The Color of the Bean

Chapter One: Hot Seats, Cool Breezes

Any breeze, no matter how hot, feels cool when you are covered in sweat.

I felt it, blowing through the rolled down window, bringing with it a combination of road grit, insects, and plain old wind-blown dirt. It was cool on my sweaty face and arms, and I was grateful.

I was also road sick. Not in the way of actual nausea, but just weary of traveling. Too long in a back seat, too long in sticky, crumpled clothing, too long since I could wash my face or even re-do my hair without the breeze whipping it into a worse mess than ten fingers and an elastic band could tame.

I sighed. As usual, she didn't notice. And Evan was too concentrated on protecting his 'baby's' tires from this washed out, rutted gravel trail that his map had unexplainably dignified with a route number, to respond.

Tall weeds whipped into the driver side windows, and Evan ducked, grunting as he spun the wheel on his Fairlane. It was low slung, powerful... Definitely not made for gravelly ruts. I stared down at treetops, as we inched around another hairpin curve, fenders swinging over open space, this time. How far down? I wondered. It didn't matter, though: dead is dead, and if we went over, that would be our luckiest outcome. 

Somewhere along the route I fell asleep.  God only knew how, considering the riveting dramatics between the two so-called grownups that I'd been painfully enduring since dawn, when we had left home in Winchester.  Their arguments had spanned the route, the stops, what to eat, how fast to go... Come to think of it, there was only one raised voice throughout, and one slow, deep lazy drawl in response, seeming almost bored.  All covered over by the hum of the powerful V-8.  It had lulled me to sleep finally.  I woke up disoriented, sticky from sweat, grimy from road dust, and itching.

Of course Ma chose just then to look in the rearview mirror. "Don't scratch. It isn't ladylike," she directed, with what was to me an irritating pretense of primness. This was the Ma who expected me, in private, to wash my face after a greasy takeout meal, which she served us on the sink drain in the kitchen, instead of using her "good linen" napkins. The Ma who  saved salt and ketchup packets in our almost barren kitchenette, but expected me to "behave" in public as if we were relatives of Rockefellers, or Kennedys. And never, ever contradict her, no matter how wrong-headed or even out-right lying and blatantly scheming she was being.

I wiggled my head, hoping she'd take it for assent, but she was off again, this time at Evan, who remained nearly silent under the shrill tirade.  I felt sorry for him... But better him than me. At least he actually chose to be around her.

I stared out at more hillsides and ridges full of trees. Along this stretch of the road, they all slanted upward (thank God, I thought.) So we were in a valley. I hoped we were on the other side of all the mountains... Or at least all the ones we would need to cross.  On one side, the tall pines and grassy fields were backed by the greyish purple of more distant ridges. I heard the maddening sound of unseen water coming through the window opposite this vista, and picked up the thermos. It was deceptively heavy, but still empty. I sighed, and dropped it into the seat, where it rolled toward the back.  Another sound, closer, took my mind off my thirst, and even Ma's meandering, meaningless chirrupping.