I am in the car with my father. He’s at the wheel and he’s going
fast. We’re both enjoying the speed. On the side of the road, the
sagebrush is a blur. The high desert plain reaches off, flat and cold
and dry, heaped with lava rock cairns. The mountains battle a pale
sky. It is November and the peaks are powdered sugar. Ahead of us the
road stretches out, straight and narrowing until it disappears in the
distance.
My father has been working on this car for years. It’s a Volvo 544
coupe from the sixties. His care is evident in the gloss of the
paint, the fabric of the seats, the dash console with its stark white
numbers. I think it looks like one of those gangster cars from a
black-and-white movie, with the headlights in the lobed wheel wells,
the sloping tail, the hood like the nose of a surfboard. I told him
that once, and I think he liked it, because he gave a little smile
and then went back to talking about the exhaust manifold.
We aren’t talking much, just leaning back in the seats. The wind is
howling over the hood. I think my father is slowly pressing harder on
the gas.