{"id":7795,"date":"2022-05-11T07:09:48","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T14:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7795"},"modified":"2022-05-11T07:09:48","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T14:09:48","slug":"pendleton-a-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/pendleton-a-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Pendleton: A Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

He was late as usual. I sat on the porch with my phone, waiting, texting people I didn\u2019t even like and playing a dumb game. Mom didn\u2019t wait with me. She never did. I can\u2019t remember the last time they talked to one another in person. Maybe at my eighth grade graduation. They just set things up every now and then<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and handed me back and forth. But at least there was some handing off. A lot of my friends didn’t even have that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There wasn’t a cloud in the September sky. I wore my usual clothes. Nothing much moved around me this Saturday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty minutes later, I heard it before I saw it: the blue Ford van nearly older than he was, belching black smoke from a dangling tail pipe barely attached to a rusted undercarriage. When he came into view, he gave me a half-ass wave as he popped a breath mint in his mouth. I saw him check the rear-view mirror and rub his face and push back his hair. Hung over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I dreaded the van. It would reek of cigarettes, sweat, gasoline, mold and Burger King. It always took me ten minutes to clean away his construction shit so I could sit down. Three hours to the Pendleton Round-up to see cowboys abuse animals and drunk people stagger around. I didn’t want to go to a rodeo. I hated everything they stood for. I never wanted to go anywhere with him. But this was his one allowed visit a month, which meant I saw him three or four times a year. Mom made me go but I don\u2019t think it was for my sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He drove fast on the Interstate, passing every car without signaling. The van shook a lot and tools banged around in the back. He took a few calls and got angry each time. I counted hawks and watched the Columbia River roll west. I noted the exact spot where the Gorge turned from green to brown, from trees to rock. In Hood River, I saw a couple of windsurfers a good forty feet above the water. Just past The Dalles I saw the dam and all the wires. He constantly changed the radio station from country to classic rock and never once asked me what I wanted to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hadn\u2019t said a word since the greeting and the handshake, but that was okay. I had nothing to say to him and I wondered if he felt the same about me. An hour left to Pendleton and we still had two more days together.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He was late as usual. I sat on the porch with my phone, waiting, texting people I didn\u2019t even like and playing a dumb game. Mom didn\u2019t wait with me. She never did. I can\u2019t remember the last time they talked to one another in person. Maybe at my eighth grade graduation. They just set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7795"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7798,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795\/revisions\/7798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}