying in stale oil was overwhelming, and the kitchen sounds of dishes clattering among barked voices and water running was reassuring. We had found the Royal Grill's asshole.

My father pulled the car back even further until it was safely hidden from view and then opened his car door. My father had parked so close to the wall that I couldn't get my door open so I crawled over the drivers' seat and joined him in the middle of the alley. He was just standing there.

"You know," my father said in a whisper, "I've never been here before."

"Me, either," I said, longing to walk those rails.

Cautiously, we stepped around the corner into the small courtyard behind the Royal Grill. The mud colored Mercury was like a sleeping dragon. I was half afraid it would awaken with a roar and alert its master within. The ground here was slimy with fallen garbage mashed under feet and wheels. And there was the familiar unseen presence I knew from my grandfather's corn crib –– rats! Lying at my feet was a gnawed bar of Dial soap. Suddenly, there were a million eyes watching our every move. But even more disturbing were the voices coming from the kitchen. The back door was held open with a large cobble stone, leaving only a screen door between us and them. Tommy, the cook, called out for steak platters, and another man said he needed clean silverware, too. They sounded close enough to kiss. Littered on the ground around the door were hundreds of cigarette butts. At any moment, any one of those men might come out for a smoke.

"Quick! Give me the reflector," my father said.

I stared at my empty hands. The reflector was still in the car. My father gave me his tooth-ache-grimace. It was a favorite of his. I ran back to the car and pulled the reflector off the window knob.

When I handed it back to my father, he slapped it on the back of Joe's car between both tail lights, and we ran like thieves.