Outlining
This is the summer of do it. Or don't. The summer where I decide if I'm really going to jump in with both feet and believe in me. I've never really given that much attention before. It's never seemed so important. I've never wanted to do it for myself before. And I've always failed. I've tried doing it for my kids. I've tried doing it to be a good example. I've tried doing it to make myself rich and famous (the writing part). This time, none of that is more important than seeing if I can walk the talk. Maybe I'll fail again this time and maybe the bar's too high, but this is it.
The summer of do it.
--- Excerpt from the writing project I've been focusing on. I have an outline in my head, thus the title of tonight's short blog ---
The drive from Albuquerque to Grants was, at best,
uninteresting. The world seemed to be
brown in every direction except the sky.
Mount Taylor loomed to the north, growing as the miles melt away behind,
and eventually the freeway ras through a bizarre patch of lava run-off that
looked almost like it was put there by a landscaper to spice things up.
During the
drive, Daniel turned his radio up loud enough to vibrate his windows. A local station with a pop-music twist and
DJ's who seemed to be selling something every two minutes. It kept him from thinking.
He'd read
the police report before leaving LA and he knew the location of the accident
based on the officer's description. He
had even used Google Maps to get a better idea of the place where his family
was single-handedly slaughtered. His
in-laws had been disgusted by the amount of information he had acquired and
tried to share. But, he couldn't help
it. He didn't know any other way to
process what had happened. At 11 pm he
had told his wife to drive safely and wished his children sweet dreams, made
them promise to be good for their mother so that she could concentrate. By 12, they were all dead or close enough to
it that they might as well have been. It
didn't make sense. The details were like
a puzzle that just wouldn't fit together correctly no matter which way he
tried. Officer Baca had been more
helpful than any one person should be.
Patient. Kind. Grieving with Daniel. Baca had been the first officer on the scene,
had even held Daniel's wife in those first moments of discovery, had lifted
Trevor from the back seat and onto the stretcher where his life leaked out, had
prayed for a speedy journey to the other side, wherever that might be. Baca had not tired of relating his experience
to Daniel. It was therapeutic, almost,
for both of them.
With the
music thumping against the windows and the red, brown, black landscape
streaming by, Daniel purposely averted his eyes from the spot where his wife
had died. There was still debris in the
road, pieces of glass that glittered in the sunlight. He would come back later, he promised, to say
good-bye. Not yet.
On the
outskirts of Grants, as the small town began to crop up as gas station signs
and small square houses, Daniel pulled off to the side of the freeway and let
his head rest against the steering wheel.
This last leg was the hardest so far.
Everything else had been a blur, a numbness, but with every mile this
became more real. Elana was dead. Trevor.
Alicia. Kymball. Danny.
He had driven over and past the place where they died. They drifted around him now, corporeal,
thrumming in time with the music and brushing lightly against his heaving body.
It was too
much to face.
For a
flickering moment, Daniel thought of dropping his foot on the accelerator and
letting the rental car slam into the overpass just ahead. But, he couldn't. Elana would be so angry. For her, he wouldn't.
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