Unstuck

Dylan opened the door and looked out. Overnight the rain had turned to ice, covering the snow that fell before. Wind pierced the wool of his ski hat. He pressed his molars together against the cold, took a single step forward, and tumbled against the railing. A mass of heavy snow had turned what had been a slight bend in the porch floorboards into a substantial slump. He picked himself up, dusted snow off his knees, and carefully sidled around the hazard.

In the early morning sun, the frozen embankment blocking the end of the drive reflected long cylindrical shafts of light, making Dylan think the harsh weather, typical of New Hampshire in January, was worth the sacrifice. Then a massive plow truck cut through the middle of the street, blocking out the sun and churning up snow in cresting waves before depositing the fresh slush into his driveway.

“Goddamn it,” he said.

He tossed rock salt over the porch, on the steps, along the sidewalk, across the driveway, and behind the wheels of his flatbed. All the bending and twisting tightened his lower back, so he straightened his spine, unkinking vertebra by vertebra, and reached for the sky. Eyeballing the frozen mound, Dylan figured he could run the tailgate straight through, like one of those icebreakers in the Arctic. He could clear it out properly later, after he had seen his father.

The scraper wasn’t in the side panel of the driver’s door, so he went sprawling across the seat with his legs kicking out of the cab to check the passenger’s side. Hopefully, it hadn’t fallen through the hole in the floor beneath the glove compartment, where the rust had eaten its way through. The breach in the floor was getting bigger and the cab increasingly troublesome to heat. The vehicle would soon fail inspection, and he considered buying another truck, but only had enough for another rusty bucket, so why bother?

He slipped an arm behind the passenger’s seat and forced a fist into the hidden recess beneath, maneuvering his outstretched fingers through the coils leaking out from the bottom cushion until his wiggling fingertips unearthed the scraper. He couldn’t imagine how the thing had found its way from the door’s side panel to the floor and then entwined itself in the coils, like an escaping prisoner. A nefarious force struck him as the most likely explanation. The scraper wouldn’t budge, and he was about to give up when it let loose, causing him to smash his funny bone against the back wall of the cab. His whole arm went numb, but somehow stung too. Outside he hopped up and down while holding his elbow. He worried he’d never be able to play again. How the hell would he be able to if he couldn’t feel the strings? Eventually the needling diminished, after the polar air had frozen his nostrils and cheeks.

Pushing all his weight behind the scraper, the ice on the front windshield came away in tiny flakes and his elbow started to ache. He switched hands, but the glaze was so thick and his grip so awkward that he resorted to chipping away at it, stabbing rather than competently shaving the frozen film away. He managed to clear the driver’s side before the plastic broke in half, leaving him staring at the useless handle. Suddenly, the idea of slamming the truck straight through the snowbank struck him as wildly logical.

The engine kicked on, fluttered, coughed, and stalled. After several more attempts, the motor started chugging erratically, and he had to keep feathering the gas pedal to keep it from dying. Surprisingly—despite the cold, the porch, the hole, the scraper, the frozen embankment, and the skittish engine—heat from the vents began to blow across his face. He closed his eyes and listened to the squeak of the wiper blades across the glass, the satisfying predictability of the rhythm.

He pulled the gear shift down towards reverse, but the handle resisted. He squeezed both hands over the black knob, yanked until it finally yielded, and floored the gas. The wheels slipped in place: the vehicle didn’t budge. He stepped out, pulled a shovel from the truck bed, and dug behind each of the four tires, ignoring his spine’s protests, until he reached tar. He climbed back in and leaned against the gas pedal. The tires grabbed the surface and the tailgate plunged into the snowbank with a startling crunch and an unexpected pop. He stepped out to take a look.

The tailgate was about halfway through. He brushed snow away and discovered a busted taillight. He fell back into the cab and slammed straight the bank, relishing the mulching sound of ice and snow, though the victory was short-lived. He had to slam on the brakes before the vehicle slid all the way across the road into the neighbor’s yard.

His father’s place was about an hour and a half north of Concord, up Franconia notch on top of Sugar Hill, but with these driving conditions it’d take longer. He turned on sports radio and listened to three men complain about the state of Boston’s professional sports franchises until he noticed Cannon Mountain. Tiny figures were grinding their way through the moguls down the black diamond trails nearest the road. The signal from Concord had weakened considerably, so he turned his attention to his phone and selected Keith Jarret. Dylan knew he would never be a real musician like Jarret, with his technical ability and improvisational mastery. It was like Jarrett eliminated the border between himself and the music. But how?

Thanks to the reflectors nailed into the trees, the driveway at the top of the hill was easy to spot. He maneuvered the truck between the twin snowbanks on either side of the entrance, relieved the guy Dylan paid, handsomely, had already plowed. The bag under the deck was half empty. He cleared the porch steps, the flagstone path, and then spread the remaining rock salt.

He noticed his father’s pickup in the carport, untarnished by the snow and ice, and examined the loose rear bumper, which his father had blamed, predictably, on some masshole. Every month Dylan made exorbitant payments on that truck for a certain set of assurances: pre-collision assist, automatic emergency braking, blind spot information system, cross-traffic alert, rear-view camera, curve control, and park assist, but none of it mattered. Dylan rested his foot atop the bumper and tested its resistance. It clanged to the cement floor in a tired heap, the sound reverberating in his ears.

The front door was unlocked. Dylan had installed a simple deadbolt, but his father refused to use it. Or forgot. The window in the vestibule was wide open, and snow had accumulated on the sash. He brushed away the flakes, fastened the lock, and continued inside. The smell of the coffee hit him before he heard the pregame football babble. His father used to run through defensive lines for the University of New Hampshire, but in the yearbook, he looked like he’d have trouble breaking through papier-mâché—everyone was so much smaller back then. There were guys now who weighed close to 400 pounds in the NFL, and the linebackers could weigh more than 250, and were quick as cats—getting tackled must have felt like getting swallowed by an avalanche of granite. And although he knew it was all dumb tribal violence, Dylan had to admit that watching these stone behemoths move with such athleticism, skill, and violence was captivating. Stepping towards the television he remembered the moment he fell in love with the game.

His mother was in the bathroom again. When she didn’t fall asleep on the tiles, she’d lie unconscious on the couch with the television or radio blaring. His parents had explained that it was a different kind of sick—not like the cold or the flu. She had to sleep a lot, and she had to stay in the bathroom with the door locked to give herself medicine, and it was something neither she nor his father, who stationed himself outside the door, wanted him to see. Dylan asked questions, but they didn’t like to talk about it.

He remembered that his father was in the chaise lounge with his feet up and a cold beer. Dylan was lying on the carpet with his chin in his hands watching the game on television. An angular wide receiver caught an in-cut at midfield with open space in front of him. The strong safety came racing in, ready to obliterate his opponent, but the receiver leapt the safety, legs doing a scissor kick in midair, taunting gravity. One moment the safety was standing there with his biceps popping out ready to decapitate the enemy, and the next he’s grabbing air, stupefied, watching the receiver continue unabated to the endzone, fist held high in triumph. His father spit out his beer. Dylan made a couple of mad laps around the room: Did you see that? Oh, my, God. Did you see that?

It was when Dylan finally settled down that he noticed his mother’s cries. His father told him to stay right there while he ran to the bathroom door. He knocked and called her name, and when she didn’t respond, he grabbed the locked handle, trying to force his way through. He started banging, demanding that she let him in. After an unreasonable length of time, she relented. His father pulled his mother out into the hallway: naked, wet, and babbling.

The memory evaporated. Dylan took two quick steps into the center of the living room and looked around. “Hello?” he called. “Did you survive the storm?”

“Yeah,” his father called from the bathroom. “Lost power for an hour, but the generator kicked in.”

“Good thing you got that new one I told you to get,” Dylan said.

“Yeah,” his father said. The concession required effort.

After the toilet flushed, his father entered the kitchen in his blue bathrobe and pink slippers, nodded his head in greeting with his rosacea in full bloom. Dylan encouraged him to see a doctor, but to no end. He hunched over his mug of coffee as he poured; his spine spavined by sciatica, arthritis, and stenosis. The pain radiated down his right leg, and when it became unbearable, he was forced to use the cane, though never in public. Physical therapy didn’t help much, and to walk he was forced to shift the left side of his body forward and then catch up with the right, crablike. Dylan had removed all the rugs from the house to make sure his father wouldn’t fall. At least he was willing to wear the slippers Dylan had bought, the ones with tacky soles, even though his father insisted they didn’t help any.

Dylan placed a mug of water into the microwave, searched through the shelf above, shifting the medications around.

“Hey, where’s the hot chocolate?” Dylan said.

“I don’t know. Wherever you put it last,” his father said.

“I put it behind your medications,” Dylan said.

“You sure?” his father said.

“Did you move it?” Dylan said.

“Try the pantry. Behind the flour,” his father said.

“Are you hiding it from me?” Dylan said.

“You must be getting old,” his father quipped.  “Your memory’s going.”

Dylan poured two heaping spoons of sugar into the powdered chocolate.

“Do you want any chocolate with your sugar?” his father said.

“Well, it’s way better than that black sludge you drink,” Dylan said.

His father paused, looked directly in Dylan’s eyes, and took a long careful swig.

They walked over to the living room and sat down at either end of the couch. His father picked up the remote and turned up the volume. They sat in silence sipping their warm drinks, listening to the analysts’ predictions.

“So you only lost power for an hour?” Dylan said.

“Yeah, if that,” his father said.

Dylan stood and grabbed the old twelve-string Guild next to the television and played a couple of muted arpeggios.

“Have you been playing much?” Dylan asked.

“Now and then,” his father said.

Dylan continued playing. His father listened.

“That’s not bad,” his father observed.

“What’s not bad?” Dylan said.

“You could do something with that,” his father suggested.

“I have. It’s on the last recording I made. Guess you haven’t listened to it yet,” Dylan said.

“I’ve listened to it, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got it memorized,” his father said.

“I’m just saying,” Dylan said.

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying,” his father said.

“What am I saying?” Dylan said.

“Never mind,” his father said.

Dylan laid the guitar on top of the middle sofa cushion between them and walked over to the hutch to look over the figurines. He picked up an alabaster whale and asked if it was new.

“Does it look new?” his father said.

“Maybe. That’s why I asked,” Dylan said.

“Yeah, well, you asked me the same question last week,” his father said.

“Oh, so you do listen to me?” Dylan said

“I can’t help it,” his father said. “You’re always jabbering on about something.”

Dylan’s father started carving soon after she died. He sold a lot of them too. Dylan thought he was surprisingly good. His father had never taken an art course in his life and didn’t know the difference between Manet and Monet, but his unicorns look like unicorns, his whales look like whales, his fish look like fish, his wolves look like wolves, his cats look like cats, and his clam shells look like clam shells. He worked in marble, jade, soapstone, onyx, and limestone. There was nothing abstract about them: all concrete lines, symmetry, and angles. Dylan liked best the whale, the way the fluke rose out of the alabaster, breaking free. When his father was carving, Dylan couldn’t reach him. He bowed his head in concentration and his lips moved as if he were arguing with himself.

“Do you know what you’re going to carve before you start?” Dylan said.

“What do you mean?” His father’s eyes remained fixed on the television.

“Like can you see it in your mind, like a picture, beforehand?” Dylan said.

“A picture?” his father asked.

“Yes, a picture,” Dylan said. “It’s not a dumb question.”

His father snorted and shook his head.

“Oh, am I jabbering again?” Dylan wanted to know.

“A little bit,” his father said.

“Penn State’s got a freshman who’s going to be the next great linebacker” his father said. “There’s a reason that they call it Linebacker U.”

“Maybe you should have gone there instead,” Dylan said.

“They would have broken me in half,” his father admitted.

---

His mother refused to say where they were going, but that didn’t matter to Dylan. The fact that she wasn’t mixing up her words, wasn’t on the bathroom floor, wasn’t sleeping all the time was more than enough. And now she wanted to take him on a surprise trip? He was giddy in anticipation, bouncing up and down on the passenger seat of the sedan.

“Where are we going?” Dylan asked again.

“Nowhere special,” she said. “Let’s just drive and we’ll see what we find.”

Dylan gazed out the window until he didn’t recognize any of the roads or the usual landmarks.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“We’re getting near Vermont,” his mother said. “Should be crossing the border soon.”

Dylan tried to remember if he had ever seen Vermont before.

“You were there once when you were a little baby,” she explained. “You wouldn’t remember. Dad and I took you there on a little vacation years ago.”

“I don’t remember you taking any vacations,” Dylan said.

“Yes, it’s been a while,” she said. “We could consider this a little vacation. Dad’s at work. School’s out. The weather’s nice.”

“You’re not taking your medicine anymore,” Dylan said.

“No, I’m not,” she said. “I was taking the wrong medication. It wasn’t good for me. It was making me very sick.”

“Why were you taking it if it made you sick?” Dylan said.

“That’s a good question. My body was telling me I needed it,” she said.

“You body was talking to you?” Dylan said.

“In a way,” she said. “I know it’s hard to understand. You’ll understand it better when you get older. I couldn’t stop doing it even though I knew it wasn’t good for me. It was like . . .”

Dylan waited.

“It was like I was stuck. I was really stuck and couldn’t get out,” she explained.

“So what did you do” Dylan said.

“I started going to meetings with other people like me,” she said. “And I started talking with these therapists and doctors. They told me what to do.”

“So you got unstuck?” Dylan said.

“That’s exactly right,” she said.

“Will you get stuck again?” Dylan asked, kneading his shorts.

She released the steering wheel and patted Dylan’s exposed knee.

“If I follow their advice, take the right medicine, and keep going to the meetings, I should be okay,” she said.

“So you might get stuck again?” Dylan asked.

“I don’t plan to,” she said. “I take it day by day. That’s one of the things I had to learn how to do.”

They didn’t stop until they reached the train tracks in Vermont. She pulled off to the side of the dirt road and parked next to the crossbuck. No other vehicles were in sight.

“Where are we?” Dylan said.

“We’re here,” she said.

Her sneakers kicked up dust from the ground as she walked over to the raised crossing gate. Dylan raised one hand to block out the afternoon glare and used the other to hold hers. They stood next to the red-and-white striped crossing gate in front of the tracks. One set of lights was set directly below the crossing buck while another set hung cantilevered above the road. Neither were flashing.

“What are we doing?” Dylan said.

“We’re waiting,” she said.

“For what?” he said.

“To see what will happen,” she said.

Dylan considered this. He turned around and surveyed the distant hills.

“Can we get ice cream after?” he said.

“Sure,” she said.

Dylan peered down the tracks in both directions, which ran far into the distance before disappearing along a switchback into the woods.

And they waited. Dylan began to think that his mother’s plan, whatever it was, wasn’t working, but suddenly a bell sounded—quick, successive, hysterical bursts—and the lights above the road started pulsating back and forth maniacally, and the crossing gate descended abruptly.

“Oh, looks like we got lucky,” she said.

“We have to get back in the car,” Dylan said, tugging his mother’s arm.

“No, we don’t,” she said, bending over and laying her forearms atop the crossing gate, like a farmer admiring his fields.

“Mom, the train is coming,” Dylans said.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

Dylan backed away until he stumbled against the car’s front bumper. He reached back and felt the grill.

“Mom,” he said, “the train’s coming.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice trilling.

Dylan could feel the train before he saw it, the air heaved and shuddered, and his heart raced. It felt like the something was pressing down on him, squeezing the breath out of his body. He peered around the crossbuck. He could see the orange locomotive leading a freight of unending cars, each its own patchy color and distinct shape.

“Mom,” he repeated, his voice rising.

“I know,” she said, her eyes on the train. “Isn’t it great?”

The shrill whistling grew as it approached, and a harrowing clickety-clack made his chest vibrate. Dylan didn’t know if the conductor could see his mother or not, but to his ears, the repetitive whistle sounded like a warning: move. He squeezed his mother’s legs, and she wrapped her arms around him.

As the individual rail cars sped by in a blur, the ground rumbled, the whistles screeched, and the bells clanged, as though outraged his mother hadn’t yielded. Dylan observed the train’s length, each time he thought it had to be coming to an end, the rail cars continued to arrive from around the bend, as though limitless.

“How long is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see,” she said.

Eventually, the caboose was in sight.

“That’s the end,” Dylan said.

“Yes, that’s it,” she agreed.

Dylan placed an arm on the gate and hooked a pinky finger over his mother’s pinky. As the caboose passed, the force from the wind pushed against the length of his body. He listened. The whistle, the bells, the clanging. All of it. It no longer sounded like chaos, but like a concert. He watched until the train disappeared and the stillness in its wake settled around his feet and made him squeeze his toes. The crossing gate returned to its standing position. The clouds overhead padded the pink sky. In the distance the sounds of birds and insects returned, as though nothing had happened, but Dylan’s chest was still heaving, like he was still riding along with the train, like it took a piece of him with it.

“Well, let’s get some ice cream,” his mother said.

The black raspberry was the best ever.

---

One of the pregame analysts predicted doom for Penn State. Dylan’s father balked at the thought.

“Well, they did have trouble getting past Pitt,” Dylan said.

“Playing on the road’s tough,” his father said.

“But still,” Dylan said.

A commercial before kickoff. Dylan left the figurines, ran a hand over the side of the hutch, walked towards the sofa, picked up the Guild, and placed it back in the guitar stand next to the television.

“Dad, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Dylan said.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, surprise arching his eyebrows.

“That truck you’re using. It’s costing me a lot and—”

“I never told you to get it for me,” he said.

“Oh, I know, that’s not my point,” Dylan said. “The thing is, you see, whenever you use it, you still . . . have trouble.”

“Now you’re blaming me because of some masshole?” he said.

“Well, I mean, that’s not it either. I mean, yeah, I get it, but I mean, it’s more than that, you know?” Dylan said.

“No, I don’t,” he said.

“I was thinking if I leased you a vehicle with all these safety precautions that’d help,” Dylan said.

“Help what?” he said.

“Help you get around,” Dylan said.

“It does help me get around,” he said.

Dylan turned around, turned off the television, and faced his father.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said.

“I think you had better give me your keys,” Dylan said.

“What?” he said.

“Your car keys,” Dylan said. “I think I should take them.”

“Why?” he said.

“You had another accident last week,” Dylan said.

“That wasn’t my fault,” he said.

“But still,” Dylan said. “That’s, like, what? Four in the last month?”

“You can’t be serious,” he said.

“You need to give me your keys,” Dylan said.

His father shook his head and pulled at his mug of coffee.

“I’m serious,” Dylan said, advancing forward. “This is something you have to do.”

“Get out of the way,” he said, “I can’t see anything. The game’s starting.”

“Yeah, I know. I heard you, but you need to listen to me,” Dylan  said.

“There you go again,” he said “Always telling me to listen. You’re the one not listening. Turn. The. Game. Back. On.”

“No, I can’t do that,” Dylan said, and walked straight into the kitchen, where the keys were hanging from a nail next to the coffee machine. He returned to the living room with the keys dangling from his hand.

“Put those back,” he said. He was standing now. Rosacea inflamed.

“I don’t think so,” Dylan said, slipping the keys into his front pocket.

His father cut the space between them.

“What are you doing?” Dylan said.

He watched his father’s hand rise but couldn’t comprehend it. He felt the slap, much harder than he ever would have guessed. It reverberated around his head.

“Shit,” Dylan said, rubbing his cheek. “Did you just slap me?” he said. “You can’t slap me. I’m fifty-five. You can’t slap me.”

He slapped Dylan again. Harder.

“What the hell?” Dylan said, holding his face and hopping backwards. What the hell are you doing?”

“Put the keys back,” his father said, as though handing instructions to a store clerk.

“Okay, fine,” Dylan said. “Jesus Christ.”

Dylan walked the keys back to the hook on the wall in the kitchen and kept walking. Outside a light snow had begun to fall. Dylan’s head and shoulders were soon covered. He made his way to his rusty bucket, lifted the handle, opened but then closed the door. He went around to the rear of the vehicle and inspected the busted taillight, running a hand over the cracked plastic. He looked back at the house, squinted his eyes, brushed snow off his shoulders, and shook the flakes from his head.

The car port caught his attention. He stepped inside and examined the inert bumper on the cement floor. He got down on his knees, picked it up with both hands, and tried to maneuver it back into place. He kept pushing harder, causing the whole vehicle to rock in place. Finally, it clicked into place. It was loose but still hanging on. Dylan stepped back to admire his work. When he turned his back, he heard the bumper clatter to the floor.

Back inside the house Dylan found his father on the couch twirling the alabaster whale between his fingertips. Dylan approached cautiously and sat down at the far end of the couch. His father stroked the whale’s fluke with his thumb, back and forth, as though feeling out an imperfection.

“Penn State is rolling,” Dylan offered.

“No surprise,” his father said.

“You know, I was thinking,” Dylan said, rubbing his chin. “I was thinking about staying here a little while.”

His father put the whale down on the couch between them.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I could commute to Concord,” Dylan said.

“Hell of a commute,” his father observed.

“True, I mean, temporarily,” Dylan said. “We could see how it goes,”

“You don’t want to be stuck here,” his father said, training his eyes on the television screen.

“Well, I mean, the porch at my place is falling apart,” Dylan said. “The driveway’s a pain in the ass in winter too.”

“I’ll grant you that,” his father said.

“No final decisions,” Dylan said.

“It is quiet up here,” his father admitted.

“Yeah, quiet’s good. I wouldn’t mind sticking around.”