The Glance by Season Harper-Fox
I’m seven, propped against a pillow in the backseat of our station wagon, daydreaming Easy-Bake Ovens. Ringo Starr. My brothers play slug-a-bug in the cargo space, wedged in with all the fishing gear, and I ignore them, eyes half-closed, inhaling the dusty air. My mouth’s red and sticky with Popsicle, our cocker spaniel awake now and whining beneath my arm. Something is coming. Something’s about to happen.
We’re on Highway 6, windows rolled down so that hot air rushes through the car. My hair plays frantically with the wind. I twist the length of it into a sloppy braid. My dad’s scanning the countryside for wild game and Mom messes with the radio knob, trying to zero in on a weak signal. Frank Sinatra crooning. Then static. She’s intent on dialing him in. Something is coming.
I tense, waiting for the threat of a distant disturbance. Clear skies. My dog trembling. My brothers go quiet and Mom stops tweaking the radio. Dad’s eyes glimmer caution in the rear-view. It’s that moment. The still before the storm when all the birds disappear and one lone straggler makes for the barn, everything sharpening, sharpening, our senses growing keener.
Then they’re upon us, all around us. The sound is deafening and I shout, not meaning to. Grungy, murderous-looking men astride stripped down motorcycles rumbling like the deepest thunderboomer. Twenty of them. Thirty. One glances my way, all grease and tattoos and wild, blowing hair. He flashes an ecstatic grin, and all at once I’m on that bike, rocketing, plummeting, faster, faster, whip-haired and free, headlong into the eye of my future.
Season Harper-Fox has published fiction, poetry and reviews in OnTheBus, Primavera, The Santa Clara Review, FRiGG Magazine, Verbsap, and other journals. She is on the fiction faculty of NYC’s Gotham Writers’ Workshop and is currently at work on a memoir.
