UNDERGROUND VOICES: FICTION
IAN MOORE

BEDTIME CONVERSATIONS

         Pulsing through main street was the thunder of my father's diesel truck. I remember that engine; so thick, so massive, grumbling like the ramblings of a worn out plumber and his sagging pants.

Despite winters heavy breathing, the green and gray tank was entrenched in its own path, traveling as if bound by destiny.

         At fifteen, I can see small rips through the clouds canopy, I can feel the force of angelic streamlines heating the weak streets. Static from the radio gives a voice to the harsh winter air and I begin to wonder if he knows.

         As always, transmissions were continually updated by my mother through the only frequency she had ever known. The news, I imagine, was delivered as a bedtime ornament wrapped tightly with commentary, projecting future doubts on my ability to love, sexually perform, and gain reasonable employment. Carving away at the solidity of her concern, it seems she only knew to whittle with an axe. And as the telegram is delivered, the wide-mouthed matriarch is slipping under the covers to warm her legs and never her lips.

         But now, as we drive, my father wears our silence like his abrasive skin, worn and cracked like the trenches of war or the split reefs under the sea's surface. Turning to me, only slightly, he says, “I heard your girl broke up with you.”

         “Yeah,” I say. We had only been together one month.

         Nodding, a flat line traces his lips, “Sounds about right.”

         His nods began to slow, as if to balance the weight of the words, questioning whether to trace the outline of my mother's supposed veracity. I know he's thinking of her when he says, “Yeah... Sometimes they're just funny like that.”

After 27 years of tumultuous living, Ian Moore now resides in Sacramento, California. He is a somewhat employable college graduate of Creative Writing. He has nothing forthcoming in any literary journal.







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