The first sunset and the ones that followed
My father unbuckled his seat belt and continued to steer the plane over runway turns with his feet as he followed the maze back to the hanger. My mom sat by my father. She left the second steering wheel just in front of her untouched. She bit her lip in a humble smile and looked out the window content to be here. Old family friends and their homes filled her head. My brother was being productive as usual, packing up his books and CDs into the backpack between his legs. I sat there soaking in the moment. My dad was a good pilot wasn’t he? A damn good one. I thought it over while I tried to get the hollowness out of my ears. The plane’s whistle-hum slowed and I began to hear the sounds of things besides the noise of the plane. My dad was rambling some such nonsense to the airport people. “Niner niner 205 zooloo whiskey alpha.” It would be neat to know airplane code I thought. My dad let me fly the 4-passenger plane one time. I didn’t really feel like I was doing anything though. He told me to watch the gauges instead of looking out the front window. That didn’t particularly make much sense. “Yeah pull it up a bit now. Steady that, you gotta be gentle. Ease it out now. See that indicator.” He steadied his hands over his controls just in case I got jerky. Flying in a little plane isn’t like flying in a 747. First of all there is this constant hummmmmmmmmmmm. Sign language and lip reading come in handy. But it is nice too. You can sing to yourself in the corner or curse whoever you please, and there is no evidence of the fact if you just cover your mouth or turn to look out the window. Going through clouds is the tricky part. I suppose it’s freaky the first time. Everything goes completely white. I mean completely. No sign of anything but white. Choppy air attacks the craft from all sides and this little piece of metal you’re in jostles up and down so much that if you don’t duck your head at you, you experience a smart pain on the crown of your head. But you begin to trust the rhythm of the clouds when you journey through them. I heard in my headset, “This stuff is a little mean, but there’s not much of it.” I wonder ed what time it was and noticed the clouds again, which were represented as a white wall painted over the windows. Except the clouds seemed a little more alive now. They no longer seemed to glow from the sun’s rays. No, their fiber seemed a bit more fluid and mystical. You see, most people think the sun sets once every 24 hours. False. The sun sets over the clouds first, then it descends to the earth, so it sets twice. Grays and blues started to swirls through the whitewashed windows and then in a blink, we entered the sky above the clouds. The fluffiness below us now took the form of a table reaching to the ends of the horizon. Perhaps a county away, there was some lightening crackling off over a patch of damp, dirtiness. My dad looked all around him. “Cessna N7262 requesting change in velocity. We’ve got some type 2-interference at 5,000 feet. Over.” Who knows what he said, but it was poetry. The plane swung a tight right turn and the soiled clouds were out of sight. All you saw was this bouncy line of white in all directions. If you looked real hard, you might see an opening to the earth. What was left of the brightness of the sky beamed down in these parts, giving just a taste of the glory above the clouds, before the clouds took over again and held their ground. The sun dipped lower and lower into the white, and our plane floated along. The sun just slipped lower and lower, and the clouds were burned yellow at their edges. The shadow of our plane moved with the clouds, bumping up and down over the white. A red light blinked on the tip of the wings.
Another thrill of my early childhood was picking out that perfect brand of beef jerky or Pringles to go with the Mountain Dew that just smiled at me through the glass in the corner of the gas station. Expect, wait a minute. Only water was allowed. My father saud it and so it was so. I had no set budget though, so I could get away with 2 or 3 items easy, but any liquid of color would cross the line. I didn’t want to risk it. Once in the car, my dad twisted the cap off his grape juice bottle as he pulled out of the gas station with one hand. All I could remember were his words, “No. No. I don’t want drinks in here. We have to keep the rental clean.” My thoughts were interrupted as he tipped his glass up and took a mammoth sip and then wiped his mouth with his arm. Wow, that makes sense. My authority basher was kicking in now as I compared his dark purple drink to my water. I waved my hand over my water in three quick darts of the hand to see if I could change it to wine. It tasted a little better after that. My dad wasn’t into music my brother or I enjoyed. And we sat in the back, nowhere near the controls of the car. And sometimes my music collection wasn’t large enough to cover the trip without getting bored of my own CDs. My brother was always happy with his new music. He would bob his head to something magically delicious while I sat and listened to National Public Radio. My mom didn’t seem to mind NPR and she seemed to sink into a large pillow every time we broke the 15 MPH barrier anyway. All the voices sounded the same on NPR: calm, professional, and dull. They spoke about countries I have never heard of and economic terms I didn’t care about. It was drab my friend. It was drab and I at those time I wanted out of those steel cage walls that put that certain uneasiness in the bottom of my stomach. I looked out the front window as the road and trees bobbed up and down over the horizon like we were in that 4-passengar Cessna chopping through the clouds, but this time the sun sank into the earth. I was a bit lower than 8,000 feet and the huuuummmmm was a hum of voices that talked on and on about positive change and political power. A wall of rock stood up from its sitting position by the road as we entered the hilly part of the trip. The rocks hid my view of the sun as we turned left and right, right and left. It soon became dark without notice.
This was my second sunset.
The darkness of the sky is a tricky thing. The dark ring near the end of the sky hints to something, the sun, still alive and well. But to see the sun after it lowers past the clouds and past the earth, you have to close your eyes. The sun is always there, doing it daily chores. You just have to know where to find it. So I closed my eyes. And I squeezed my pillow like it was that girl I had a crush on. I saw her walk to class between 2nd and 3rd period everyday and sometimes I saw her in the lunch line, but it hadn’t gone beyond the eye contact stage. It was easy to snuggle with a girl you hardly knew. You could fill in the parts about her that were missing and it was always easier to snuggle with a girl after went below the earth.
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All Writing > Fiction > The first sunset and the ones that followed
The newscasters had stopped throwing news back and forth and they had left the studio for classical music. That is when my dad fed the CD’s player’s mouth Neil Diamond. Blinking lights on the dash accepted it like dancing candy. In a swift counterattack, my brother selected a youthful and slightly rebellious CD for his own listening. It looked like a mix of rap. I usually could go for a little “Hard Knock Life” by Jay-Z, but Neil Diamond had that raspy deep voice that was more of a moving vibration around the fluff of my pillow. Kentucky woman “You guys awake back there?” My eyelids flipped up. “Yup.” My Mom was out for the count. She was sprawled out with her mouth open from round three. My brother was nodding his head to his music, but I think I just saw him miss a beat, so maybe he is slipping too. “We are about 20 minutes away now. ‘Member when we ate that family style dinner in that house on the corner?” my dad asked. “Oh yeah.” Dad was excited. He brought up old family memories whenever he was excited—then he would plan out the next family adventure. “You know? We should really go to the Grand Canyon. We are all good hikers. You know it. We could get some gear and hike out there a night or two. We could see if the Wiliamsons could go.” I encouraged him knowing it probably would fall through anyway. “Yeah.” My dad maneuvered the car through one of those speeding-trap little towns. I closed my eyes again. Neil Diamond engulfed me and then the music changed. Our car drove through an opening at the bottom of the road. We were underground now, where the sun was making its rounds. You’d think it was dark underground the earth, but when it is dark outside, the inside of the earth is bright and glowing like a magic orange. It is warm too. I should bring my dogs here. They would love it. They could swim in the lakes that move like mist and they could make friends with all the trees. You know how plants grow toward the sun? You may have seen this in 7th grade science project. Even if you nail a plant upside down to a board and put the thing outside, the plant finds its way to the sun even if it body has to twist and do the tango. Well the inside of the earth looks a lot smaller than you would think. It is a small world when it is turned inside out. All the trees line the outside, but when the sun sets past the clouds and then past the surface of the earth, it takes a break from its work of descending at a steady pace. When the sun sets past the earth, where our car has gone, it likes to dance around and float and spin. So the trees, they aren’t all aligned and straight. They constantly move and try to grow towards the sun. They sway like they are a strand of seaweed in the ocean, and they feel alive from the rays of the sun. And our car is kind of taking a tour. I am the only one awake in the car. My mom is hanging out the window fast asleep. Trees are brushing her hair. My brother has nodded off as well. His head is in his lap. But my dad, he is calling things out to me. poetry. “Niner, niner two -oh five. Cesna Bird chasing sun. Weee haaave overhead.” I am listening, with my big headset on. The kind with the mic that comes out the side. I am listening to the poetry and looking outside the window I see apple pie and deviled eggs. My mom’s nose is sniffing it all in. Her nostrils are rising and falling twice as fast, but she is still fast asleep. Then I see her. The girl I see between 2nd and 3rd period is floating and pushing off from the springy part of the trees. Smiling and twirling and flying. “Dad, I’m gonna see ya in a minute.” I unbuckle my seatbelt and toss my headset. I push the blankets around me away and my shirt scrunges up. I pull my shirt off all the way. The sun feels good on my skin. I roll the window down; I jump out and I am flying. Out of the car, the first thing I notice is the heat. It is even more warm and tingly. The sun is doing the waltz and adding some swing dance moves in there when she gets in the twirling mood. The girl I have a crush on is looking at the sun and imitating the moves. She looks at me and there is that eye contact. Niner Niner two-oh five. She dances and dances and I follow and it is so bright.
This was my third sunset.
“Nate, Hey buddy wake up man.” It was my mom’s voice. I felt the drool at the edge of my lips. Last night’s sleep left a good taste in my mouth. I wasn’t in my bed at home. The sheets were too smooth and there were more pillows on the bed than I liked. We were at the Williamsons’ house. And the dancing lady was looking through my window. She had to go back to work,
This is an unpublished work copyright by Nathan T. Baker, All Rights Reserved, 2006. |
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