The following story was published by Carvzine, a monthly literary magazine put out by the University of Washington.

THE GREEN M.G.

My Mother's MG was forest green with orange rust all over it. It was a small car and it smelt like old cracked leather. I liked to pick at the bits of leather that were falling off the seats. There was a hole in the middle of one of them where my little fingers had plucked the leather and then the styrofoam until hitting a metal spring. My Mom had green eyes like the car she drove and long sandy eye lashes and white white skin with brown dots all over.

Mom gathered me up into that old car and hauled me off to see my Grandfather in Ojai and then the car sputtered and coughed on the highway and choked and gagged until it just stopped and we were stuck on a small road running through a field of orange trees. The orange grove smelt good and we just sat in the car. A small breeze blew some dust through the windows and made me sneeze. I sneezed and wiped my nose and looked at Mom, turning my whole body over like she was a magnet and I was metal and te only thing keeping us apart was the seat belts. She sat a little slumped over with bright wide eyes and looked at me and then at some spot on the horizon, and we both just sat there, and the breeze blew through, and we both kept quiet. Then she put both of her hands on her face and screamed, shaking her whole body all over the place. The scream lasted a long time. I just sat in my seat, turned toward her, with my eyes closed. When she stopped I opened my eyes and she was looking at some spot on the horizon again. She turned the key and the car started. The little engine was crackling and coughing again and we were on our way up to the ranch. Sitting hot and sweaty in my seat, I wriggled my body into twisted positions to signify my discomfort. I wanted it quiet again. I liked her best when it was quiet.

When we arrived at the ranch Mom made dinner for me and her and Grandpa. It was some kind of steak, but I only had a little of that. I sat at the table with a mess of food all around me staring at her. Her face was all twisted in different directions as if her skin did not know exactly which way to go and her lips almost disappeared when she smiled and talked with Grandpa and she was hunched over like a little girl and her eyes sparkled like two twitching light bulbs. I almost took up my steamed carrots and threw them at her. Sitting in my chair I hunched over lower and lower until all I could see were her knees and Grandpa's knees under the table. Her knees were swinging back and forth. I waited for them to stop but they did not. They just kept going in and out in and out in and out. I was too little to do anything about it and so I just drank my milk and munched on my steamed carrots.

Grandfather's ranch was a big dusty place. Everywhere smelt like the inside of a dusty cowboy boot and everything seemed sort of dangerous. There were lots of snakes and dogs and cats and chickens and all sorts of noisy animals. And there was wood everywhere. The ranch house was made of wood and I had to be careful not to rub my hand the wrong way on a wall or a table or door because splinters were everywhere.

Grandfather seemed to fit the ranch. He had a face like an apple that had been sitting out in the sun. His eyes were green like my Mother's and he had hairy ear lobes that I liked to squish with my fingers and his throat hung down a little and wobbled from side to side when he spoke and he smelt like some type of wildflower that grew out in the back. He smoked a pipe out there in the yard and somehow the smells got traded. The yard smelt like his pipe and he smelt like the yard. He lived there alone on the place except for a lady who lived in a steel trailer by a creek at the entrance of the ranch under a very big oak tree that had at least a billion ants living in it. I could never be sure but I think that lady was my aunt.

After dinner, Mom took me into my bedroom and put me to sleep by reading some book. I liked her voice best when she read to me. She sat indian style in front of me on the bed and spoke softly in a voice that sounded like it was talking about the good things in life. She left once I knew I was asleep, but I woke up again. I stayed awake awhile and looked around at the empty room. There was a picture of some little girl on the wall wearing a crooked smile. It must have been Mom, only her teeth were much smaller in the picture. It was a black and white picture, inside, and Mom was sitting in a chair that was too big for her. Her eyes were crooked like her mouth. One of them was bright and open and looked like it was smiling and the other one was dark and shiny and seemed like it was made out of glass. I got out of bed and began to march back and forth from wall to wall, pretending to be Toad from Wind and the Willows. I made stomping noises on the wood floor watching my feet moving, my face pointed directly at the ground, imagining that I was Toad heading off to jail.

I heard a sound and I stopped walking back and forth and stopped and listened. I walked to the door to the room and opened and listened again. Then I walked on my top toes down the hall and the sound of my footsteps made little echoes in the hall. I crept down the stairs toward the sound that was coming from downstairs and saw Mom standing in the middle of the living room with her nightgown on standing completely still with one arm around herself and she was crying. That was the sound. I stopped on the bottom step and kept one hand on the bannister and watched my Mom. She didn't move. She just stood near an open window with her head down and one arm hanging and the other wrapped around her and she was crying quietly. The ceiling was high and she looked small. She looked small like she was getting smaller. I could smell something in the air, something nightlike. I sat down on the bottom step and kept watching Mom. After awhile she put her other arm down and looked out the window and walked up closer to it. She looked like she was made out of silver. Then she shut the window quietly and turned to walk away and stopped when she saw me on the stairs. She just stopped and stared at me and I stared back. Her eyes were wide and wet and they hung, looking at me, and then they closed and stayed that way and I got up and went back upstairs quietly and got into bed and went to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning I went to play with the dangerous animals, mostly with the chickens. I chased them and threw rocks at them. I saw the views atop oak trees and felt the dryness of dust in my mouth and made uneven treacherous walks over little hills leading to dry creak beds and brown ravines. The ranch was a great big dry hot world to me with big trees and fences and the smell of dirt and bruch everywhere. I was shirtless and craving cold lemonade as I usually did when playing in the dust of the ranch and so I ran back to the racnh house. My legs were small but I ran fast and furious until I stood outside the kitchen panting and puffing and pinching my sides.

I heard my Mom's small voice. Mom and Grandpa were talking in the kitchen. I was never to enter a room when they were speaking to each other in a certain tone and when they were alone together they always spoke in that certain tone. It was a conclusion that I came to all by myself and so even with my mouth filled with dust I waited outside on the porch impatiently until they were finished talking and Mom came outside to get me. She seemed to know I was there. She was carrying a cold glass of lemonade.

She handed me my lemonade and sat beside me and said something about me being very dirty and to take a bath or something of the sort. Something motherly. I tried to ignore what she said. I liked her best when she was quiet, when we were just two people sitting on a dusty porch looking out on a dusty ranch. Grandpa came out to join us a few minutes later and took me up in his lap. I liked the way Grandpa smelt and I like that we all just sat there and did not say anything. There did not seem to be anything to say. A plane flew up over the hills at the end of the ranch, one of those small planes that do not make very much noise. Mom said something about the weather and Grandpa grunted. I tried grunting too but it ended up sounding more like a burp or a hiccup. Grandpa turned me around to face him and smiled at me and then offered to take me to get some ice-cream at the Carnation place in town. Of course I did not say no. So Grandpa kind of threw me off his legs and we left Mom there on the porch with my empty glass of lemonade.

Grandpa played some kind of ancient blues music in the rusty old green pick-up truck. The truck was dusty like everything else on the place and smelt like my Grandfather. I could barely see over the dash board so Grandpa put me on his tool chest so I could see. When we got to the ice-cream place Grandpa let me get as much as I wanted. I got three scoops of chocolate mint chip. And he got some ice cream too. He got two scoops of chocolate with nuts on top. So on the ride back we were both eating our ice cream and listening to blues music.

We wound up a hill on the dusty road that led up to the ranch house. I looked behind us to see how the car made a dirt cloud on the road. Then Grandpa put my hand on the wheel, saying something about me being able to drive someday. Even though I was not doing anything I was scared that we might crash. My heart was jumping fast. When I was getting out the truck I spilled all the tools everywhere in the dust. Grandpa did not get mad at me but simply told me to go inside and wash my face while he picked up the tools. I went inside to wash my face. It was warm inside but there was a cool breeze blowing through the stairwell as I stomped up it making a rhythm with my footsteps. I got to the door to the bathroom and could smell the sweet soaps Mom used to bathe coming out of the door. I walked in and saw her lying still in the bath. It did not look like she was dead. It just looked like she was thinking about something very far away. I took a bite out of the ice-cream cone and chewed. It always tasted good to me with the ice-cream still on it. So I stood there and studied her and my hands were all sticky and the faucet dripped.

Her eyes were open and they were almost blue. Her hair was dark and wet, combed back in one wave. Her face was calm and her lips were still red and her skin was dotted and pale with freckles. Her eyes were stuck like they were staring at the sun and she looked right through me as if I was not there. I walked up to her body to kiss her, careful not to get my hands wet, as if staying dry were the most important thing.