The Grip

The Grip

Big Bro’s eye stung from sweat as he blinked from magnified light the eighty eight Durango’s front windshield. The sun radiates his vascular fore arms causing them to excrete tiny beads that grow and fall following veins to a plastic armrest. It was noon and the hoods of every car on the block had to be hot enough to fry an egg and cook a steak. He felt like a cupcake coming to rise in an easy bake and everything inside the dark blue sedan was on low broil and Big Bro thought he could take another hour and they would have to find some form of shade.

Lil Bro breathes deeply and takes in the sweet syrup smell of evaporated diet soda spilt in the cup holder and collected pennies lining it. A drop of perspiration rolls down his adam’s apple and into the soft dip between his clavicle bones. He sinks deeper into the reclined grey leather chair with each shallow breathe. His older sibling, Big Bro, cracks an eyelid and watches the mechanical sprinklers pop out of grass and shower perfidiously edged lush St. Augustine matted front yards. He was sure that they had made it to Arizona although this looked nothing like the desert he expected. It was a long drive across the Texas panhandle had taken longer than expected and each day spent in El Paso was one that took away from the ultimate destination.

It was a ticker tape rural Phoenix suburban neighborhood each house had two or more levels with a large green lawn. There was only one tree on the block and It was a palm. The tree reminds Big Bro of the beach and what he’d seen in the movies of California and the sunset strip. Babied flower beds stripe an inviting bright mess of colors geometrically patterned to lead up every house surrounding the cul-de-sac. Big Bro forgot the street’s name and curiosity of the baring didn’t cross his mind. All he could think of was the heat. A closer than normal Sun was now hung completely overhead without a cloud in the sky. Even with the windows halfway down it was not cool enough to keep him in deep rim rather leaving him sweltering lucid thoughts.

Once again glancing at his little brother he cautiously avoids making any sudden sounds that would shake him from dreaming. Big Bro lets out a struggling yawn and watches the birds float from tree to tree. He hears there back and forth tweets and long whistles and watches them skip across a lawn looking for worms the mulch. A mocking bird is chirping back and forth with a scissor tail hanging on the side of a miniature Victorian house atop a ten foot pole in someone’s back yard. He thought to himself this had to be the place life swells.