Steve Upham
“Where are we going?” I asked Mom.
“Just get in,” she said.
I opened the front passenger door and got in the car while she helped Neil into the back. It was late and we never went out at night. I turned around to watch as she leant over Neil and put his seatbelt on. Neil was his quiet self again. Thirty minutes earlier he was screaming and banging his head against the kitchen wall. A bump had formed on his forehead.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
“We’re going for a drive,” she said as she put a sports bag in the boot. “Now stop asking questions and put your seatbelt on.”
I did as she said. I looked back over at our house. All the lights were still on.
“The lights are still on,” I said when she opened the door and got in. She put the keys in the ignition and started up the car. I think the TV was still on as well.
“Mom?” I said.
She turned on the radio. It was the news. They started talking sports. They were talking about a football game. The Hawkeyes were playing in Minnesota or something. It might as well have been on another planet. Snow had stopped the game. It wasn’t snowing where we were. We had a cold fog that was a dirty yellow colour because of the street lights.
“Mom?” I said. “The lights are still on.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She turned on the heating and put the dial up as far as it would go. The rush of hot air drowned out the radio.
She steered the car out the drive and onto the road. She put her seatbelt on once we were on the move like she always did. I stared back at our house as we drove past. It was lit up like a lonely bonfire. Neil didn’t seem concerned about any of this. It was like we did this every night.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
“I told you,” she said, “We’re going for a drive.”
“But it’s late.”
She didn’t say anything. I looked back at our house until we got to the end of the street and I couldn’t see it anymore because of the other houses. There was no one else out. When I turned around I saw a dog wander onto the road up ahead.
“There’s a dog on the road,” I told her. But she didn’t slow down.
“Mom, there’s a dog on the road,” I said.
She slammed on the breaks and we all jerked forward in our seats. The dog had stopped in the middle of the road and was staring at us. Mom hit the horn.
“Move you dumb fucking thing!” she yelled. She hit the horn again but the dog didn’t move, it just stared at us with its fevered red eyes.
“Jesus,” Mom sighed. She lowered her head and rested it on the wheel, her hands gripping it tightly.
“I’ll move him away,” I told her. I went to get out.
“No! Don’t get out,” she shouted, grabbing my arm. “Stay here.”
She released the brake and put her foot down on the gas. The car screeched like it was in pain and sped towards the dog. We didn’t hit it. I looked behind and couldn’t see it. It must have gotten out of the way. I hoped it did. Mom drove on as if nothing had happened, checking the rear-view mirror every few seconds. Neil was still staring out the window. I don’t think he even noticed we had stopped.
“Can we turn down the heat,” I asked. It was getting hot in the car.
“No,” she said. “It’s cold.” She was wearing a warm coat and she had beads of sweat on her forehead.
I thought we might be heading for the mall but she drove straight past it.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“For a drive,” she said.
“But where?”
“See what else is on the radio,” she said.
“I can’t hear it,” I said.
“Turn it up then.”
I turned up the volume. Someone was complaining about a garbage strike or something. I didn’t listen to what he was saying. I didn’t feel like it. I turned around to see what Neil was doing. He was still lost in his own world, staring out the window. His face was inches from the glass. He had his finger pressed against it as if he was pointing at something.
“I don’t know why you keep looking round to your brother for,” Mom said.
“What do you want to listen to, Neil?” I asked him.
Neil didn’t look at me. He just stared out the window.
“Neil, stop it,” Mom said, looking in the rear-view mirror. His face was pressed up against the window, his nose squashed into the glass. He was laughing. His laugh never sounded like him. It sounded like it came from someone else, someone younger than fourteen.
“Stop doing that,” Mom said.
But he didn’t stop.
“Neil! Stop it! Please,” she pleaded. “Enough, okay. I’ve had enough of this.”
But Neil kept his face pressed up against the window and didn’t stop laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Mom put her foot down and we sped up, getting right up behind a truck in front of us.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
She slowed down. Neil was still laughing. Nothing had changed. A car passed us and someone in the back seat gave us the finger.
I was trying to figure out where we were. From the signs I could see it looked like we were heading for Nebraska. I didn’t know why we were heading there for. We didn’t have any family or friends that lived there, not that I knew about anyway. We never really went anywhere. When Dad was around we might go to the lake in summer for a few days, but once he left we didn’t go anywhere.
I tried to turn down the heating but Mom turned it right back up again.
“Leave it alone,” she said.
“It’s boiling in here,” I said. I opened the window a bit to let in some air.
“Shut the window,” she yelled. “Goddamnit! It’s fucking cold.”
“But I’m hot,” I said.
“Do as you’re told and shut it now,” she said.
I put the window back up.
“Where are we going?” I asked again. She didn’t answer.
“I’m hungry,” Neil said. It was a shock to hear him speak after all that time. I turned around and Mom looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He was still staring out the window.
“Can we get something to eat?” he said.
Mom didn’t say anything. A little while later Neil said he was hungry again. Without saying anything, Mom stopped at the first place she could find. It was a truck stop off the interstate. It had a restaurant with Good Times in blue and red neon across the main window. It didn’t look like good times.
“What do you want?” Mom asked.
“I’m hungry,” Neil said.
“So what do you want?”
“I’m hungry,” Neil said quietly to himself.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger,” I said.
“Neil?” Mom asked again but he didn’t answer.
I could see that there were lots of empty tables in the restaurant.
“Why don’t we go inside,” I asked.
“Because we’re in a hurry,” Mom said.
“In a hurry where?”
“Stay here and make sure he doesn’t get out,” she said.
Mom got out but kept the engine running. I turned off the heating while she was in the restaurant. I turned back to Neil. He was still looking out the window.
“Where do you think we’re going?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. I asked him again and got the same response. I turned back and flicked through the stations on the radio. I got a religious station where a preacher was yelling that Satan was in Wall Street or something. I kept changing the stations and found nothing so turned it off.
“How did you know I was here?” Neil said.
I turned around. “What did you say?” I asked him.
“How did you know I was here?”
It’s one of those things that Neil says that makes no sense and you have to think about it awhile before you can give him an answer.
“Because I can see you,” I said.
“How can you see me?” he said.
“I don’t get it?”
“How can you see me?” he said again.
“With my eyes.”
“If I’m a ghost, how come you can see me?”
“You’re a ghost?” I asked.
He nodded.
“How do you figure that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been told.”
“Who told you?”
“Someone.”
“Who?”
“Someone told me.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been told,” he said.
“Who said?”
Mom came back with the burgers. She got in the car and immediately turned the heating right back up.
“I told you to leave the heating alone,” she said, brushing the flakes of snow off her coat before shutting the door. She handed me a paper bag with the burgers in it and a cardboard drinks holder that held three large cokes.
“I need to go toilet,” Neil said.
Mom was about to drive out of the parking lot.
“I need to go toilet,” he said again.
Mom sighed and stopped. “Okay. Quickly then. You go with him,” she said to me.
“I don’t need to go,” I told her.
“I don’t care. Go with him to make sure he doesn’t run off.”
We got out of the car. It was freezing. There was ice on the ground and flakes of snow floating in the air. I followed Neil past some big trucks into the restaurant. There were only a few people sitting in there. They stared at us when we walked in.
I led Neil to the toilets at the end of the restaurant and waited by the sink as he went into the cubicle and locked the door.
I was always having to look out for Neil. He may have been two years older but I was the older brother. I was always keeping him out of trouble and getting myself into some, usually by getting into fights at school with whoever called him a retard.
“Where do you think we’re going?” I asked the cubicle door. Neil didn’t answer. I heard the toilet flush and he came out. We went back outside and got in the car. I helped strap Neil back in. I held out a burger but he didn’t want it, so I put it down on the backseat next to him. I held out a coke but he didn’t want that either.
Mom pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the interstate. It looked like we were heading for Nebraska. The large signs said so. It was only 56 miles away. It was snowing and the wipers were moving fast across the window.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke up to the sound of a storm blowing around me and Mom screaming. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know if I was still dreaming. Mom was screaming at Neil to shut the door. I turned back to see Neil holding the door open looking like he was about to jump out. He was staring down at the road. Mom just kept screaming at him to shut the door. Neil didn’t move. He was frozen, staring intensely at the road.
I tried to tell him to shut the door but I couldn’t even hear myself as there was so much noise in the car. Mom suddenly veered across the lane. I heard car horns blasting behind us as we left the road and screeched to a stop on the side of the interstate.
Neil jumped out and ran off up a snowy bank. Mom screamed after him to come back.
She then yelled at me to go and get him. I tried to get out without undoing my seatbelt. I was still unsure if I was dreaming or not and it took me a few seconds to realise why I couldn’t move.
I unbuckled the belt and got out of the car and ran after Neil, following his footprints in the snow. It was freezing cold and I wished I had my jacket on as I ran after him. How many times have I done this, I thought as I chased after him, stumbling in the snow, trying to stop him from doing something stupid. It should have been the other way round and not me doing all the chasing. I was tired of being the older brother.
At the top of the bank was a tall wire fence with barbed wire running along the top of it. The wire fence ran along the top of the bank for as long as I could see. There were yellow lights on posts every so often. On the other side of the fence a plane was getting ready to take off. The lights on the tips of its wings were blinking.
I ran alongside the fence, following Neil’s footprints. The snow was thick and my legs were getting tired. My shoes and jeans were wet.
I saw Neil holding onto the fence, his face pressed into it as he watched the plane ready for takeoff.
“I’ve never been on a plane,” he said when I ran up to him. I was relived he had stopped.
“Do you think I’ll get to fly one day?” he said.
“Sure. We’ll both go,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
We watched as the plane engines roared louder than the traffic rushing behind us. I looked back to see Mom standing halfway up the bank, knee deep in snow with the car hazard lights flashing behind her. The traffic was slowing down to look at us. I felt like a loser standing up there.
I turned back to see the plane speed down the runway and then slowly lift up into the sky. It looked like it was touch and go if it would get into the air, trying to carry all those people away from their shitty lives on the ground. I could see their faces looking out the little windows and imagined them all screaming for mercy when the plane crashed into the ground. We watched it climb higher into the dark sky until we couldn’t see it anymore.
I was shivering. “We better go,” I said to Neil. “It’s fucking freezing.”
“I’d like to stay here,” he said.
“It’s cold. We need to get back in the car.”
“I want to stay.”
“We’ll come back,” I said. “We’ll come back during the day and we can stay and watch the planes all day.” I started to walk away. “Come on, let’s go.” But he didn’t move.
“Come on, Neil,” I said. “It’s fucking freezing up here. I don’t wanna freeze to death.” But he still didn’t move. His fingers were gripped through the wire and his eyes were on the lit up runway. I ran back over to him and pulled his fingers away from the fence, one by one. I was pissed at him for making me do this. I wanted to break his fucking fingers and cause him some pain. I wanted to make him cry.
“Do you think I’ll get to go on a plane one day,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I could get on one tonight,” he said.
“You need a ticket first.”
“No. I could get on. No one would see me.”
“Come on,” I said pulling his last finger from the fence. I took his hand and led him back down to the car. Mom just watched as we walked past. The car doors were still open. Some snow was on the backseat so I swept it off before helping Neil into the back. I put the seatbelt around him then shut the door.
I swept off the snow from my seat and got in. I was shivering and put my jacket on in the car. My jeans were soaked through from the knee down. I tried to pull them away from my skin but they were so heavy they stuck to my legs.
Mom got back in. She didn’t say anything. She gripped the steering wheel. Her knuckles were white. The veins in her hands stood out. She leant forward and rested her head on her arms.
“Are we going home now?” I asked.
“I’ve had it,” she said. “Jesus knows I can’t take this anymore. It’s the right thing to do.” She started to cry. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I didn’t know how to make her feel better. I never did when she cried. I put my hand on her shoulder but it felt a lame thing to do.
She sat up straight and then reached over to the backseat and grabbed her bag. She put it on her lap and unzipped it and searched through it and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
“You don’t need to use them,” I said. “He’s not going to run off again. He only wanted to see the planes.”
She got out of the car and went round to Neil. He wasn’t paying attention to anything we were talking about. He was staring out the window like before.
“Sorry darling,” she said, as she clamped the cuff around one of his wrists. “But it’s for your own good.” She attached the other cuff to the door. Neil didn’t move. He just stared at his wrist. Mom got back in the car. She had stopped crying. She looked in the mirror and wiped her eyes. We were soon back on our way. I started to feel warm again. I looked back at Neil and he was staring down at the handcuffs.
It wasn’t long before we left Iowa and crossed the Missouri River. We passed a sign that said ‘Nebraska – The Good Life’. I wondered what must be good about it as we got closer. When I looked back at Neil he was asleep, his head resting against the window.
“What are we doing in Nebraska?” I asked Mom but she didn’t answer.
We followed the signs for Omaha. We drove through streets with snow ploughed off to the sides, piled up a few feet high in some places. I could see the lights of the buildings in downtown Omaha. It looked like a nice place to be.
We drove down empty streets, passing darkened windows and vacant lots, all with a halo of dirty yellow light. It was the same dirty yellow light from our street back home and it seemed to follow us around. Flakes of snow were falling and it looked like we were in a ticker tape parade. I was trying to imagine what we had won but I couldn’t think of anything. I saw a snowman standing lopsided in an empty lot and I felt sorry for it being there all alone at night even though I knew it wasn’t alive or anything like that.
I didn’t know what time it was when we drove into the hospital parking lot. Neil was still asleep. The parking lot was all lit up, just like the airport runway. We could be seen from space, I thought at the time. There weren’t many cars. I guess we’d been driving for nearly 8 hours so it must have been around 4am when we stopped.
Mom reached over to the backseat and grabbed her bag. She took out a pen and on her thigh she smoothed out the crumpled paper bag that our burgers came in and started writing. The paper had grease stains on it that looked like black bruises. Neil woke up but he didn’t say anything. He stared out the window. He didn’t even think to ask where we were. I don’t know if he knew we had stopped or if we were still moving.
“What are you doing?” I asked Mom but she didn’t say anything as she wrote. She started to cry and stopped writing. She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. Then she started to write again. When she was finished she smoothed out the paper again and put the pen on the dashboard.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said to me, “You wait here.” She got out of the car and went round and opened the back door. She took the handcuffs off Neil.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“You stay here,” she said. “We won’t be long.”
“Where are you going?”
She helped Neil out of the car and then shut the door. I got out.
“Get back in the car,” she yelled at me. “I’ll be back soon. Get back in.” She opened the boot and took out the bag.
I didn’t get back in. I watched them as they walked towards the hospital together. Mom had her arm around Neil’s shoulder and I could see that she was talking to him. I wanted to run after them, to see where they were going. But I stayed by the car and watched as they vanished through the sliding doors into the hospital.
Less than a minute later Mom came back out, without Neil or the bag. She was walking fast to the car.
“I told you to stay in the car,” she said.
“Where’s Neil?” I asked her.
“Get in the car,” she said.
“But where is he?”
“Get in the car!”
I got back in the car. I watched the hospital entrance in case Neil came out. Mom got in the car and quickly started it up and we sped out of the parking lot, the tires screeching like in the movies.
“Where’s Neil?” I asked her again.
“Neil’s fine,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about him. He’s fine.”
“Where is he?”
As she drove out onto the street I looked back at the hospital, expecting to see Neil standing at the entrance looking for us. I watched it until I could see it no more.
As we drove back home, I kept turning back, expecting to see Neil sitting there, staring out the window. But all I saw was his burger sitting on the seat still wrapped, and the handcuffs hanging from the door handle as if they were clamped around the wrist of a ghost. Maybe Neil was right. Maybe he was a ghost and no one could see him.
I thought about it as we left Omaha and I thought about where he might be but it was hot in the car and I soon fell asleep again.
–
Steve Upham has not been published before. His influences include Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Bob Dylan, The Band, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Son Volt, Damien Jurado and Drive-By Truckers.
