I was seven years old, maybe eight, and my father and I were staying at a strange house again. How long had we been driving? The days spun loose behind us, and I didn’t bother counting. I remember his right hand on the wheel, his voice speaking in fragments. I’d wake up in a new city, a new state. He would smile and say, “Not much longer.”
This new house — I don’t remember exactly where — smelled of motor oil. The carpet on the porch ran black with it, a mark as big as a body. I remember that much. And the movie on the rabbit-eared TV. A man talked about how they were coming, they would be there soon. Back then something would appear on the TV, and then it would vanish and you’d never see it again. You were left with a few afterimages, like the milky residue of a dream, a longing to find the thing and make sense of it. So you paid attention harder when it happened, because you had to hold it in your mind. I remember the voice from the box nudging everything close to normal. It was almost like we were home on the farm, in the smallest bedroom, where my mother and I sometimes watched game shows on the little black-and-white.
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