Night Moves

Night Moves

There is a gleam in his eye that lets me know he has found another ancient gadget of some sort to add to his collection. His house is full of days-gone-by equipment. He has a Corona typewriter, an old VCR that goes hand in hand with the old-fashioned TV that resembles a big box, set inside a wooden cabinet.

“What is it now?” I ask, shaking him off. I admit, I don’t understand the allure of old, inefficient things. Oh gee… Let’s go back to the good ol’ days when we could only watch TV on 3 channels and typed our high school papers on a manual typewriter!

Michael, on the other hand, thinks all the used-to-be items are somehow romantic and fascinating. I find them simply useless. He grabs me by the hand and pulls me into the living room. I look around: old posters, a 1968 stereo with a handful of vinyl records, an old-timey telephone with a cord and a rotary dial—the list goes on and on, but I didn’t see anything new.

“Here—” he says, eagerly, pointing to a shelf. “Look! Look what I found!”

He drags me over to the shelf and pats his latest item affectionately.

“An 8-track recorder with 8-track tapes!”

He beams with joy.

“Oh Lord,” I say with a little groan that I really want to swallow but fail.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “This is a treasure.”

I shake my head, trying to chase off the memories that were about to pile up in my head unabated.

“Nothing,” I say, forcing a smile. “It’s just….”

1977. Summer.

Mom, Dad, and I were driving home from the cook-out at his boss’s house. I didn’t want to go, of course, but Dad insisted, and Mom gave me that look of half sympathy and half sorry, you’re going. We were in the van, Mom and Dad up front and me in the back. Dusk was coming on fast and it would likely be dark before we finished the half hour drive home.

I couldn’t really hear what Mom and Dad were talking about, but I did hear little inflections, particular words spoken suddenly louder and gaining speed.

“Seriously??” I heard my Mom ask incredulously.

Dad turned and glared at her.

They both drank too much at the cook-out, so I didn’t like the way this conversation was heading.

Dad began fishing around in the 8-track tape box, occasionally looking down to find what he wanted when my Mom suddenly shouted “Bob! Watch where you’re going!”

He glanced up, swerved a little, but then drove on in a more-or -less straight line, slowing down just a little.

“What are you looking for?” my Mom asked.

“Don’t get in a panic, Carol. I can drive and chew gum at the same time.”

“Yeah, except you’re not chewing gum. You’re looking for a tape. What one do you want?”

“Night Moves,” he said, relenting.

Mom leaned over, fingering through the tapes. Pulling the desired music out of the box, she slammed it into the 8-track player a bit harder than necessary.

“Jesus, Carol! Are you trying to break the thing? You got something against Bob Seeger?”

My Mom sat in stony silence.

After a few minutes, Dad reached over and grabbed her hand.

“Look honey,” he said in a friendly voice. “Like John, (my Dad’s boss), I just think there are some things that women shouldn’t—”

Mom jerked her hand away. She looked like she was going to spit.

“How dare you?” she countered “How DARE you—”

“How dare I what? Say what I have to say? State what I think is correct?”

“You mean spew chauvinistic crap. How can your vision be so damn limited? Women can do whatever they damn well please however they please.”

“Yeah, well, maybe some women can but you can’t. I won’t allow it.”

“You what??”

Dad wasn’t really paying attention to the road anymore, swerving this way and that, scaring me as we spun along into the darkening night.

“Night moves…” I crooned along to Bon Seeger’s hit song. I sang as loudly as I could trying to block out the increasing volume of my parents’ declarations. Trying hard to sooth myself or them or somebody.

But the battle was on. Cussing, shouting, the car weaving this way and that, my Mom going from yelling to crying to yelling again.

“Can you turn up the music?” I yelled from the back, but they didn’t hear me. Seems like they never heard me.

The fight escalated to the point where Dad pulled over the van, for which I was kind of grateful, and ordered Mom out. She opened the door and hopped out, screaming and crying and slamming the door behind her.

“Dad!” I wailed.

He put the van in gear, turned up the music, and drove off.

“Dad!” I shouted. “You can’t just leave her by the side of the road like that!”

He turned and looked back at me, wearing a snarl.

“Serves her right. She shouldn’t talk to me that way. Let her find her own way home.”

“But there’s nothing but cornfields. Do you want her to jump in a car with some random guy driving by? C’mon! Dad!”

He was slowing down now. Bob Seeger was still singing. That’s what people loved about the 8-track. It just looped around and around from beginning to end to beginning again, never stopping.

“Please, Daddy?” I had collapsed into my little girl voice, which was the best way to get what I wanted from my dad.

He slowly brought the car to a stop, taking a minute to just sit there, staring out at the encroaching darkness before turning around.

His driving was steadier now and we moved along, checking the sides of the road as we went. Back a few miles we found her, sitting by a ditch, framed by dark corn fields. Her head was buried in her hands, and she did not look up as we approached.

Dad pulled off to the side of the road and got out. I watched through the back window as he stooped down in front of her, gently pulling her hands from her face. I could see them murmuring, the words much softer now. Getting up, they walked back to the car. Neither spoke the rest of the way home, but I could hear the little chokes and sobs that escaped from my mom as we drove. I felt my heart wrench.

I’m not really sure when the beginning of the end was for my parents, but in my head, it was that night. Still, they stayed together for awhile, the household punctuated with explosive arguments and stony silences. Dad stayed gone at work later and later, and Mom started allowing his dinner to get cold.

Winter came. The winter of 1978, which went down in history as the year of cataclysmic blizzards and cold temperatures. Snow piled and piled and piled, drifts deeper than I was tall, snowplows stuck in the road. School closed for weeks. It was awful. We were trapped inside our household cocoon, but nothing pretty was getting ready to emerge. Mom and Dad mostly tried to stay out of each other’s way, but the predictable bickering would suddenly bloom up out of nowhere. And then the drinking, followed by a new onslaught of insults and accusation.

 We had an 8-track in the house just like in the car, but we also had a turn table with speakers. Mom preferred the traditional vinyl records, but Dad preferred the 8-track. None of that fussing around with placing a needle on the edge of a spinning sphere or having to get up and change the record. Choose a tape you like, and it can play over and over again to infinity. Great modern invention! The disagreement over which was better, turn table or tape, led to simply allowing the music to fight, Mom playing an album at the same time Dad put in a tape. The stereo shouted at the 8-track and the 8-track responded with fists raised, everything getting louder and louder. It was chaotic and messy, and I spent a lot of time in my room, praying for the snow to melt.

I was grateful we got through that winter with nobody getting maimed or killed. I was glad to go back to school and get out of the house. Snow was still piled up everywhere, but the roads had been cleared and everyone was able to move around at will.

And my Mom’s will was for Dad to move. Out.

At first I thought I was glad, I was so sick of the endless tensions and raised voices or spark- filled silences, but the more I looked around, the more I understood I would miss my Dad. The checkers table, the porch swing where we spent summer nights eating ice cream. The 8-track tape player. Bob Seeger.

I stood, frozen in time, staring at Michael’s new 8-track, my stomach knotting itself up into a hard ball.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asked again. I shook my head. “Nothing. Just haven’t seen one of those in a long time.”

“Look,” he said, regaining his enthusiasm. “It even came with an old tape.”

Night Moves.