We were on the road. We were searching, I don’t know what for. My dad was driving, it feels like he was always driving. The road was paved, but it shouldn’t have been. We moved smoothly over it. There was nothing smooth about us. My uncle, my dad’s brother, was in the car. The presence of my wife, but not her, was there as well. My cousins, my uncle’s boys, they were there too.
In this way we rolled along the road slowly, all of us looking out the windows with no expectation of seeing what we were looking for. On the left side of the road the dirt hillside steeped up sharply and prevented any thoughts from venturing off in that direction. On the other side of the road we passed house after house, all tucked nicely into their rolling landscape of green grass and neat tidy fences. Everything was so clean. So clean.
I looked at my cousin and saw the sadness, the inevitability of our fates. My dad was awash with drunken swagger and his brother was stewing in quiet solitude, also full of drink. The cousins looked at each other. Everything was empty. The car was missing all its finishes like the back of a cargo van from the 70’s where the ribs and construction were painted over white—spot welding circles and all.
Then I spotted him—Owen, my nephew, the thing we were searching for. He was stupidly trying to make himself smaller in the intersection of two fences, but he could not possibly hide in all the neatness. Two sections of perfect fencing came to a corner and Owen, all six foot one inch of him was curling his shoulders forward, trying to sink back into the corner. But I spotted him, I made him, I called it out as we rolled past and slowly all the drunken travelers in our car responded. My dad stopped the car. He started to reverse it.
Owen moved like an elastic creature, moving over the fence and then from one yard to the next. His body bent, and curved unnaturally, over tall wood fences and down into yards out of sight. He was moving in the opposite direction, trying to evade us.
My dad continued backing up, down the road, a reverse chase. I jumped out thinking I’d be better on foot. Then everyone jumped out. Owen was hiding now, no longer moving, it was hard to know where he went.
We were all spread out on the road, confused and searching. My dad had an expanding contraption that he expertly unfolded on the lawn of a nearby house. It was green. It resembled a portable play pen but grew into a large crooked box of an unknown material. It was a trap. The idea was to trap Owen in it. I knew this would work, that the trap would be successful. So I kind of gave up on the chase.
There was an oxygen tank in the car, the kind that sits alongside someone’s bed when they need added oxygen. It was in the road now and rolling toward my dad. He was frustrated, angry in a way that I was too familiar with. I was worried the oxygen tank might explode, it seemed like it shouldn’t be jostled around. My dad picked it up and threw it with his crazy angry gorilla strength. At this point, I knew we were all fucked.
I watched the oxygen tank fly up the road past our parked van and hit a wall, then bounce back toward all of us. It hit the ground behind the van, in the midst of our group of searchers. Layers of it broke off and smoke spilled out. I knew it was going to explode.
My wife was trying to crawl to me on the road surface, to safety. I motioned to her to keep crawling, faster, but to stay low. Then the tank exploded and the chrome outer layers of it blew into shrapnel that flew straight upward. I was grateful for that. I thought the hot metal parts would fly horizontally into us and cut us to pieces. I watched the explosion lift up into the sky and begin to descend down toward me in long slow arcs of smokey trails. As they came toward me their speed slowed and I batted them away effortlessly. The oxygen tank issue was resolved.
It was time to leave the road, the car, the whole pursuit, and get somewhere safe. I no longer cared what happened to Owen.
I was trying to make my way to the Main Street, to where shops and people are. I am carrying my twin baby girls in my arms—but one is noticeably older than the other by a year or so. They both say different things to me, both appropriate for their age. They are getting heavier.
I am moving quickly to the safety of the city street with a naked baby girl in each arm. I am aware of what they each say and I am in tears, but I need to get everyone to safety. Carrying them is warming me, connecting me, I am swooned by their simple love at this young age.
My mom is walking alongside me in our group of people. We are all trying to get to the place, to the place where we will be able to rest and be safe. That place is just ahead, it is Main Street in Pasadena. My arms are getting very tired and I have to give one of the girls to my mom to carry. She takes one of them without expression or words and we move on. I wrap both arms around my one naked baby girl and look toward the corner.
It is right there. I am pretty sure we are going to make it.