Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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  • Art
Picture

JAMES BRAZIEL

Jick's Chevrolet

IS A PLACE UP THE HILL just out of Oneonta where the highway splits two ways. Doesn’t matter which one you take, both routes open up to county roads that curve by hay fields and the new houses being built where the March tornadoes struck. At some point they loop dead center through a long pine thicket no one’s cut down yet. But they will. One day they’ll replace those trees with the bottom of the blue sky, and for a moment you’ll breathe good, so good. Thing is, only so much pine tar can be taken in before you faint, fall against the wheel, crash against a stump. But don’t worry your sore head too much—that’s just one cut to home. 

When you get to the top to Jick’s, his big blue board all lit up with the pop
-light sedan and its pop-flash wheels flashing next to the word Chevrolet, you’ll find all the pretty cars you’ve never owned--Camaros, Impalas, Corvettes, and Corvairs. Names made for riding low and pretty, made up of unreal reds and hellfire yellows, and chrome, chrome, chrome! just out of reach from your bumper and your dusty windshield.    

Now Jick, he’s a good guy. And his cars are good cars. They just out of reach. So after letting the thin card punch 10 hours off your life, head up slow to Jick’s, take a look and choose a route off the two-way that splits again and again like a ruthless root, dividing you up. Every
afternoon let the rubber fly until the maps in your head get so dizzy, you forget the way home.
     

Wherever you land, you’ll crank up the ole 4-banger in the morning, I bet, and head back to Jick’s cause Jick, he treats his customers right. He’s ready to open the door to a pretty car and say, “Here you go! Kick a wheel! Give it a spin!” Throw those keys right where only you can catch them. And you’ll catch them right where the sun meets your hand in the bottom of the blue sky.

Jick’s cars crank easy and ride easy as you head down those same county roads. But this time’s different, whatever cut through whatever field you take to get to the thicket of pine. On the other side, the ride gets wider, emptier. And you can fill up all that space. Every last bit. Until you’re as big as the sun and the moon and all the light and all the dark.

Picture
James Braziel is the author of the novels Birmingham, 35 Miles and Snakeskin Road. He lives and writes in north Alabama with his wife, poet Tina Mozelle Braziel.

published by
The Department of English
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
Copyright © 2012-2022 Map Literary
Map Literary

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  • About
    • Masthead
    • Submissions
    • Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award
    • NJ High School Writing Contest
    • In Print
    • Subscribe
    • Links
    • Internship Opportunity
    • WPU MFA
  • Poetry
    • Richard Ryal
    • Sherwood Anderson
    • Mark DeCarteret
    • Dennis Hinrichsen Poetry
    • Daniel Biegelson
    • Natan Last
    • Jim Daniels Poetry
    • Michael Chang
    • D E Steward
    • Benjamin Paloff Poetry
    • David Dodd Lee
    • Isabelle Doyle
    • Kathleen Heil
    • Leonard Kress
    • Lauren Tess
    • Cesca Janece Waterfield
    • Billy Cancel Poetry
    • Scott Minar
    • Greg Glazner
    • Bruce McRae
    • Maureen Thorson
  • Fiction
    • On Experimental Fiction
    • Mark Cassidy, "How I Met My Wife"
    • Emily Trachtenberg, "Plum"
    • Hector Donovan-Gonzalez
    • Christopher Linforth, "Zia"
    • Jenessa Abrams, "You Never Wish That Upon Anyone"
    • Eros Livieratos, "On Feeling"
    • Halsted M. Bernard, "Your Hands"
    • Justin Meckes, "The Gash"
    • Reb Livingston, from "Bombyonder"
    • Craig Foltz, "Without Stigma"
  • Nonfiction
    • Martha Wiseman, "Loose Ends"
    • Jan Jolly, "Through My Father's Glasses"
    • Kristina Moriconi, "Still Looking"
    • Wm. Anthony Connolly, "IGY"
    • Cal Freeman, "Loosestrife"
    • W.F. Lantry, "The Strange Beauty of the Unfamiliar"
    • Michael Roloff, "Accretion"
    • Andrew Sunshine, "John Hancock's John Hancock"
    • Diane Payne, "3 micro memoirs"
    • Luc Sante, "Flesh and Bone"
    • Isobel O'Hare, "Failure: A Love Letter"
    • Melissa Wiley, "Barbed Wire Fence"
    • Ashley Wilkinson, "fractional distillation"
  • Art