Thanks for the Ride

The only thing I remember about my uncle was the day we picked him up from prison. He climbed in the car, dripping, soaked from the rain, and he still had a cigarette in his mouth.

“Toss that,” Mom said.

“Good to see you, too, Val.”

He took one more drag, flicked the cig out the window—a fiery bug falling through the rain—and then he turned to me in the back. His hair was in a Swayze mullet, except the top had receded and thinned into the shape of a beak. He lowered his round glasses and winked at me.

“Hey there, little lady. Gimme some.”

He punched out his fist. A gold ring on his pinky. When I fist-bumped him, I could feel the scarlet diamond on my skin, the smallest heart in the world.

“Since when do you smoke?” Mom said.

“It helps me relax.”

“You can’t relax another way?”

“Another way how?”

He searched the radio stations and stopped on a Van Halen song.

“Exercise, walk, read . . .” Mom had always been a big fan of listing. She made one almost every day, and it was my job to cross off the errands on her notepad. I did this now—pick up Mitch—as she rattled on. She often spoke in them as well. Everything she learned and did could be bulleted and numbered, and a part of my life, too, would rely on lists. I’d tape them to my bathroom mirrors and kitchen cabinets, and I’d make ones for my little brother Louie to complete. A good list could get you through any kind of day. “. . . listen to music, watch TV, write.”

“Write?” he laughed. “Did you just say write? I’ve done my share of that.”

Out the window, I saw a boarded-up warehouse. Broken glass on the road. Graffiti.

“I’m not trying to pick a fight right now.”

A man slept under a rusted awning, his body curled in a tarp, shivering.

“All those letters,” he said. “Not one fucking reply.”

I turned to them now.

“Mitch.”

“Not one visit. Not even you. Bullshit.”

“Please.”

Mom tilted her feathered hair my way, and Uncle Mitch spun around as if he had forgotten about me. The rough fuzz on his face reminded me of sandpaper.

“I’m a bad mouth, aren’t I?”

I must’ve been smiling because his laugh lightened up.

“A dirty mouth could use a good cleaning, that’s what your grandma would say if she was here,” he said. “How it’s look in there?” He opened his mouth and let out an ahhh like at the dentist. Silver caps shined in the lower back. “Dirty?”

I laughed now, nodding.

“Oh no,” he said, his face full of fright. “Is it bad?”

“And stinky,” I said.

Uncle Mitch and I fist-bumped again. I wanted that ring.

“Goofs,” Mom said.

We crossed a bridge. The creek ran just below the road, so full and high from all the rain. Wide puddles had spread in the park, their surfaces reflecting the bare branches and gray sky. In the summers, Grandpa took me there, and we tossed pieces of bread to the ducks in the pond and gave them names. He once told me this town made two kinds of people—givers and goners—and he was seeing more and more of the goners ever since Uncle Mitch became one, and he said to never let anyone end up like that, ever, because there was no going back.

Uncle Mitch was watching the park.

“Do you and Grandpa name the ducks?” he asked.

It startled me, how he just read my mind, and I stuttered in my reply. I was beginning to read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. When my brother Louie was a toddler, I’d read Bradbury stories to him. At the school library, I checked out a novel about telepathy. My third-grade teacher said it’d be too hard, but I finished it, and before I was older, I believed in it, too, that one day I’d hear my little brother’s voice in my head, and he’d hear mine in his, and we’d always be there for each other.

“Had a feeling you guys did,” he said, then spoke to Mom. “He’d always say he was going to take the grandkids to the park to name the ducks, and sure enough he does now.”

“Just like he said,” Mom said.

“How is he? He say anything? About today?”

Mom looked at him. We were at a red light. Her hand might’ve touched his. I couldn’t see over the seat, but I imagined the ring burning like a meteor in the dark inner space of her palm.

“Figured I’d ask,” he said.

Mom drove onto a street of old narrow houses not far from downtown square. My grandmother grew up in this neighborhood, I’d heard, but I never knew much about her. She died before I was born. There used to be an annual fair here, but most people had moved away from this part of town. The sight of empty yards and ruined porches made me watch for ghosts in the windows.

“There it is,” Uncle Mitch said, pointing to a mint-green house, the paint peeling. “Pop Quiz, little lady. Who grew up there?”

He sang the Jeopardy theme song.

“You?”

He made a gameshow buzzer noise for wrong.

“That’s where your grandma grew up,” he said.

Again, he heard my thoughts, as if he had a tin-can phone wired to my brain. I followed his hand smoothing down his wet mullet. The diamond was a spotless ladybug in his hair. I wondered if he had worn the ring his whole time in prison. I pictured him on his cot in his cell, gazing into the red eye on his finger, and there was still a chance for him, there was still some hope he could find.

“Oldest of ten. The big sister.” He looked back at me. “Like you pretty soon.”

Mom was going to have my brother in a few months.

“That’s a helluva job,” he said. “Being a big sister. You gonna be ready?”

“I will,” I said.

“Ding-ding,” he said. “Correct answer, Big Sis. You’ll handle it all right. Just like her, you’ll get it done.” He turned to Mom. “I know one thing. If she was still alive, she’d be here in this car. She’d have written back, too. Every letter. No matter what.”

Mom said his name again.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Mom soon pulled up to a dingy yellow house. A pit bull snarled and barked, the chain around its neck so taut it might snap. The dog whimpered when a shirtless, thin man came out and said to shut up. He waved at Uncle Mitch, then went inside, the door still open to the dim entry of the house. I thought Uncle Mitch should stay in the car.

“Well,” he said, “thanks for the ride.”

“Any time,” Mom said. “I mean it. Okay?”

Uncle Mitch said okay, then got out. The rain had slackened. A light drizzle. Almost mist. He walked to my window and said to roll it down. The air was cool and the faint rain felt good on my fingers and lips, and he was playing with the ring, turning it on his pinky.

“Big Sis,” he said, “just remember . . .” He stopped messing with the ring and glanced up at the sky. “Shit. You’ll figure it out your own way.”

There’d be other times I’d see him before he’d vanish from us. But this was what stayed with me, this car ride and his ring, a kind of dream I could never finish before his death, before he could appear in full, before there was enough time for him to give me more.

Mom honked the horn and drove away. Uncle Mitch was petting the dog.

“Okay, Big Sis,” Mom said.

I grabbed the pen and the notepad. At the bottom, I wrote call Uncle Mitch.

“What’s next?”