[Ian Hilgendorf]
The Car Ride; or Jonah Loses to the Whale
The car ride home from church; myself in the front seat, buckled in, hands on the steering wheel, and Tommy sitting kitty-corner to me in the back, his nose just below the passenger side rear window. Our heater does not work anymore and I can see my breath issuing from my mouth like little puffs of steam from a train’s engine. In the back, Tommy taps his boots together making a little rhythm as our car labors down the road. From the rearview mirror, I can see his lips moving. For the last several blocks, the car has been making a banging, sputtering, I-can-no-longer-do-what-you-areasking-me-to-do, kind of noise, though until now I have not noticed. I have been thinking about the electric bill and the pink slip of paper sitting on my coffee table and whether or not I should expect a child support check from Ray this month. In the face of all that, I have spent the last several minutes bartering with God. You do this, I’ll do that- sort of a thing. Tommy clears his throat. “What did you learn in Sunday school today?” “We learned about Ninevah, and about Jonah and the whale,” he replies. “Oh yeah? What happened to Jonah?” “He didn’t like God so he got bored on a ship and then it stormed and he swam to the beach and sat under a fig tree. Like Fig Newtons.” I imagine a tree covered in Fig Newtons and me sitting beneath it with a burning hot sun beating down on my body. Somewhere nearby, Tommy is running around in a bathing suit with swimmies on his arms and my sunglasses on his face. They make him look like an alien. We are both
Wayne Literary Review
29