Literati,
I have known the author Ed Coonce from the humble beginings of A Word with You Press in our clubhouse in Oceanside, California, fifiteen years ago. Ed and our crew of miscreants– often 30 or us– would meet weekly to share our work over wine and dinner. Ed’s work was often the highlight– unbrideled wit marinated in sarcasm and satire.
But the humor was set aside for this short piece, and to me, writing just does not get any better than this.
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Summer Night Memoirs
by Ed Coonce
It is 3:33 a.m. and I am nine years old again, exploring the surfaces of a hostile end of summer. The sounds of the season rage around me, the combines harvesting the vast fields of corn, the chitters and caws of the crows, and the droning of the radio downstairs. The news on WIBC is about the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, into earth orbit.
I am in a strange new house, someone has taken me from my mother, and a cold brunette woman has taken her place. I ask her repeatedly why I am here and when can I go home, and am told she doesn’t know, and not to ask. I feel guilt and sorrow and helplessness at the same time. There is no place in this new life and place where I will fit.
The farm house that shelters me sits across the road from a vast 800-acre field. The air is so clean in these suburbs. At night, there are more stars than I have ever seen, and as time lurches onward, I wonder which one of those constellations is my mother. A social worker is supposed to come visit and check on me every so often, but during my four years in this place, no one comes. I am neglected and beaten more days than not.
The attic is my bedroom. It has one small window where I can look down on the yard next door. I see Norma, my neighbor. She is my age, and in my class at school. She waves up at me and I wave back. One day she invites me over and we play, running under the maples, laughing, and we lay on our backs in the grass, looking at the clouds and telling each other stories. We wonder about the future. I tell her that when I am grown up, I will go to Mars. She wants to be a nurse. We hold hands for a bit, and I tell her I’d better get back in the house soon, or I might get in trouble.
One evening on the way home from grocery shopping, from the window of our 1952 Chevrolet, I watch Sputnik chug across the sky, and wonder who the Russians are, to have accomplished such a thing. Long after the satellite disappears, I bury my consciousness among those stars, marvelling at their brightness, and ask again, which one is the woman who birthed and raised me until she couldn’t? After four years, at 13, I run away, and never go back.
Tonight in Encinitas, sitting near the coast, I see the first flush of firmament, a glittering blanket that stirs those long-forgotten memories. I gaze at the one star I am sure is Norma, and ask her to say hello to my mother. I know they hear me.
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