Rio de Dios

Joy Ride (1)

89 Joy Ride (1) “Even when an angel makes you fly, you are the wings.” —Lyn Hejinian Cars don’t need us but do like to watch us, the dead, wave like flags, can’t wait to hear what our colors will be this year, what sex will be done where. Backdoor. I grew hard of hearing at the drag races, admired Rat Fink, liked to misconstrue flew the coupe and double headers. To remember growing up is to remember old cars: yellow on black number plates, space-wand curb feelers, paired lunchbox speakers at the drive-in—see how the sky in the movies rests so lightly on the steering wheel, quiet rectangles of static light. Do you make good three point turns? Driver’s license as birth certificate— as Wanda Coleman says, to drive is to live.The last hitchhiker I picked up, twenty years ago this spring, I stopped for just before the 4th Street Bridge.Thin, 90 head a little too big like a character in Thunderbirds, dirty hair, a model’s lips. Just waking up each day is a blind date with hope. I was going to work, had in my new earring, while he had busy eyes, a transistor radio, a bent stiletto, and a grudge against traffic. He was entirely on the side of the cars, he explained, because traffic made them want to stab something. Chernobyl was two days away. He rubbed the knife on the seat, blade flat.The car turned to glass, the road as well, both of us going 35 transparent miles per hour, me miming a casual U-turn, him rubbing a knife in circles on invisible fabric. We could look down, see the river far below, look ma, I have wings. If you could have just one super power, would you rather be invisible or would you rather fly, would you rather love that which will never be able to love back, or would you want to see the future, stop the reactor from melting down, the 91 baby from unlatching the pool gate, the knife from prying open the head’s bones like the lid of a wet, stuck jar? They say it just looked like regular smoke, Chernobyl, even as birds dropped from the sky, a day like any other. My hitchhiker turns to stare, complains he can hear the other cars talking about us, and they do not like my driving. Thank you, Jesus, but this one you can love for me. I pull over in a red zone, turn off the key, take it out, put it in my shirt pocket, lift up my door lock, flip on the hazards, and walk away, just leaving him sitting in an invisible car miles above a shoelace river. Maybe the angels can use his hair for nests; maybe he has not one but three or four powers; maybe he can jump down and fly through the floor of the bridge. Later I drove home the slow way, taking hours, my hand tracing where the knife had been, massaging the seat, 92 leaving the radio on even during commercials, making each turn with exaggerated care, thinking about the abyss that is each person and what winds blow up out of them, the rare times when we step up to the edge and lean over and look all the way down. ...