Overread at Table 3: Scene from "After the Gold Rush"

The Kickstands “Side Car” starts to play.  Camera opens to a New Mexico highway, empty, blue sky, noon, scrub brush on either side of the black asphalt, with stubs of mountain ranges in the distance on either side.

Meg has the window down and her long hair flowing in the breeze.

Another car pulls up behind them.  Then pulls over into the left lane.

Meg’s boyfriend looks at the driver of the other car, who gives the rock-n-roll horns.   Both men smile, then they push the pedals hard to the floor, each car speeding, taking more of the road.

Meg rolls up the window and turns up the song. 

They are racing, yes, but not racing to beat each other, no, not racing to win, they are racing to celebrate.  Celebrate what, you might ask?  

If you were alive on that day, and if you can remember the first of May, in the year of our Lord 2020, then you would know why two cars would be racing for seemingly no reason heading north on a New Mexico highway with no one to see them but one lone eagle in the sky.

If you were in America, on that day, at that moment, you would know.

You would know.