From the monthly archives:

June 2001

Rain

June 1, 2001

in Fiction

“…and in the South Bay, we have a three-car accident on southbound 85 just
before Saratoga.”

South Bay! South Bay! The mother in the minivan fumed as the traffic in
front of her moved exactly ten feet and then glided again to a stop. Why did
they always talk about the South Bay and never what was going on where she
was. “When are we going to get home, Mama?” the child in the back seat asked
her. “Soon, Allie,” the mother replied, trying to keep her voice calm and
her hands not so tightly clenched on the wheel as the clouds around them darkened.
Looks like a storm’s coming in, she thought. I hope we make it home by then.

“On the Bay Bridge the metering lights are on and the traffic is backed
up well beyond the maze…”

The top-notch executive in the convertible sports car made a split-second
decision. He abruptly transferred his cell phone to his other ear, shifted
his car into second, turned his head to check the next lane, steered with
one knee and cut off the car next to him, all while simultaneously castigating
his CFO for last quarter’s numbers. This gained him one car length’s position.
The driver of the car he had cut off shouted something. The executive made
a rude gesture out the window, and something fell on his hand and stuck there.

Curiously, he pulled his hand back into the car. Stuck to the back of his
hand was a large piece of ash, an ash that might have risen from a log in
a fireplace and then settled back again into the hearth.

He looked up, looked around. Fires were not unusual for this area, and a
fire up ahead would explain the rotten traffic today. But there wasn’t any
smell of smoke in the air, and the dark clouds ahead of them were rain clouds,
not smoke. As the executive watched more ash began to fall all around them,
falling lazily to the ground like grey powdery snowflakes and drifting in
clusters on the hood of his car. “I have to go,” the executive snapped at
his cell phone.

“In Napa County Highway 29 watch out for a ladder in the roadway. CHP is
en route…”

The electrician’s truck wasn’t doing so well in this traffic, and he eyed
his gauges worriedly as they creeped upward. His brother had told him just
that weekend that the water pump was going to be a problem, but he had laughed.
This old Ford had been nothing but rock solid for him for years, it would
last a few more weeks. He had some good jobs down in the valley to do, high-paying
jobs, and that would give him some money to fix up the truck.

He watched uneasily as the ashes fell heavily from the blackened clouds
and not a car on the road was moving, not an inch. People all around him were
getting out of their cars, faces turned toward the sky, holding their hands
up to catch the ashes, pressing their fingers against them, crushing them
in their palms.

“Highway 17 slows at the Summit…”

The electrician heard the first raindrops hit the roof of his truck like
tiny marbles, tap tap tap. Then he saw one drop onto the hood, sizzle, and
the vanish in a bit of steam. Another, larger, slapped down bright red on
the sheet metal, rested for a moment, and then melted right through it.

“My God,” the electrician swore, crossed himself and slammed his truck into
reverse. He accelerated backward, crushing the bumper of the car behind him,
then shifted again and came forward. It was no use, he was trapped in traffic.

“Roadwork at Fillmore and Van Ness…”

The air was growing hot as the drops became a sprinkle became a storm, and
there were cries and shouts from cars all around him. Molten raindrops pocked
his truck; one came through the roof and melted through the seat next to him
leaving a stink of burnt plastic and foam rubber. The electrician pressed
his hands to his mouth and prayed.

“Traffic is stopped at the 101/880 interchange….”

In the executive’s car, the convertible top provided no protection against
the rain, and the drops punched through again and again and again. The executive
used his briefcase for a while to try and cover his head, but after a while
not even the best quality leather workmanship money can buy could stop it.

“Nothing but brake lights all the way from 880 to the toll plaza on the
Dumbarton Bridge…”

The mother in the minivan was in the fast lane, and she got out of traffic
and drove into the grassy median, something that had only occurred to a few
other drivers on the road. But there the rain had pooled in the ground and
it was only a matter of a few feet before the tires overheated and melted
and blew. She did not get far. As the minivan ground to a stop she got out
of the front seat, pulled her screaming daughter out of the baby seat and
curled up on the floor of the back seat as the storm pattered noisily down
on the roof, sounding entirely like the big thunderstorms she used to remember
when she was growing up in the midwest and had missed so much when she moved
to California.

“And this just coming up on my screen, it looks like we have a major backup
on the Sunol grade due to a rain of fire. CHP is asking people to use alternate
routes. More weather and traffic every eight minutes.”

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Drive

June 1, 2001

in Essays

I had business to do in San Francisco the other day, so like thousands of
other people do every morning I got in my car and fought my way up the peninsula,
fought my way through the smog and the traffic from one freeway to the next,
from one dirty city intersection to the next, and then fought my way into
a parking space. I didn’t have much business to do, not even worth the trip,
actually, but it had to be done, and once it was done by midmorning I found
myself feeling tired and worn and beaten.

I was sitting in my car at the intersection of Geary and Fillmore, waiting
to turn left. Left back to Van Ness and then back to 101, back to Silicon
Valley, back to work again to finish my day and meet my deadlines. It was
a bright May day, the sort of beautiful temperate late spring day in the city
where the weather is actually not too cold and not too hot, no fog to cloud
the sky, just blue blue blue and and light and warmth and yellow sun.

Cars were stacking up on the left side of the intersection, to the left
on Geary where I was going to be turning. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to go
down to Van Ness and 101 and back to work. More fighting to be done, I sighed,
more driving, more push push push and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

I looked out the right side, out to the West, toward the coast, where there
was no traffic at all.

What do deadlines mean, really? a little voice said. It seemed to be coming
from my car. The work gets done, eventually, doesn’t it? What’s a few hours?
I found myself suddenly smiling, no, grinning, as something inside me went
plink and I abruptly shifted into reverse, backed out of the left turn lane,
and turned right.

West on Geary went away from the freeway, toward the coast and the beaches,
and toward Highway 1, twisty twisty Highway 1, the very long way home. I felt
like I was running away, I felt like I was skipping school, I felt wicked
and I FELT GREAT.

Four lights down Geary: One to unlatch the car top, one to put the back
window down, one to find my hat and my sunglasses in the glovebox, and the
final one to fold the car top down. The woman behind me in the nice sedan
gave me a look of dismay as the top came down. Oh. You have a convertible.
Yes. I have a convertible. And this is what it wants.

On the beach side of the city the sky was still clear but I was not the
only one who was playing hooky; the road was crowded and it took a few miles
of southward travel before the traffic opened up, before everything — the
road and the air and and the sky and the car — all came together. From then
on there was little traffic as I drove south, and what few cars I encountered
I easily passed.

Do people who are not car people get this? This sense of the perfect day,
the perfect road, the perfect place, an almost glorious joy of driving where
there are no missed shifts, no hesitations, where every tight corner is executed
perfectly and there are no slow RVs hiding around the bend?

For miles I kept the ocean on my right, cliffs and scrubby brush and rolling
hills on my left. Once I turned a sweeping left-hander near Pacifica and the
whole hillside around the turn was flung wide with splashes of wildflowers,
bright California poppies and wild lupines, the magnificent orange and blue
mix that only occurs for a few weeks at this time of year. There was a light
wind, a warm wind, not enough to be annoying, and it passed in waves over
the flowers, stirring them this way and that as I passed on.

Three times I had to make a decision, to turn back from the coast, to go
back over the mountains, to go back home. There were three roads that would
take me there. Each time I assumed I would run into fog, into cooler weather,
that I would become bored of the drive, that I would encounter slow drivers
that would ruin the mood. It didn’t happen in Half Moon bay at Highway 92;
it didn’t happen at Highway 84 at Pescadero, and it didn’t happen at the nearly
unmarked Bonny Doon road. I drove all the way to Santa Cruz, with the weather
and the road and the perfect sense of well-being still on my side, stopped
in town for a late lunch at a little cafe, and then drove back up the mountain
freeway home, arriving in mid-afternoon just as the sun was setting, just
in time to crack open a beer and sit out on the porch listening to the bees
hum.

If I want to get any work done in the future on bright warm spring days
I will have to put my guard up and not listen to little voices coming from
my car. If there are more days like that and more drives like the glorious
California coastline my car can make an awfully convincing argument.

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