Ridin’ in the Dewdrop Car - Vignette By Dale Scherfling

 

Ridin’ in the Dewdrop Car

Vignette

By Dale Scherfling

I was cruising in the Dewdrop Car when Ms. Henderson called my name for the third time.

“Jeromy? The equation on the board?”

The fluorescent lights buzzed back into focus. Twenty-three pairs of eyes. I blinked at the chaos of numbers and symbols like they were hieroglyphics.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Sighs. Eye rolls. Ms. Henderson’s tight smile that meant another note home. Another talk with Mom about “applying myself” and “your potential” and “if you’d just focus.” Hard to focus when home means Dad’s new apartment across town and Mom crying at the kitchen table.

So I leave.

In the Dewdrop Car, there’s only quiet. Leather seats, no steering wheel needed. Just back from Spain, 1936—my notebook full of a war correspondent’s observations written in pen; erasers are for sissies.

I checked on Marianne Kroft across the room, beneath the pulldown maps. She was chewing her pencil, actually doing the work. Once, two weeks ago, she smiled at me in the hallway. Probably just being nice, but I’ll take it.

In my head, she was already beside me.

“Where we going?” she asked.

“Here and there, hither and yon.”

God, you’re so interesting, Jeromy.

I told her about the car. One seat when I’m alone. Two if she’s with me. Three if my little brother Donny needs to escape too. Told her how it floats through air, walls, and trees. How I wear it like my clothes, wake up in it at night deep in dark woods.

Once, a wolf stared at me, head cocked like he knew something but didn’t know what. Brother Wolf.

She understood everything.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“Surprise me.”

“World’s Fair, Flushing Meadows, 1939. Then a train to San Francisco, catch the China Clipper to Shanghai—”

The bell rang.

Marianne gathered her books and walked past my desk without looking. The real one, I mean. She smelled like vanilla and had her earbuds in.

I stayed in my seat, pen moving across the page. Ms. Henderson could wait. The Dewdrop Car lifted off, and Marianne—my Marianne—was laughing beside me as we rose through the ceiling into open sky.

Some people live in the real world.

I’ve got somewhere better to be.

 

 

Dale Scherfling is a newspaper veteran of 30 years, serving as a sportswriter, columnist, editor, and photographer, and a retired Navy journalist and photographer. His work has been accepted by San Diego Poetry Annual, Letters Journal, The Blotter Magazine, 25:05 Magazine, Writing Teacher, Third Act Magazine, Yellow Mama, Close to the Bone, Flash Phantom, Does it Have Pockets Magazine, Lost Blonde Literary, All Hands Magazine, Pacific Crossroads, Daily Californian, Naval Aviation Magazine, Propeller Magazine, Buckeye Guard Magazine, and Oddball Magazine. He is the recipient of three U.S. Army Front Page Journalism Awards and is also a college lecturer and instructor of photojournalism, photography, and music.