excerpt from "King of the Road"
by Kate Burnham

In a blue hotel in New Orleans, I fell asleep and saw Dad. He was standing in the backyard by the neighbour’s fence. I could feel the grass under my bare feet and the cool hotel sheets. I could see the lamp on the bedside table and my parents’ dog at the back door. And I knew I was in two places at once. He wasn’t angry. For years, I was worried he would be, but he wasn’t. I didn’t need to explain why I wasn’t there to say goodbye; that the borders were closed, that I didn’t get the funeral details until it was too late to book a flight. We just stood and studied each other. And then the afternoon sun faded him away. Like water on the highway when you get too close.
          I’d flown to New Orleans alone. Z was flying in from Colorado and said she’d meet me at our hotel. I sat outside with a plate of red beans and rice, watching blue dusk settle over the Garden District, listening to Roger Miller and the St. Charles streetcar. As darkness tucked itself between the shuttered houses and the gas lamps came awake, I stopped to take photos: a lizard on an iron gate, a bulldog asleep on a wraparound porch, the shadow of a palm across a coloured wall, a crow on a telephone wire. I listened to King of the Road on repeat.
          I get that from him. Dad, when he liked a song, would hit the back button on the car stereo, insisting, “One more time, and that’s it!” I didn’t mind, but seven times is too many for Back in the Saddle Again. Dad loved any song with roamin’ cattle or howlin’ coyotes. I didn’t. I was nine with a wheat allergy. The wide-open prairie just wasn’t my bag.
          Dad liked a lot of things: ‘bacon and tomata’ sandwiches, The Andy Griffith Show, watching the rain from the front porch, counting the seconds between the thunder and lightning. He loved Roger Miller. King of the Road was the first song he taught me. At five, I snapped my fingers and sang, “Trailers for sale or rent/rooms to let fifty cents/no phone, no pool, no pets/I ain't got no cigarettes.”
          I’d heard the veil is thinner in New Orleans. I woke from the dream in tears with Z asleep beside me. I’d seen his face. He looked healthy. He could stand.
          In a shop on Decatur Street the next morning, behind the brass cherubs and beaded lamps, Z found a first edition of Midnight Cowboy. She’d just seen the film and considered it a sign. We went next door to a psychic whose shop was lined with purple candles. She took Mastercard but preferred Amex. Z went first. “You have many people around you,” said the psychic. She shuffled her tarot cards. “But few people really know you.”
          “She’s right,” Z said later, over gator sausage on a stick. We were sitting in a covered food market, watching the rain. “What did she say to you again?”
          I chewed my pecan praline. “She says there’s a lot of love in my life.”
          “True,” said Z. “What else?”
          “She said my dad’s dead and I worry too much.”
          When evening slipped over the French Quarter, we moved to a white house with pink windows. Z went to shower and I sat watching a pink pool of light on the hardwood. We took a taxi to Dooky Chase for dinner. I apologized for crying and dried my face with the hem of my dress. We ordered Oysters Norman, gumbo, and crawfish etouffé.
          That was in May. In June, we flew to Newfoundland to see the ice floats. In July, we drove to Tobermory to see the shipwrecks. In September, we flew to New York. We rode the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island and ate clams on the half shell. When afternoon melted into evening, we sat sun-drunk on the train to Manhattan, planning our second trip to Paris.

 

 

 

From The Malahat Review's winter issue #229