4th of July

Chapter 23

A SHAFT OF EARLY-MORNING sunlight split the clouds as I tossed a last suitcase into the back of the car, strapped in, and backed the Explorer out of my driveway. I was hot to get out of town and so was Martha, who had her head out the passenger-side window and was already creating quite a breeze with her wagging tail.

The stop-and-go rush hour traffic was typical for a weekday, so I pointed the Explorer in a southerly direction and used the time to replay my last brief talk with Chief Tracchio.

“If it were me, I’d get the hell out of here, Boxer,” he’d told me. “You’re on restricted duty, so call it vacation time and get some rest.”

I understood what he wasn’t saying. While my case was pending, I was an embarrassment to the department.

Get lost?

Yes, sir, Chief. No problem, sir.

Agitated thoughts bounced around inside my skull about the preliminary hearing and my fears concerning the upcoming trial.

Then I thought about my sister, Cat, putting out the welcome mat and how lucky that was for me.

Within twenty minutes I was heading southbound on Highway 1, the open road cutting through thirty-foot-tall boulders. The waves of the Pacific pounded the rocky incline to my right, and great green mountains rose high on my left.

“Hey, Boo,” I said, calling my dog by her pet name. “This is what’s called a vacation. Can you say va-ca-tion?”

Martha turned her sweet face and gave me a loving brown-eyed look, then put her nose back into the wind and resumed her joyous surveillance of the coastal route. She’d gotten with the program, and now I had to do the same.

I’d brought along a few things to help me do just that: about a half dozen books I’d been wanting to read; my screwball-comedy videos; and my guitar, an old Seagull acoustic that I’d strummed sporadically for twenty years.

As sunshine brightened the road, I found my mood lightening. It was a stunning day and it was all mine. I turned on the radio and fiddled with the dial until I found a station in the thick of a rock and roll revival.

The disk jockey was practically reading my mind, spinning hits of the seventies and eighties, sending me back to my childhood and to my college days and memories of a hundred nights with my all-girl band jamming in bars and coffeehouses.

It was June once again, and school was out—maybe for good.

I turned up the volume.

The music took me over, and my lungs filled as I sang LA dude rock and other hits of the times. I crooned “Hotel California” and “You Make Loving Fun,” and when Springsteen bellowed “Born to Run,” I was pounding the steering wheel, feeling the body and soul of the song out to the ends of my hair.

I even egged Martha on, getting her to howl along with Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty.”

And that’s when it dawned on me.

I really was running on empty. The little blinking gas light was frantically signaling that my tank was dry.