The Complete Drive-In

2

One time when it got dark and I was nervous from the way James and Cory were acting, and Steve and Grace had moved to the front, trying to stay out of it all, and Homer, he was practically oblivious, just stretched out on a seat, not knowing that at any moment he could be lunch or ass-poked.

I started telling stories from the Lory collection aloud. You know, like I was just telling Reba, but really loud, and pretty soon, they were listening. Cory and James, and then Homer, who sat up and listened with his mouth hung open. Up front, even Steve and Grace quit groping each other, as that was available to them on a regular basis, and took to listening. Reba sat by me, worked her arm around mine, leaned against my shoulder, and listened to me tell the stories from the book.

I think I told three of the tales, and I told long versions, adding in stuff not in the stories, but stuff I thought ought to have been there, though I went light on the sex stuff, no use heating up the natives, and those stories, way I told them, it held them.

I felt the way I figured cave dwellers must have felt. Felt like the Grand Poobah of the cave, the storyteller, sitting there by the fire (minus the fire, of course) talking into the night and everyone listening carefully, and gradually scooting closer, more engrossed in the stories by the moment. And that was a good feeling. Having a kind of control. Even if it was with a story. Because for a long time now I had felt totally out of control, a random leaf blown by a savage wind.

And I thought in the back of my mind, as I was telling these tales, here we are in a tale ourselves, an incredible adventure we didn’t want to be living, but we wanted to hear stories anyway, tales about others in strife and joy, but not our own strife and joy.

It was kind of weird, really.

But it worked.

And when I finished that night, everyone seemed calmer. Happier. Not so much aware of the ghostly drive-in that pursued us and floated around us and tried to become one with us.

I felt I had taken some of the pressure off the teapot. And Reba, she was sweeter that night, and slower, and I felt respected, and when I came, I opened my eyes and saw over Reba’s shoulder the ghostly shades from the drive-in drift by. An old acquaintance, Crier, was looking my direction, not really seeing, just standing there ghost-like, looking at the spot where I lay on my back, Reba astride, and I felt a strange fondness for him. But in that moment of pleasure, I was quite fond of everyone and everything.

And when daylight came, it was a little better in there.

No one was singing tunes from The Sound of Music or giving me the high five, but it was better. Calmer.

Nights came, I told more of the short stories. And as the nights passed, I told the Lory novel. Then the Louis L’Amour novel. Then I began to make up things. I felt like Sheherazade from the Arabian Nights, and like her, I feared if I ever slowed down or bored them, I was dead meat.

Then, when I felt I was maybe out of tales or losing my energy to tell them, was hoping my ass could take a lot of loving and not be too unhappy with it, and, in fact good at it, so I would have something to barter besides being turned into jerked meat, a strange thing happened.

And considering our lives have been a list of strange things, this was a very strange thing indeed.