Blowing Bubbles, Soft and Fine

Yes your hair smells like sunshine today / Gasoline horses will take us away

“Gasoline Horseys” by Sparklehorse

I accidentally skipped October. I’d been counting the months since, even re-counted twice, and I feel guilty about that. It wasn’t seven, it was eight gone. And all day I’d thought: Wow, seven months.

It was an anniversary day and I was home alone.

I drove up and down the little mountain road to the antique store. I wanted something to do and I knew the grocery store up the street would be too busy because everyone was coming back to town. 

I’d wanted something to do and I didn’t want it to take too long and it was a nice drive over. Horses and dogs and donkeys and sheep. A bamboo thicket in the thinned out woods. It looked like I passed the same car twice. A couple good songs on the radio. Cathedrals and spires of opaque white-ice drip on the rock faces along the roadside making rivulets in the ditch.

I looked around the store for one thing and didn’t find it so I left. There was nothing, I knew, that made me think that they would’ve had it. It wasn’t that I’d seen it there before, decided not to get it, then regretted it. I just thought there was a chance that they’d have a Rio Bravo movie poster, maybe even one with Dude—Dean—classically with his hat over his face napping before the song. One of the consignment stalls always had old posters and memorabilia.

Leaving the antique store without buying anything makes me feel like they think I stole something. I worry about that when I walk out.

Back at home, after undoing the drive, I felt like I shouldn’t have done that and that I just wasted my afternoon. Empty handed. Recently, wasting time makes me depressed and everything feels like wasting time.

I wanted something to make it feel worth it and I didn’t find anything that did.

I stood at the broken window in what would’ve been—and is, because we still call it this, unless I slip and say “your office”—the nursery and I watched three flickers take flight from the brittle, winter-bleached grass. Then a guy across the street was trying to stick a wire-stand sign into the frozen ground. I thought, And you’re going to trust him to repair your foundation?

I went into the bathroom to run hot water. I saw the mirror needed to be cleaned. It steamed up around the caliche spatter of toothpaste.

I should have gone to the grocery store instead. It’s because I like orange juice a lot right now and needed to buy milk too. Instant coffee years at this point and I can’t go back. I save so much time.

I watched a little baby gray-colored spider crawling down the baby blue bathroom wall.

I turned off the sink. I thought, I want people to ask me if I have kids so I can say yes and start to tell them. I want them to feel bad for me and give me attention and pity and I know when I say, “Yes, but…,” and they interrupt and ask how old, I don’t know how to answer.

—

“I think he’s been letting me win,

And I think he’s doing it again. 

Thanks for letting me win.”

—

I keep promising myself to change. Try to change.

In my grief, westerns are the most moving and get me the closest to being able to.

I watched My Darling Clementine last night.

His lullaby was from a western. But it wasn’t that song.

I was having a rough one of it a couple weeks ago and so on still. My trauma therapist neighbor came over the other day when her dog ran over to play with mine. I was influenced by something, under the weather, a little snippy. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and had a feeling that that day I would have to and it, of course, happened.

Here.

She said, I don’t know how old you are but I have a twenty-five year old client who can’t have sex because he watches too much porn.

I said, That’s sad.

And, not twenty-five.

Before this, the last time I talked to her, which was the first time I’d ever talked to her, she walked over while I was sitting in the yard with the dog and she said, I heard you’re having a baby.

And she said, I can’t wait. Anytime you need a babysitter… Just ask.

—

Want to hear what’s really sad?

I want to tell you I love you everyday and kiss your head.

You were born thirty miles from where I was thirty years later. And I’ve never seen someone so handsome, so beautiful. 

I got to hear you cry. I saw you move your arms and your mouth when your mom put her spit to your dry lips. I saw your body twitch and wiggle. I saw your eyes half open for half a second. Through all that medicine.

A gift. 

Big guy for a month early.

A giant not of this world. 

A saguaro silhouetted in the distance, arms reaching up.

A slanted Piñon in the front yard.

Three flickers pecking at the grass. One smaller than the other two.

Even though it’s different from what I wanted, I’m glad you’re with me every day.

I can’t ever find the words, but there’s the sky, something to look at that’s always there. 

Hundreds of boxelder bugs are stuck to the south facing front of the house, the side in the sun. 

I’ll pick up the guitar and put it back down.

I want a sip of that, it looks good, but I’m allergic. 

Low sky like a hydraulic press pushing down. 

Six black horses through the Sonoran and a sore shoulder. 

Deer in the brush at the edge of the hazing house yard. The boys that lived there called it that. 

Hit-skunk smell and downed trees along the street. 

The willow that used to be in the backyard. 

Everything I wish I could show you, more than how bad I want to take the dog back to Tucson. Him lying in a hole he dug under aloe chewing a mesquite pod. 

It piles up.

—

I’ve got pictures on the walls and a candle shaped like a dog and a quarter of a raccoon’s jaw.

My dog’s been walking with a limp. Front left paw. He’s fine. 

I’m thirsty. Thinking about all that has been kicked up in the sun by the horses in movies, the creosote smell caught in my throat. 

I reach under the bed in the dust there for something I dropped. Chihuahua does this for Doc Holiday before she betrays him and sets in motion what gets them both shot differently.

—

“Oh My Darling Clementine,” the song, breaks my heart every time.

Your heart. Lopsided-large and broken. Rest in peace, son, I love you and we miss you every day.

—

I’ve promised myself before that I’ll change.

I’m trying.

I’ve tried to pray. I’ve gone a little while without. Most of the time. I want to try again and try again.

Essayer, to try. Generally. And I could use a haircut. Make it look like I was.

I wanted to see the ashes for the first time in secret before bed.

I don’t know what’s next, but thank God, I had half a year’s plan.

Does that count as saying one?

I learned that Henry Fonda was Peter’s dad.

But Peter Fonda didn’t have a son named my name.

That would’ve been too much.

On a visit to the Old Tucson movie set town, I got pulled on stage.

What’s your name, love?

I hated being pulled on stage so I said, Jim.

Jim, where you from?

Well…um, right here.

Here?

I wasn’t going to tell them anything.

—

I looked and screwed the lid back on and I’m glad I looked.

My son was born in May. I held him for the first time two days later as he died. I hate beating around them, skirting around the real words. 

If he passed, then he just passed through. 

Hot in the shade on a bad day. Walking around with a non-fever. 

—

There was a painting at the hospital called “Halloween Dogs in Salem” that we loved. I’m from Salem and there was a dog in the painting dressed in jail stripes that looked like ours that made us laugh. And when I say laugh, I really mean smile.

The painting was almost exactly halfway between where we had to sleep in the women’s hospital and where he had to sleep in the CICU. We went down 8 floors and there was the painting and then we crossed a bridge and went up 7 floors. We always saw it on our way to see him, and after we said goodnight and played him the song.

We’d be whistling, humming it, singing it up the bridge, me behind the wheelchair leaning down before we’d get to the painting, stop and look at it. 

When we’d gotten home from the hospital I emailed the painter about buying a print, about how we loved it in our hard time. But we couldn’t afford it. Half a year later she emailed me and asked for our address, she’d found an extra she wanted to send to us. 

—

The way the year can repeat itself and all the ways it can change. You’d think you could catch up now. But when one scene ends another one’s on screen, and some of what you see takes longer to watch and sit through.

I could say, This is sad but it’s not like that. It’s beautiful. 

I should use the word less so it means more here. All the things that can change is what we have to look forward to and taking you with us.

That actually feels sad in some ways. I used to know all the nurses’ names.

I want something good and sweet to happen. For the sake of my true loves. Every single one of them. You and your mom. 

Something on the other side of the wall. Something to us is everything right now and everything’s sometimes gotta be just lullaby fine.

And another Monday ahead. They keep coming back around faster. 

If I start to feel better I’ll start to worry there’s a problem. 

Wyatt kisses Clementine on the cheek goodbye with a smile.

—

Red-tailed hawks every single time I’m driving 81. They actually weren’t all red-tails. I looked up the hawks of Virginia and tried to remember the kinds by size and differentiating attributes. I said red-tailed hawks because I knew those ones by heart. I thought: Hmmh, even in the winter.

—

“Meanwhile back home at the ranch,

I still get up early in the morning

And I never knew a better place.”

—

Now there’s a line in the grass along the length of the front of the house where the rain and snow melt fell off the roof.

The weather is starting to get nice like this time last year. I didn’t expect it to hurt like I expected it.

And when I noticed it something else got stalled up and I thought: Things just can’t go right today.

Somedays I just get so mad my eyes get dry.

—

The dog was crying in his sleep on the couch underneath an afghan. Squeak of basketball game on the TV in the background. Hairdryer going in the other room. I thought: What is a hope chest? What are we hoping for exactly with this chest? Or because of it? Did I ever have a hope chest? Who gets to have a hope chest?

—

Reading about “Oh My Darling Clementine,” I learned, there’s an old cartoon dog named Huckleberry Hound who was always singing the song. I like that he was a kind of coonhound like our dog.

Like your dog.

He’s your first dog and he’s a good boy. He knows it.

I watched a few that were western-set and showed the dog Huckleberry Hound. It’s like you. 

The dog sighed. 

It only makes sense. 

—

I went to get the print of “Halloween Dogs in Salem” framed. Little shop next to the grocery store. It was raining on the drive over. The first real pre-spring rain. I got out of the car and moved a branch fallen in the road.

I knew I’d get asked about the painting. It seemed to me like a part of that job. I rehearsed saying that our son was in the CICU and we saw this painting everyday we got to see him. But when the lady at the shop asked about the print, I could only say it was in the hospital where our son was born and my wife and I really liked it. I wanted to get it framed for her for Valentine’s day.

She said usually they need two weeks but they can get it done for me in time.

Driving home, I realized she got it. She somehow understood.

—

When I watch a western I picture watching it with you.

Your mom and I watched one on New Year’s Eve sick with a cold. Two weeks after we’d told our extended family about you. She didn’t like that they all died at the end. I told her, but it said they would right after the title screen. 

The first time I ever watched one as an adult and liked it, I was sick. 

A couple weeks after you died, we watched another one in New Hampshire.

Five months after you died, your mom was writing about you and I was watching My Darling Clementine for the first time in the other room and started writing this. Now it’s even later than that. “Last night” was months again but I didn’t want to change that because I want time to work differently. I can stretch it out.

—

When we played you your lullaby we said, Can you believe how great his taste is?

And here, right now, I’m not telling anyone what it is.

And that conflicts with the fact that, not only did I want to write this, I wanted to share this. You know, put it somewhere where other people could read it because I want people to know about you.

I want people to be able to hear or overhear (I’ll have to settle for read) me talk to you like I am a father out in the world with his son. Like we’re out on the range of the grocery store and I’m just talking to keep you entertained.

I at least tried to cover our trail.

But like in a western, someone might eventually pick it up.

—

Nathan Dragon lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, and co-runs the publishing project Blue Arrangements with his wife, Raegan Bird. His debut story collection, The Champ Is Here is available from Cash 4 Gold.