Moonlight on Linoleum by Terry Helwig

Author:Terry Helwig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books
Published: 2011-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

THAT EVENING, Daddy dredged fresh-caught trout in cornmeal and tossed the filets into a cast-iron skillet crackling with bacon grease, which we stored in an old Folgers tin. Mama covered potatoes in foil and buried them in the ashes at the edge of the fire until they were done and the foil had turned black. Daddy sat on the cooler and the rest of us atop blankets, savoring the sweet taste of trout and licking butter that melted over the sides of the potatoes.

Later, while toasting marshmallows, we heroines basked in Mama’s and Daddy’s astonishment and admiration as we told and retold how we had rescued Joni. Firelight lit our faces and our laughter traveled out into the night. Afterward, we settled onto our pallets for the night.

I lay outstretched on my back, my head cradled in my hands. I felt the firmness of the bedrock beneath my blankets. Some of the girls slept in the back of the pickup, but I preferred to be near the campfire, trusting that Daddy was right. There were no more tarantulas about. I luxuriated in the rare feeling of solitude. Embers glowed in the fire. A night symphony played within the canyon: the plangent howls of coyote harmonizing with chirping insects and rippling water.

My body ached from riding the rapids earlier that afternoon. I bumped against the rocks for so long that I wore a hole in my cutoff jeans. We older girls sat on our butts with our feet pointing downstream. Much to our delight, and Mama’s chagrin (Mama had dreamed more than once that I had drowned), we shot through a chute of rapids flowing briskly over large stones. Laughing and sometimes coughing up mouthfuls of water, we lined up, over and over, for another ride.

Lying there, I felt slightly dizzy, as if I were still bobbing in the water. But when I looked up to see a million stars staring back at me, my full attention turned to the night sky. Could anything be more beautiful? The Milky Way looked like a veil tossed across the horizon.

As if on cue, a falling star flared across the sky. I gasped when I saw another and yet another. I stopped counting when the number reached into the teens. I had unknowingly stumbled upon the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks in August every year. Meteor after meteor hurled itself against the night sky. It was magical. I lay there enraptured. My mind stopped clamoring. Worry, longing, bewilderment—everything quieted. I became nothing other than a portal for amazement.

With the stars still falling all around me, I vowed to remember that night forever. I decided to fireproof it in my memory by painting a picture, much like Van Gogh’s Starry Night, onto the canvas of my mind.

There would come a time, when summer passed and other winters came, that I would lie awake, beneath the tin roof of our ten-by-fifty-foot trailer, and summon up that picture of an infinite universe, spinning with stars and wonder.

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