From a Mustang

The passenger door of the Ford mustang was open to its full capacity, the azure paint of its metal frame glistening in the California sun. Piled high on the seat was a mountain of clothes, scraps of paper, a dozen vinyl albums, as well as worn sneakers, and a pair of heeled boots. A framed diploma from UCLA dated May 1969 sat perched on the very top of the pile. A large bag bulging with the strain of its contents sat on the floor beneath the seat. A hand reached for the bag, turned it over and lifted a creased envelope out from under it. The fingers dragged themselves along the sender’s address in Connecticut inked on the envelope and then fumbled to extract the letter within.

The fingers traced the printed words. …Has been sick for months now. The fingers touched the ink of the following paragraph. …Would appreciate if you came home…I know the two of you haven’t been on good terms, but Richard, please remember that he still loves you…

Richard’s thumb stopped on the final sentence. He rubbed gently on the word “love,” written so neatly in his mother’s familiar handwriting. He stared at the subtlety curved “1” and looping “e” and pressed his thumb to the word. The ink refused to smudge. He placed the letter on top of the framed-diploma, letter and envelope now separated, and slammed the mustang’s door. He stood beside the car and stared out toward the street.

How familiar his mother’s handwriting had been, although he had not seen its perfectly formed letters in six years, and yet the simple swell of her scribbled “l” brought forth a sense of overwhelming knowledge of his life six years earlier. It seemed almost a lifetime away, and as Richard stood beside the mustang and kicked a loose rock from the road’s pavement, he thought of how President Kennedy has just been assassinated immediately after he left for college. He had been nineteen then, clean-cut and determined to follow his father’s career path in his accounting firm, but that had been when he and his father were on speaking terms.

Now he stood beside his mustang, brown hair grown over the tops of his ears, the hint of a beard and a fine line of hair above his upper lip visible. A semi-wrinkled t-shirt depicting the album cover of The Band’s Music from Big Pink was stretched across his wiry frame. Denim jeans adorned his stovepipe-thin legs, and from underneath the jeans, his sandaled feet peeked out.

Richard pulled at his t-shirt and stiffly walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle, his hand poised on the door’s handle. He stared down at the pink house printed on the cotton shirt, a house that was just as far as Connecticut. Hell, if he was going to drive all the way to Newport, he might as well stop in Woodstock and visit the musically famed house. Maybe he’d run into Dylan or even the Beatles there.

It was wishful thinking. The only home he was most likely going to visit was that of a funeral parlor, and if he delayed his cross-country drive long enough, he would escape his father’s approaching death and subsequent funeral altogether.

“Watcha doin’ there, son? You thinkin’ ‘bout movin’ this car outta here?”

Richard’s hand tightened on the car door’s handle. He turned. A cop was walking toward him, a smoldering cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. He stopped before Richard and rested both hands on his holster. His right hand fingered the gun.

“This here’s a no-parking zone, son. I’d advise you move that car before there’s a problem.” The cop stepped closer. The nametag pinned to his blue uniform glistened in the sun. Officer Daley. “There isn’t a problem, is there?”

“No, there isn’t,” Richard retorted. He opened the car door and slid behind the wheel. He fumbled to place the keys in the ignition. The mustang roared to a start.

“Hold it right there, son. I don’t like your tone,” Officer Daley barked.

The mustang barreled down the road, and in the rearview mirror, Richard watched Officer Daley hastily return to his vehicle parked behind him. The siren blared as the red lights flashed from the roof of the police car.

Richard pressed down harder on the gas pedal, and Officer Daley sped up in response. The mustang rounded a sharp corner, and the dozen vinyl albums toppled from the pile of Richard’s possessions on the passenger seat. A copy of Highway 61 Revisited fell into his lap. Richard glanced down at its cover. It had been a gift from his father four years earlier, a feeble attempt to win back his son’s trust. His father had even written on the album’s top right corner to declare that the album was a gift to Richard. How typical of his father, to deface an album, to spit in the face of its creator and devalue the artistic merit of the record.

Richard pushed the album from his lap. He glanced in the rearview mirror and studied the path of Officer Daley’s vehicle. Officer Daley seemed to be lagging slightly behind, but his reduced speed appeared intentional. The tiny reflection of the officer’s face in the mirror showed a pinched expression of determined anger. Richard rounded another corner.

Richard looked back at his father’s handwriting on the album. Had his father presented the album to him in the years before college, Richard would have gladly accepted the album with or without its offensive ink marks. In Richard’s pre-college years, his father had seemed like a mythic figure, complete with his own accounting business that Richard had been honored but somewhat reluctant to join later in life.

“Richard, you will be my successor in the business,” his father had said to him one night after dinner. He winked at sixteen-year-old Richard over his glass of sherry. “And what a fine one you will be.”

“I don’t think I’d be as good as you.”

“Nonsense!” his father had boomed. He had stood up from the table and waved one hand in a dismissive motion while the other clutched the sherry. “I’ve seen the marks you get in math. You are talented enough.”

“Dad, I don’t think…that’s really not the same—”
“I won’t hear it!” His father had interrupted with a smile. “I know my son, and he will certainly live up to his father’s expectations!”
Whether he had pleased or disappointed his father in choosing not to work for his business, Richard did not know for certain, but his father had certainly failed to live up to Richard’s own paternal expectations. His years in college brought upon him the realization that his father was one of the over-thirty generation that could not be trusted, forever puttering around in the business world and blindly conforming to society.
“You’re just a bumbling old man,” Richard muttered aloud under his breath. And yet, as he glanced at his father’s cramped handwriting on the album cover, a tinge of sadness washed over him at the thought of his once mythic father dying in a Connecticut hospital.
Officer Daley’s car horn blared in the distance, and the car’s reflection in the mustang’s mirror jerkily pulled over to the side of the road. Richard eyed the rearview mirror. The police car stopped and began to move in reverse. He could barely decipher the gritted teeth and downturned mouth of Officer Daley before the car vanished down a side road.
“YEAH, THAT’S IT!” Richard shouted. “GIVE UP!” A crackle of laughter escaped from between his lips, and he spun the steering wheel violently to the right with one hand while the other absently tuned the radio. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” filled the interior of the mustang. Richard changed the station. Marvin Gaye.
Route 50 would take him straight across the country. If he kept up this speed, it would take him less than a week to drive cross-continentally. Richard’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. He almost wished to see Officer Daley as an incentive to floor the mustang’s gas pedal.
The mustang would have to journey a few hours north along the California coast. He couldn’t afford to lose that much time. His mother’s written words echoed in his mind. …The doctors are only giving him a week at the most…He keeps asking about you…Please, Richard, I beg of you…
There had to be another freeway. Richard glanced in the rearview mirror again. He bit his bottom lip. The steering wheel was damp with the sweat from his palms. The mustang hummed along the road. Another vehicle passed by, and Richard was nearly tempted to ask the driver for directions to the nearest highway. The radio signal lost strength. The Rolling Stones were barely audible.
How long did funeral homes hold deceased people for? Could the funeral be delayed? A painful knot swelled in Richard’s stomach. He needed to find the freeway. No, he couldn’t be late for the funeral. He could not show up after a six-year absence after the death of his father. His eyes scanned the road frantically for a sign indicating the nearest highway entrance. He hadn’t passed another driver for the last several minutes. Was he even heading east?
A white car appeared before him and turned out onto the road from a residential area. Richard slowed the mustang and rolled down his window.
“Hey, man!” he called out. “Hey, wait! Where’s the nearest—”
The white car stopped beside the mustang. The driver stared darkly at Richard. He brought a walkie-talkie up to his lips and breathed heavily into it.
“Over and out,” the driver grumbled. He glared at Richard. “There isn’t a problem, is there, son?”
* * *
The black payphone in the station rang only twice before his mother answered, her voice thick with sleep.
“Hello?” she answered groggily.
Richard leaned against the phone. Officer Daley stood beside him in silence and eyed him with a hawkish glare.
“It’s Richard.”
His mother spoke, and as Richard listened to her voice—its inflections just as familiar as her written words—the police station seemed to wash away. The clicking of typewriters and ringing phones on the desks of paper-pushing cops silenced. Officer Daley’s presence beside him was no longer felt.
“…Peacefully around nine o’clock yesterday morning…”
He placed the receiver back on its cradle.
“There isn’t a problem, is there?” Officer Daley asked gruffly.