Talking Points                         

1,810 wds

A traffic jam on the beltway and nothing on the radio silenced the kids. She thought, ‘Maybe they’re frightened trapped in this box of metal.’ Next, mom had to say the jam was not the kind spread on bread. She smiled at her daughter beside her in the other front seat.

“Spread on bread,” the little girl who was seven said,“ You made a rhyme, gimme a dime.”

“If you have a dollar give me a holler.”

“Mom, that’s not right!”

“A beltway is called a beltway because it surrounds the city like a belt around a belly.”

“Belt belly. Belly belt!” shouted the almost two year old boy in the car seat behind his sister. 

“Does the belly bulge? Is it a silly belly?”

“Now you have the idea,” said mom.

“You know something mom? Jam is a noun and a verb. You can jam something. Verbs move, nouns do not move.” 

“Oh no, i don’t want to jam anything,” she said. “And this traffic jam is certainly a noun, not the moving kind of jam.”

She loved the moments her children were creative, especially with words. The girl was naturally articulate and the boy alert, a good listener. Mom, who had wanted to be a poet, felt relieved. When they were born ten fingers, ten toes was enough; now they were growing into speakers very well. Shout all they want, all well and good, aside from shouting while stuck in traffic. 

The vehicles ahead began to move, someone behind honked, then slow again and she thought about her engine overheating. If the car was motionless too long, she thought, the engine would get hot, catch fire and blow up. This is logical. Moving, the engine fluids cooled as the wind brushed against the front of the car, the radiator. Or so the mechanic at Mr. Mechanic told her. He used the word ‘brushed’ and that worried her. The face of this man in oil smudged overalls reminded her of her brother, lacking only her brother’s eyes. His physical attitude was the same; slightly hunched, face thrust forward like a ram about to ram, and for this reason she liked him, yet his eyes were different eyes. 

“Truck!” the boy shouted. A truck was passing slowly in the right lane, the wheels turning at window level. 

Two years ago her brother died. Close to two months after he died she gave birth to the boy in the back seat, it was a busy time. Her brother knew nothing about cars, house repair or anything dealing with legal or medical matters. He knew birds. All he knew were birds and this avian knowledge was exceptionally complete. At his memorial service the president of the university said her brother was an ornithologist “wing tip to wing tip.” It was 

not unusual for the president to honor a lost faculty member, but this time the president looked and sounded genuinely sad. The governor sent a representative, but that could be politics, a messenger from on high sent to check on ceremony attendees. Perhaps this gov rep pursued an issue beyond press or protocol or even politics itself. The governor’s man, accompanied by a lovely young woman who said nothing, expressed his condolences, saying he very much appreciated ‘the doctor’s’ (her brother’s) input on the Sandhill Crane ‘situation.’ It sounded somewhat authentic.

That word, situation, returned now when she heard the words Sandhill Crane, Cranes, or ‘Flyway.’ All of it was situational, like a traffic jam. The situation was about State Bird Policy and her brother had been an “All-Star Ornithologist,” which was him but didn’t sound like him. To her it was real, but inexact. To the big wide world it might be real but not very important anyway. Life goes on. 

She did not notice who the governor’s man spoke to, kept track of or palavered with. It was all busy and her brother was quiet in his box. All he had loved was maybe his wife, maybe his children but definitely birds; all he wanted was to fly and that day he went under the ground. Dead, the most unelaborated fact, speechless here forevermore.    

During periods of forced idleness, as when stuck in traffic, she often recalled her brother and his singular obsession with birds, (or did birds taken him prisoner?) One day in slow, halting, pausing, overheated traffic like this he said, “Hey sis, think how nice to be a bird now and fly away.” 

His passing was noted on the evening news. The lovely newsperson correctly pronounced his name, the handsome young anchor seated beside her made a personal comment in bidding his long ago professor farewell. It was good to hear, now what would they say about her, soon to be a divorcee and single mom? Nothing, like most of them stuck on the beltway, nothing. Life goes on.

As the hurt for a lost brother had ebbed away she prepared to divorce her husband. 

Her husband, whom she didn’t miss at all and was only in her life right now when the support check arrived, would laugh and say, “Why didn’t you have the engine checked?  You gotta be regular about this stuff.” He was so ready to jump on a mistake no matter how small. Hating his smirky tone she had the car checked anyway, something was seriously wrong with it and it, whatever, got fixed and this made her feel better. Then she hated him more for being right. She would get rid of her i-told-you-so-husband and seek advice elsewhere. Aside from this he often rolled over on her first thing in the morning. Good god, what a messy way to start the day. He said, “Ah, a great way to start the day.” She quickly grew to love waking alone. 

A walking man passed the car.

“Man!” The boy shouted. He laughed and sputtered with his lips. 

Mom turned back and said to him, “Buddy mine don’t sputter like that, okay?”

The boy smiled. 

“He’s not sputtering, he’s spittering,” the girl said.

Traffic air hot and slow, the girl looked to her mom and said, “I miss daddy, when’s he coming to see me?”
“I don’t know, in the summer i guess he said.”

They looked at the traffic. The girl watched a man talking in the car beside their car. His window was rolled up yet she could hear his voice. He looked odd; his face glowed. His mouth was twitching as he spoke in a loud voice, loud, the girl thought not because she heard him but because he opened his twisted up mouth so gross and wide. And stranger than this; he was alone in the car and he held no phone. He gestured with his hand, pointing or making a fist. 

“Mom, look at that man. That man is talking and he’s all alone and he’s shouting!”

Mom glanced aside and the man was not only talking loud and jabbing the air with a finger, his body was gesticulating so violently his car rocked. 

“Don’t stare honey, it’s not nice to stare.”

“Man,” the boy said, pointing with a roundish finger.

Mom wondered who the man’s wife might be, if he was warming up for a confrontation. Or a husband, a male partner, nowadays that was possible. Briefly she wondered if husbands have fights with husbands; a twice weekly bicker-fest. Of course they do, and how does that work? Maybe they talked and he lost and now he was driving his anger away. And now he’s stuck. 

   There is a familiar feeling; in her opinion her husband was not smarter than her but he was accredited with more education. This gave him an edge. 

“He’s shouting at the radio, honey,” she told her daughter and leaning back toward her son said, “He’s shouting at the radio. It’s kind of normal.” 

“Why is he doing that?” daughter said.

“I think a lot of people do that.”

A statistic came to mind; every five minutes someone in the United States shoots a television. She slowed; maybe the shouting man would creep ahead of them. He might have a gun. Their vehicles remained even with one another, slow black tires on black asphalt.

“Maybe shouting at the radio he’s practicing for a hot political debate. He could be a wing nut,” she said to her daughter. “Do you know what a wing nut is?”

“No.” Her daughter continued to look and say nothing.

Now, how to describe a wing nut?

“I’ll show you a picture at home.”

She imagined how it felt to pinch a wing nut and turn it. Could the radio voice be pinching that angry man and turning him, wing nutting him as he is trapped in his car?

“Maybe he‘s singing along with the radio.  There’s lots of crazy music,” mom said.

“Yeah, weird music. He looks like he’s shouting.”

Mom turned to look at the man and at that moment, at the same instant, he turned and looked at her. Their eyes met. His face was puffy and blotchy, his mouth ugly. Veins bulged in his neck purple/red to busting. 

Their cars were in motion. His rage briefly distracted her and she forget she was operating a motor vehicle. Her car bumped into the car in front of them.

The brake lights of that car went on and stayed on. The driver’s door opened and a gray-haired man looking just past middle age stepped out. She put her transmission in park and got out, turning back to say, “Don’t worry about anything, we’ll be all right, just stay quiet.”

The man was looking at his bumper and her bumper. 

“Did i mess up?”

Body tense, ready for the man to yell at her, he said, “It’s nothing.” He took a deep breath and she noticed how broad his shoulders were. He smiled.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure i’m sure. The bumper was scratched anyway. I’m just glad to get out and stretch.”

“Yeah, i know what you mean.” 

“We can do a stretch-out dance.” The man said and raised arms, his hands flashed open and he shook his hips. 

This set her back, she felt a warm rush; the man’s bright eyes and goofy expression ~ unforgettable. 

She swiveled up to the clouds in the blue, raised her arms overhead and took a deep breath. “It’s a beautiful day for a stretch.” 

The traffic started to move. The man started, saying, “Oh, gotta go.” They returned to their cars, put them in motion and rolled on, slowly.

“Who was that man, mommy?”

“He was a nice man,” she said. “We were doing a stretch-out dance.”

“On the beltway?”

“On the beltway!”

The boy spittered, laughed and shouted, “Man!”