The Drive-In Movie

The Drive-In Movie

                                               Michael S. Walker

           They started the feature and—as usual—it was still not dark enough to quite make out the images on the massive drive-in screen. Charlie sat in the back seat of his family’s Ford sedan, with his sister Sally, and stared past his father’s head at the amorphous figures on the screen. From a silver speaker hooked precariously to the driver-side window, lines of dialogue from the feature sputtered and crackled, sounding like they were coming from the bottom of a coffee can or something.

           His sister Sally sat far far away from him, not staring at the screen at all. She was fiddling with the arms of some plastic baby doll she had cradled in her own arms. The doll was wrapped up tight in a pink wool blanket.  Sally was also singing along with their mother, who sat in the front seat, her eyes (ostensibly) focused on the blurry feature. The song was an old, old favorite. Charlie had not heard that song since…

           Wait a minute…what day was it? What year was it now…?

           Charlie only knew that it was summer and the whole family was at the drive-in movies once again. Seeing a new double-feature. The fact filled Charlie with warmth. And something else. A feeling as amorphous as the moving blobs on the giant tiled screen. Not a very good feeling, perhaps…

           “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly/ But I don’t know why she swallowed that fly…perhaps she’ll die…”  his mother and sister sang together in identical, almost tuneless, voices.

           “Hey…I paid to see a movie,” his father murmured, good naturedly, from behind the wheel. “Not listen to a concert. Stow it, please.”

           But they, as if to tease him, went on singing.

           “I know an old lady who swallowed a spider/that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her…”

           Charlie stared at the back of his father’s skull in growing fascination. Shouldn’t there be…something? A bald spot perhaps, like some pink pancake, stretching down almost to the nape of his neck? Why was that singular image fixed in Charlie’s mind? But no. It wasn’t so. His father’s hair covered all of his head in massive, dark, greasy curls.

           It was the hair of a young man in his thirties.

           Why was that… strange?

           As Charlie struggled with this, lines of dialogue from the movie leached through to his ears. His mother and his sister gave up the old lady ditty somewhere around “I know an old lady who swallowed a dog…” to concentrate on the feature as well.

           On the screen, a thin, nervous-looking man in a silver space suit? and helmet was talking into a long microphone attached to some elaborate control panel or computer. To the left of this ungainly figure, a small crowd of school-aged children looked on in rapt fascination.

           “We are starting our retro-rocket countdown; five, four, three, two, one, firing retro-rockets!” the thin, skittish man in the suit chirruped into the microphone. He then pressed hard at a button on the bulky control panel. “We will be touching down in twenty minutes.”

           One of the children—a little girl with cute brown pigtails—now broke free from the group and sidled up to the man.

           “I have to go to the bathroom,” she whispered.

           “We have just touched down,” the man replied, matter-of-factly.

           In the front seat, his parents laughed heartily. His sister joined in a split-second later as to not be left out.

           “That Don Knotts…” his father said, munching popcorn out of a greasy bag between his legs.

           Don Knotts? Wait a minute. What was this movie? Hadn’t Charlie just seen it a couple of months ago on TV. Passing the time at the…hospital?

           Why the hospital? He couldn’t remember. Again, it was part of that amorphous feeling that he still could not define.

           “Mom? How old is this movie?” Charlie asked. He was surprised/not surprised at the sound of his own voice. It seemed a couple of octaves higher than expected.

           Curiouser and curiouser…

           His mother turned to stare at him from the front. For a second, only for the briefest of seconds, her face seemed gray and emaciated. Like some antiquated death mask. And then that image dissipated. And there was his young mother, her hazel eyes twinkling in the growing darkness.

           “Whatcha mean, Charlie?” his mother said, smiling. “You know this movie. The Reluctant Astronaut. You begged and begged me to take you to see it when it first came out. When it was at the Midland Theatre a few months ago.”

           The Midland Theatre? The Midland Theatre? Hadn’t that old barn burnt down. Like in…

           Again, Charlie could not remember. And it was maddening.

           His mother returned to enjoying the movie. She slid across the front seat, close to Charlie’s father, and rested her small head cozily on his shoulder. His father, in turn, pulled her in even closer. With one strong, hirsute arm.

           That can’t be…right Charlie thought, automatically. But still it was nice. Very nice to see that. Despite all these pieces in his head that did NOT fit together. Despite all uncertainty. His inability to remember.

           Nice to see his parents together. Again.

           Charlie looked out the windshield now, past his cuddling parents. It was growing darker and darker by the minute. The colossal characters on the drive-in screen stood out in sharp relief. As if they now were being projected in the dark of some regular theatre. The Midland, perhaps.

           But the Midland had burnt down in…

           Charlie thought it might come to him. As it grew even darker.

           He now glanced out his side window. At the vast, gravel lot/house of the drive-in theatre. There were other cars out there of course, on this starless night. All pointed toward the screen wall. Like chrome and metal worshippers in some outdoor church. By the moving, flickering light issuing from the screen, Charlie could see these other vehicles fairly well. But there was something off about the cars out there too. Something incongruous to his thinking. They all seemed too bulky to be real. Or tapered and flattened out, like race cars. Some of them had tail fins…

           And then, Charlie noticed an even stranger particular. All of the cars that he noticed, seemed to be sporting tiny little flags. Without exception. Tiny purple flags hung from the hood antennas of every car he looked at.

           And all of the flags were emblazoned with white crosses…

           Something was comin to him now. Becoming clearer in his mind. As the feature ran on and on in hilarity. And the darkness settled around them. As his parents spooned in the front seat.

           That amorphous something was… 

           Charlie stared over at his sister. She apparently had lost interest in the movie and had gone back to attending to her baby doll. She was singing to it now, as she fussed and tightened the pink blanket around its small body. More of that old song.

           “I know an old lady who swallowed a horse…she’s dead, of course.”

           “Of course,” Charlie echoed numbly in his mind. “Of course…”

           How old was his sister? Very young. Three? Four? He wasn’t sure. And that doll. It seemed to stir up now unpleasant associations for Charlie. Pain out of nowhere. A black cloud of grief.

           A strange word now bubbled up in his mind.

           Preclampsia…his sister…

           But there was his sister. Three or four. Looking down on her child with untempered devotion and love. She caught Charlie looking at her. She leaned over and punched him hard in the arm.

           And that was alright. It was all part of that lovely warmth…

           “Daddy, Charlie is staring at me!” his sister brayed.

           This time, his father turned around to look at him. And, for a second, just as it had been with his mother, there was some kind of ghostly image. Some quick superimposition.

           It looked, as if for a brief second, as if half of his father’s face were…gone.

           But there he was again. Smiling. Loving. Only mock scolding.

           “Charlie, do I need to turn this car around now and drive us all home…”

           Everyone laughed at the joke. Charlie included. That warm feeling was there despite the darkness. Despite the ghosts. The ghosts that were coming more and more into focus as the reels of The Reluctant Astronaut played out on the vast screen. A screen that Charlie knew should be full of gaps and holes now. A screen that should exist as a rusty artifact in a lot overcome by weeds. A screen where no double-feature had played for years and years.

           If this was eternity, it would be…alright.

           The dialogue of the movie now seemed to cut out. As Charlie thought this one thought. And from the tiny silver speaker on the driver-side window a sound like machines, a mechanical hissing breathing began, over and over, as his parents and sister laughed.

           And then, that sound stopped too…