Short Story: Flawless Tangos
Repost and revised from original
“Beep-Beep! Beep-Beep! Yeah!” an appropriate Beatles’ song plays on the car radio amidst the long traffic jam on I-65. On the day before Thanksgiving, an unending trail of cars, minivans, SUVs and semis are piled up like dominos waiting for an unsuspecting push.
This snowstorm started just after noon. Now, at 5 PM, seven inches of fresh, heart attack snow lays packed firmly on the highway without a snowplow in sight. With the thousands of vehicles struggling hopelessly to the far reaches of the Midwest on a holiday eve, and at this juncture, twenty-one miles south of I-80/94, the choices north branch to loved ones in Ohio and Michigan to the east, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota to the west. The snowbound vehicles nearly touch each other in many places along the growing 50-mile-long chain of metal, and frustrated humanity, and unfortunately, have intermingled too closely in a few spots, like shy, inept dancers stepping on each other’s toes while in a slow waltz for the first time. Neither feels it’s their fault the other can’t dance.
Sam sits with his 2005 Mazda 626 in drive, a glazed-over look on his face. The destination of Minneapolis is likely implausible by 6 AM tomorrow. In coming back home from Indiana University, he has never felt emptier for the fruitlessness of the journey. It’s the final holiday season to drive back from campus in the ‘05 Mazda, that has survived 275,000 miles of abuse and typical college neglect.
His folks, now separated, the war over a host of perceived ills – money, politics, the ongoing pandemic paranoia – finally broke their quarter century bond. Sam remembered again his promise to visit his mother first and foremost. Sam tenses at this choice as Debra made the pandemic the straw that broke that bond. Sam watches large flakes pelt the windshield without a foreseeable end.
In the past five years, making his way through a digital technology major via switching from marketing and political science, flunking a few courses, working at Chili’s, tending bar, drinking after work too much, and dating a few intelligent, beautiful, if emotionally-detached-from-reality women, who just never worked out, he felt sapped by the time spent, a hollow feeling permeating inside.
The highway equally matched his life. He kept slowly trudging forward; meanwhile, the clouded skies producing a blur of white bluster, a delaying deluge of winter dampness. Stuck and swirling and looking for a way out, only finding the swirling rhythmically pulled him along despite his efforts to move towards a defined direction.
His high school friends at other universities, most of them closer to home at the University of Minnesota, will be more difficult to find this holiday. The cock-and-bull stories have waned in excitement and entertainment value from his bright-eyed freshman year when they all still charmed.
Sam will still see the old stalwarts: Jim, Tommy P., Jessie, Becka and Hog. They will likely go out to The Mall of America and drink till the closing time of 1AM at the 4th floor, five-dollar-plus-a-head watering holes, if the mayor hasn’t screw that up with his safe-n-secure policies. Sam will play double-dee for the group, since guilt finally has won out over the binge drinking and frequent blackouts in his final year at school.
They will laugh, dance, toast and horseplay throughout Friday and Saturday night. Hog will moon some old couple while riding shotgun in Tommy P’s Ford F 250 on I-494; Jessie will flaunt her perfect chest in a snug red top with ample cleavage exposed, but just to leave some frat guy anxious and excited, yet unfulfilled and broken hearted, as always; Jim and Tommy P. will argue over sports teams past, present and beyond, as they have since 5th grade at Thomas Edison Elementary; and Becka will be Becka. The quiet blonde girl that takes two beers to turn into a bounce-me-off-the-wall and throw-away-the-key, all-night, party girl. Strange how life returns to normalcy for those two nights of the year. Or so it seems to.
In the past ten minutes, the train of cars has moved 500 feet. Mile marker 239 approaches. The Honda ahead is from Iowa. It has been in front of him since Lafayette. The wipers click by in delay mode. His eyes close for a prolonged second under the overcast, snow-filled sky.
“The National Weather Service has issued a blizzard warning for the northern Illinois and northwest Indiana…Twelve to eighteen inches are expected in northwest Indiana and ten to sixteen inches in northern Illinois… Travelers should seek shelter and lodging as soon as possible. Winds will increase throughout the night to forty miles per hour. Temperatures will fall nearing ten degrees with wind chills nearing thirty below. State Road–,” Sam pushes in the CD on the player. Damn.
He selects a track and the first chords of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” begins to play.
…We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
Diana peers backward through the rearview mirror for a moment as the rear wiper sweeps off the heavy snow. The handsome guy behind her looks annoyed. Probably heard the dreadful forecast. Only one mile to go, she gratefully thinks. A bit of relief comes in the form of a brief smile. But sadness weighs inside, for others, who have long journeys ahead in the unrelenting snowfall.
Diana hopes Grandma Johnson does not go to too much trouble. She will. As grandmas always do. Once again, at Thanksgiving, Diana drives to her new home in Lowell. Her mother and father died a little more than a year ago in a car accident on I-80 heading back from Purdue after dropping off their only child at the dormitory for the start of her freshman fall semester. It’s been hard ever since. The last close relative is Mary Johnson. Her once close high school friends are scattered all about and Iowa no longer feels like a home.
The quiet little engineer is what her snobby roommates, Yvette and Maria, at Duhme Hall call her. Toiling away for hours on Calculus, Statics, Thermo, Optics and her blow-off course, Cost Accounting, she is expecting all A’s in three weeks, after finals. Then, off to Indianapolis for a mechanical engineering co-op with Altec Industries.
She ponders back to when mom, dad and herself watched the Iowa-Iowa State game and ate homemade pizza; or when dad checked over a ’76 MG or the ’73 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, while she watched intently over his shoulder the mechanic’s magic he applied to every classic vehicle he ever touched.
Or Mom dressing her up for Sunday school and church at St. Thomas Aquinas, where she fidgeted and squirmed in her pink dress in the pews. “Cute as a button,” the little old parishioners commented every Sunday in the vestibule, as Diana blushed. Their vacations to the Grand Canyon and quick trips up to Las Vegas afterwards sparkle again in her thoughts, captured in pictures forever kept inside her heart.
A single tear flows down her cheek. More flakes drop on the windshield. A heavy gasp of air from the semi exhales from beside her.
Bump. Bump!!!
She looks over her right shoulder to see that the guy behind her has hit her 2015 Honda Civic. She stops the car, puts it in park, unfastens her seatbelt, and proceeds to get out of the car. He is already out.
“I’m so sorry, I got in a daze and bumped into you,” Sam apologizes in a rush. Diana instantly warms to this.
“It’s ok. Probably there isn’t even a mark,” Diana adds.
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t be such a goof. I’m from Minnesota and should know better how to drive on this stuff.” Sam looks down into Diana’s brown eyes and sees true innocence and striking beauty in just a glance.
“Well, I used to be from Iowa, but I still can’t get the hang of snow driving. First snow, anyways. You know how people are, they forget after seven months without it,” Diana tilts her head up slightly towards Sam and feels something too.
“Maybe you’re right.” Then, they both glance awkwardly down at the bumper that has a softball size dent in it.
Sam hesitates, then says, “I feel so bad. Hey, I could buy you a cup of coffee at the next exit and we can handle this?”
“I am getting off there anyways,” Diana says.
“I thought you said were from Iowa?”
“I was. My folks passed away—”
“Oh, I’m sorry—”
“Hey! Lovebirds!” A rude middle-aged man yells from behind Sam’s car. “Move your ass! The highway is already a winter fucked-up wonderland!” He revs the engine in park on a 15’ red Corvette, while the window shoots up.
“Ok, Ok,” Sam places his hand out in an easy-does-it manner to the old prick. Diana looks over at the angry man with a small bit of contempt painted on her face, but them turns back to Sam, unflustered, once again.
“Well, I’ll meet you at the next exit. There’s a Grandma’s close by to the right.”
“Sure, I’ll be there. You don’t have to pay for a thing. I’ll take care of you.”
Diana blushes slightly, “You will?” Sam stumbles out, “I mean–”
“I know what you meant.” she smiles.
“What’s your name?”
“Sam.”
“Diana.”
They shake hands for a prolonged second. The snowflakes seem to stand still. A piece of the hidden sun’s final rays finds the interstate around them in an icy spotlight. The remaining souls sit in limbo, while they proceed onward.
They both head back to their cars and make the long journey one mile down the interstate. It takes twenty minutes to drive to Grandma’s Restaurant.
In the nine hours of chatting at the restaurant, many things are decided forever by the couple. A future planned via an interstate mambo on snow. The blizzard, the holiday blues, the loneliness and the fears vanish under a cup of Joe or two bought for Diana Johnson Walker by Sam Walker.
And all the snow and the growing wind on a jammed interstate dance floor could not stop their flawless tangos over the next 68 years.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Rob
Great piece of writing , thanks