Your dad wrote this the night before "The Big Riceball Reveal." The writing and the event are unrelated. Then again, how could they be completely unrelated?
A long, low road. Longer, lower shadows. A rumble against the hillside, either Mac trucks or thunderstorm leftovers. He moved in a sort of forward moonwalk, a plaid button-up dragging along the roadside gravel. He bought that shirt the year Kurt Cobain died.
He hadn't spoken in two days, but he'd lost his voice. He knew he'd lost it when he tried identifying the type of moss growing on the shaded side of a dark pine. He'd had no voice to name it.
The night dropped like a wet chamois. Still, the night wasn't dark enough to shove all the details under the ground. The moon lit up a broken, half-buried carousel, and then a star, and then another star, and then Orion.
Headlights coasted from left to right and then stopped on his face. He drew a knife, which turned out to be a number-two pencil. His vision waned and he sunk into the earth, moss growing from his shadowy, dark trunk. And the driver of that car, behind those headlights, saying nothing, having lost his voice.
