Prompt for October 1, 2014
Word: Driving
Parameters: Write for 15 minutes without stopping
Lurching into leaving
Stop, start, stop, start, we screeched it all the way down the highway. It was not driving so much as lurching.
She drove his truck, mustard yellow, toward home, because her car didn’t start that day and he was nowhere to be found. It was his prized possession, the one I watched him clean and wax every day he was home, which wasn’t often anymore, and here she was driving it down a highway, grinding gears. She’d never driven a standard before this one, and we shook all the way home, along the shoulder of the road, wincing every time someone passed. She never pulled it out of second gear, so the engine hummed loud and angry, even though she only logged 15 miles per hour.
We didn’t have far to go, seven miles, but it took us half an hour that way, and she reddened and shook her head, but we were thrilled to ride in that truck he’d spent weekends rebuilding but never used, even though it seemed, to us, this ride should be faster and wilder.
On the turn to our street that engine almost died, but she gassed it around the corner, and we all went crashing against the passenger door because the truck didn’t have enough seat belts for the three of us and her.
Some things, I guess, look shiny and beautiful on the outside, but when you get behind the wheel, you realize you have no idea how to steer or shift gears or get home in one piece, without shaking loose all those important pieces of you.
Maybe that was the way she existed in those years, stuck at home even after all the kids went to school because he preferred she didn’t work, so her engine of significance hummed loud and angry. And when she needed to turn, she gassed it so she wouldn’t sputter out.
She shook her way into leaving, into escaping a life that could not hold her, and even though it hurt to shift those gears, she did not die. She overcame. And maybe it didn’t look at all what she expected the day, fourteen years earlier, when he’d slipped a ring on her finger and they’d promised to love and cherish each other for the rest of their days, but she made it home.
She did not drive that truck again. She parked it back under the magnolia tree where he’d last left it, and then he slapped a “for-sale” sign on the back window and parked it out by the highway and sold it in two weeks.
But every time I see a mustard yellow ’53 Chevy, which isn’t often at all, I think of that day. I think of her courage. I think of the way she got us home, even though she had no idea she could.
Link up your contributions below.
Welcome to The Ink Well Creative Community.
This idea was adapted from Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Fridays. Being a creative writer, I needed just a little more time than five minutes, so I decided to tweak and begin my own community for creative writers.
How It Works:
Life can get crazy, making consistent writing and creating a difficult-to-attain dream. But 15 minutes a week isn’t too much to ask in the name of creativity.
Every Wednesday at 10 a.m. CST, I will post a word/quote, either by itself or with other parameters (like a specific word count or a word that must be used somewhere in the piece). Your challenge is to expand on the word/quote, writing for 15 minutes without stopping. You can write a short essay, a poem, a story or whatever you feel would best express what you want to say.
Once you’ve written your piece, come back here and comment with either a link to your (mostly unedited) work or, if you don’t have a blog, post your entire piece in the comments section.
The only rule for participation: Visit the link (or read the piece) of the person who posted before you and encourage them in their writing. This is how we learn from one another and build relationships and become a supportive creative writing community that offers each individual’s unique beauty to the world.
If you don’t think you’re a creative writer: We are all of us creative, and we are all of us writers, which means we are all of us creative writers. If you feel like you don’t belong here, please let us show you that you do. You are a creative writer.
I hope you’ll join us!
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