Summertime in the South
It is summertime in the South. The air is hot and thick. Each breath seems to linger in your mouth like the thick smoke from a cheap cigar.
A cigar you bought from the convenience store. The heat drew you in there. You walked to the back where the coolers are.
Behind the frosty glass door sat bottles full of liquid air conditioning.
They look at you. You look at them.
Which one will you choose?
They all promise you something different.
The hot air outside has found its way inside. It awakens the smells of the convenience store—the pine trees of the mop water, the smell of stale chips in the wire racks, and the vinegar from the pickled egg and pigs feet jars.
Your mind wanders.
You want to open the cooler door and step inside, but you know that the clerk would get upset.
Instead, you open the door and take your time picking out which Dr. Pepper bottle you want.
You actually know which one you want, but you figure that if you look like you are shopping the clerk wont get upset at you holding the cooler door open.
You take a bottle and wonder, “Does this stuff really have prune juice in it?”
You walk up to the clerk at the cash register.
Do you have money? You pat your right pocket.
The change inside answers you as the dead presidents dance with your keys.
That is the sound of commerce.
You place the bottle on the counter.
“$1.25 please.”
You are surprised. Was it the “please” or the price? You remember when you could buy the same sized bottle for less than a dollar. You mind goes back to those days when you drove in the truck with your dad.
Those were the days before trucks were luxury things. There wasn’t any air conditioning in dad’s truck. You rolled down the window, hung out your arm, and let the motion of the wheels rolling down the hot black asphalt cool you.
“$1.25.” You awaken from your daydream into childhood.
You pay with exact change.
The air is so hot that the bottle is not that cold anymore. It felt like you pulled it out of a pack of ice from the North Pole when you pulled it out of the cooler.
Now it reminds you of touching the mailbox in the fall. It isn’t too cold and its all wet.
You sling the dew off of your hand into the air—it quickly fades away.
You open the bottle and the smell of the Dr. Pepper mixes with the smell of the hot tar on the road. You watch the mist come out of the bottle. It reminds you of the fog on the lakes in the fall. You take a drink. Your body cools from the inside out.
A cold soda feels so good in the summer time in the south.
You feel the air on your skin.
It moves with each move of your body.
The heat is too powerful for the cold soda to fight.
It was just a brief moment in the Oasis.
The air is getting heavier.
You feel it on your skin.
“Clap.”
It is thunder.
The heat and the humidity are dancing together. A storm is brewing, but from where?
The sky is bright and there are no gray clouds.
The air is getting heavier.
“Plit.”
It’s a rain drop hitting the hot windshield of a car.
“Plup.”
A drop hits your hot dry skin.
The showers come.
The sky gets darker, as if a giant eagle had you in the shadows of its wings.
The air gets cooler.
You can breath.
The rain hits the hot tar of the road.
The melt together and birth a smell that only road and rain can make.
It fills your lungs.
You can breath.
The air is cooler now.
You take a deep breath.
Your mind goes back to when you were baptized.
You remember that first breath you took when you came up from under the water.
You are full of peace. You heart is light. You can breathe. You are at peace with God. You feel as if you are really living.
You look around. The sunlight breaks through the light gray clouds. You see rays of sunlight beaming down.
You see God’s spotlight shining down on the stage of the world.
You close your eyes and breathe.
You open them. The rain has stopped. The clouds have passed over and the sun beams down brighter than before. The air is thick with the smell of fresh rain and hot tar. Today is summertime in the south.
posted by Hugh @ 8:57 PM
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