THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET: SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

Hornets 2 - 1947

33 1947 Hornets 2 The old green Chevrolet climbs Bull Mountain slowly, grinding its way over the top in the heat of mid-summer, slowly picking up speed as we lumber down into Bull Creek. We are going to Huntington. My father drives, my mother in the passenger seat. I sit in the rear, where I am always made to sit, looking straight ahead, trying to keep my stomach calm enough so I do not throw up. My father hates it when I get sick, hates stopping the car, hates waiting for me to bend over at the side of the road and puke, sometimes puking so hard that I nearly pass out, losing my balance and lurching against a tree or a rusty guardrail. Once, head spinning, I fell forward into my own puke and then skidded down a small bank, leaves and dirt sticking to the puke, ruining the shirt my mother had ironed for this trip. My father would not let me back in the car until I had climbed farther down the bank to a small creek and washed out my clothes, standing naked in the cool water, glad that the water was mingling with my tears so that no one would notice. So that I would not notice. Lee Maynard 34 We were going to Huntington that time, too, and I rode the rest of the way in my wet underwear, my pants and shirt flapping outside the rear window. I stare straight ahead, the hot air streaming in through the open windows and pushing against my face. I breathe deeply, trying not to think about my stomach. And then a hornet flies in through the window and hits me in the center of my forehead. I catch a glimpse of it just before it hits and I think it is huge, the size of a hummingbird. Yes, the size of a hummingbird. I am positive. The hornet whacks into my forehead and bounces off into that space behind the rear seat where it buzzes angrily against glass of the window. I am trapped in the back seat with a hornet. I feel the terror in my throat. I twist in the seat and dive to the floor, a space so tight that I barely fit. I know I am pushing against the back of my father’s seat, but I do not care. I raise my head slightly so I can see the hornet . . . and I am back standing under my uncle’s willow tree, the paper hornets swarming over my body, the stings coming so rapidly that I do not know where I am being stung, only that my skin is a sheet of pain, my eyelids are stung shut, and my mind is shutting down. And all I can hear is the buzzing. And I hear the buzzing now, here, in the back seat. I scream. I had not known, until that moment, that a mortal fear of hornets lurked in some dark recess of my heart. Myfatherpretendsnottohear.Hehasseenthewholethinginthemirror. He drives carefully, still easing the old car down the mountainside. The hornet makes a sweeping arc out of the rear window and down past my face. I scream again. The Pale Light of Sunset 35 My father slams on the brakes. The old car sits on the highway, engine running, my mother with her arms braced against the dash. She looks at my father. My father reaches down and grabs the handle of the parking brake and jerks it toward him. I hear the ratchet sound of the brake locking and then a car door opening and then my father is ripping open the door to the back seat. He reaches in, grabs me and jerks me from the car. I hit the hot blacktop and slide, skin coming off my elbows. But I’m still focused on the hornet and I do not seem to notice any other pain. I sit up on the hot pavement and watch as my father flails his arms against the back window, trying to crush the hornet. He hits it a glancing blow, knocking it out of the car and onto the road. My father, moving slowly now, steps carefully away from the car and, with one dramatic stomp, mashes the hornet into the hot tar. My breath catches in my throat and I realize I have been sobbing. I look up at...