1,037 MPH

In 1841 my ancestor, Henry Alexander Griffith, discovered the speed of the earth. From that time on, no one in my family has done anything of note. His discovery a shining gem in a sea of forgotten headstones. He’d be impressed to see my beetle going thirty in a fifty-five, with busted A/C and all. I’d go faster but when I hit forty, the car coughs black fumes, a mechanical stroke starts. Henry, surrounded by the whips of overseers, only knew his own two feet. To him, the beetle would be a marvel of engineering. A bullet you could sit on. But to the other drivers i’m a hazard to be avoided. It’s routine to pass me, for me to be passed. I hate to say it but sometimes I’m a little grateful when it happens. Each car brings a breeze of relief. I hate that. I hate saying under my breath “thank god.” When the heat is at its worst. A reminder that the beetle’s speed, the words of its wheels, are an insult. But I know there is progress here. Henry’d find it in my flickering headlights, still punch drunk from an accident I was too young to remember.

In the distance an engine thunders behind me. Going sixty, maybe seventy? The rearview calls for my eyes, a streak of blue shoots between cars. Faster than sixty. Ignore it. There’s progress in my sagging chassis, Henry’d see it. A dust cloud billows over the other cars. Horns Honk. The other cars always yield to my slowness. The blue streak never slows. The air surrenders to the roar of its engine. I grip the steering wheel as the streak, a Firebird, spears past me. In that instant I see it clearly. Fresh off the lot, a pristine blue, blasting through time. Past all the uneventful lives of my family. The sun no longer matters. Winter begins and all other seasons cower in its wake. He has a taste of Henry’s speed, his knowledge. An understanding that moves past buggy wheels, horse haunches, his own two feet. And onto speed of the earth itself. The other driver never slows. Never sees my second hand, lawn green beetle with busted A/C. All at once, my foot finds the gas.

  80 MPH

The beetle’s arthritic axles groan with pain. Begging for the easy thirty. My foot never eases. It’s good to hear its rusted heart, full of quivering combustions. Surge through that pain. Show them what they don’t know. What they don’t see. That there is progress. Past those nameless burials, early deaths, those last words forgotten. Progress, as Henry had, through the chill of winter to read the speed of the stars. The Firebird roars ahead, eating that past. I press on the gas.

155 MPH

            Speed. I feel it in the wheels, the teeth of my engine. That’s something I’ve never known very well. My only solace is that I’m not the only one in my family like that. We’re the ones who:

–  Live as though dead

– Accept

-Go thirty in a fifty-five

Only Henry stands out, but there’s no record of how he’d died and when. What did it feel like on the barn roof, charting the stars on stolen paper? How cool was the air back in 1841? Henry must’ve felt like he’d discovered winter going as fast as he did. Living through those numbers, body flung into the heavens. I want some of that wind. That relief.

200 MPH

Freedom. The Firebird is a spec in my rearview. The road is one long streak of gray, every nerve is standing up. My eyes won’t close, the air is laced with fire. I can’t take my foot off the gas and the wind has locked my head to the seat. A wind that is all my own with a relief close to Henry’s. I’ve made my own progress.

1,037MPH and beyond.

There is no record of Henry Alexander Griffith. He’d been a slave and so there was little to mark his entrance or exit to this world. All the same, we know his discovery, his existence. It lives in our mouths before we’re born and impregnates our last breaths. In that way he has lived, does live, will live. 1,037 MPH, the speed of earth’s rotation. The speed of standing still. Henry exists at the speed of memory, traveling into descendants who won’t know me, that is a race I’ve lost since the beginning.

Eben Bracy was born in Flint Michigan but raised in Virginia. He is the winner of the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize and is currently based in Norfolk. His mind is either floating out at sea or caught in life’s raging storms, for him the way out has always been fiction.