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.

Three Vignettes and One Poem by Adele Ogier Jones

 

Three vignettes

 

(i)

Red roses on dry earth, crumbling clay

so many surprises in Afghanistan

blood red roses bloom

unexpectedly. pink, crimson and mauve

reflecting the surrounding mountains

at dawn and day’s farewelling

sunset

 

(ii)

as daytime heat dies with the sun

a breeze remarkable in its coolness emerges

long hidden in caves, waits for the dark

to invite the stars on a clear, black night

blows a gentle tune through rustling leaves

a lullaby for weary souls worn down

by harsh light and day’s

noise

 

(iii)

night so black in Badakhshan

darker than velvet with sequins of silver

stars take on new meaning, distances and horizons

where Kabul light cannot dim the ebony of night.

darkest in regions, remote and unnamed

in mountains and deserts where campfires

remain unheeded as men gaze to stars

as companions and leaders.

 

Ensemble

 

Even a one stringed violin sounds beautiful here

A guitar and accordion can bring a listener to ecstasy

A long trip, short preparations, then a performance

Like a bud transforming to full bloom, full eroticism.

 

A stage set for dual musicians, guitar and accordion

At their feet tabla and rabab waiting for the moment

A slight cadence, gently building, swelling to roundness

Like a spark bursting into full flame, full heat.

 

The accordion whispers, one note then and beautiful on the air

Fingers moving down, down an across a bridge, ivory on black

Then full throated and singing in deepest melodies

Rich, exuberant, powerful. Romantic, fully sure.

 

On and on with the guitar in ascendance and then falling

As the accordion dominates, each playing to the other

Making love, aching for control, sensitive

To the improvisations of the other, each time new.

 

Then to the stage robed players stroll, ancient and regal

Red flowers presented in expectation of what is to come.

Scarlet cushion reflecting the crimson of the accordion

As it weaves wide, then closed, spreading and collapsing.

 

Single displays, applause and joined by its ancient mate

In new ways, unheard before, unknown contortions

Together and alone, then another and the fourth, each

Its own music but aware of the other, enjoying the rhythm.

 

In unison, in opposition, each enjoying the feeling

Exhilarated by the sound which was not the same as yesterday

New sounds with old, ancient rhythm and melodies

Cadences unknown to each other, intervals newly felt and heard.

 

Building to a crescendo unheard in traditional houses in Kabul

Experiments of an earlier century in Paris and Marseille

An audience cheering in as many languages as the instruments themselves

An encore to guitar and tabla, to rabab and accordion, old and fresh together.

Writing creatively as Ogiér Jones, Adèle calls Freiburg i. Br. and Melbourne home. Professional writing is published under her name Adele M.E. Jones. She has four published collections of poems, the first, Afghanistan – waiting for the bus published by Ginninderra Press (2007, republished 2015), with the most recent, Counting the Chiperoni (Ginninderra Press 2019) written while working in Malawi. She appears in numerous anthologies including I Protest: Poems of Dissent (Ginninderra Press 2020). Like most of her poetry, her first novel Desert Diya comes out of her international and intercultural work.