Daisy Cashin

These Janky Ol’ Wings

I am twenty-seven years old, zombie-eyed, and thin, biking circles around Hampton Park in Charleston, South Carolina. The May sun, dragged to its perch by the universe’s circles, sits lazily in the sky. On my face, a film of grease that has accumulated during my Sunday brunch shift at Queen Street Grocery mixes with sweat from my brow and stings my eyes. Tears meet in the corners of my mouth like tidal creeks finding the harbor. My grandmother Wren has just phoned from Chapin. 

On my first lap around the park, I notice a man in the gazebo by the old baseball stadium. He is on his side, curled up like a child taking a nap on the floor. His feet are bare. I cannot see his head. There is a police cruiser idling on the shoulder and an ambulance parked in the grass. A pair of policemen lean against their car, giggling, sure they will never die. The paramedics struggle to pull the stretcher through the soft grass. Behind them, on the dashboard of the ambulance, a Bojangles box filled with the picked-apart remains of a never-named chicken, hatched only to be caged, slaughtered, and eaten, decays in the sun. 

I pedal hard, and my tears turn cool on my face. The gazebo is gone. I remove my hands from my handlebars, extend them into the wet air, and close my eyes. 

I am flying. 

I am eleven years old, spending a Saturday afternoon in September at work with my uncle Callum while Mom and Dad are at the Cherokee Casino across the border in North Carolina. For now, Callum is a gas station technician. We are riding in his Ford dually to fix a pump at the Circle K in Spartanburg. Callum calls the truck Chunky Thunder on account of its girth and rumble. Dreaming My Dreams is in the CD player, and the windows are down. Air swirls with the stench of gasoline and Copenhagen, and thumps against the Skittles, Funyuns, and Gatorade in my lap.

Outside of Clinton, South Carolina, Callum turns the volume down and shows me how to use the CB radio hanging from the ceiling. I learn the lingo, the secret words of the highway—chicken coops, choke and pukes, angry kangaroos, and meat wagons. Callum says the truckers call cops bears. He says the bears are real sneaky bastards and that we’ve got to be careful. Then he finishes off a Mountain Dew, lodges a pinch of Copenhagen into his bottom lip, and says, “What do you think? You think we can hit a hundred?”

“A hundred?” I ask and eat a handful of Skittles.

Callum bounces his head up and down like an ornery rooster. Then he tells me to get on the CB radio and ask the Little Debbie truck up ahead if he’s heard where the bears are sitting. So, I get on the radio in my giggly ten-year-old voice and say, “Hey, Debbie. This is Chunky Thunder. You see any bears up there? Over.”

The radio crackles, and Debbie chuckles, “All clear for fifty miles, as far as I’ve heard, Chunky. Over.” 

My eyes get wide. Callum hangs up the CB, turns Waylon back on, and spits into the empty Mountain Dew bottle. Waylon’s singing, “Hello highline, hello highway. Here come a big ol’ semi my way…” Callum hums along, stiffens his arms on the steering wheel, and pushes his foot down on the accelerator. My little body presses back against the seat, and my blue Gatorade rolls up my stomach. Waylon continues, “Trees goin’ by, lookin’ like a fly…” Callum howls with Waylon and pushes the pedal down further. We hit eighty, then ninety, then a hundred. Callum and I are flying, and flying is goddamn sweet.  

A fly hits me in the forehead. I open my eyes and see the gazebo again. The police and paramedics are standing over the body with their thumbs tucked into their belts. A paramedic crouches and touches the man’s neck, then stands and shrugs. Her partner moves like mud down the steps to retrieve the stretcher. 

I close my eyes again and return to my flight.

I am twelve years old, waiting in the big hay field at my grandmother’s farm in Chapin. It is Christmas afternoon, the first Christmas since my parents never came back from the Cherokee Casino in North Carolina. I am full of breakfast casserole and emptiness, sitting in my new go-cart that Callum bought from the junkyard in Newberry. It has a rusty roll cage, dry-rotted tires, no shocks, and no muffler. Callum has plowed a figure-eight dirt track in the back forty. He is excited, leaning on the roll cage, telling me how to get it sideways around the corners. I listen intently. Callum bangs on the roll cage and says, “Alright. Go get ‘em.” 

So, I go get ‘em. 

I push the gas pedal into the floor and bump and rumble towards the turn. I lean hard and yank the steering wheel to the left. I am sideways. Callum is jumping up and down, flapping his arms like a deranged vulture on the side of the highway. Dirt is flying, grass is flying, Callum and I are flying, and flying makes me forget. 

A shiny, workless truck with a big, dumb muffler and a blue Salt Life decal on the back window passes me too close. I open my eyes and pedal angrily for a minute, then catch my breath when I come back to the gazebo. 

The paramedics plunk the body on the stretcher, lift the stretcher onto the rolling gurney, and push the body towards the ambulance. The lights flash, but there is no siren. The ambulance rolls gently into the road. 

I extend my arms. The air holds me up.

I am sixteen and bored on a Sunday afternoon at my grandmother’s, where Callum and I now live. Callum is in Aiken at the drag races. My grandmother is at the Publix getting groceries. I am alone. I am mostly ever alone. 

I open the door to Callum’s bedroom like it is a secret tomb. There are treasures everywhere—cigarette cartons, empty beer cans, and a plastic handle of Old Crow whiskey on the bedside table. I sit on the edge of the bed, take a glug from the warm bottle, and shove a pack of Parliaments into the front right pocket of my Wranglers. As I try to screw the cap back on, it falls to the floor and bounces under the bed. I get on my hands and knees to find it.

Under the bed is a stack of Hustler magazines. On top of the magazines is a plastic Mickey Mouse dinner plate holding a blackened glass straw, a grey butane lighter, and a blue plastic baggy filled with pale white crystals. 

I am flying, and flying is goddamn lonesome. 

I bounce over an acorn, and my eyes open. I come to the gazebo. A young woman in a white dress and scarlet sash holds a bouquet of white roses. The sash reads, Class of 2025. She glides toward the gazebo and looks over her shoulder at a man with a camera, then lifts her dress as she floats up the stairs. In the gazebo, she poses and lets the fabric fall where the body had been.  

I’ve had enough of the park. I veer onto Huger Street and close my eyes through the four-way stop. A guy in a Toyota Prius lurches to a halt and honks. I flip the bird over my shoulder and pedal on. I close my eyes through six more intersections before I reach the Royal American, where I lock my bike to the railing under the bald eagle facade and shake some air into my t-shirt. 

Inside, the bar is cool and dark. The regulars are quiet and alone. They are mostly ever alone. We are mostly ever alone. I order a Miller Highlife and a shot of Old Crow, then press the cold can against my forehead. 

As I cool down, “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” creeps out of the speakers. I take a too-big sip of beer. Suds spill onto my shirt. Waylon sings, “Everybody’s gone away…” I take my shot and squeeze my forehead, pressing my thumb and index finger into my temples like talons. Waylon persists, “Some caught a freight, some caught a plane. Find the sunshine, leave the rain.” 

My cheeks turn wet again. I’ve just spoken to my grandmother Wren. Callum came home from his dishwashing shift at the Applebee’s last night and flew himself into a snare in the laundry room. And sometimes flying is an illness.

I am tired. I am tired of all this goddamn flying. But I was raised by birds, and I just can’t quit these janky ol’ wings.

Daisy Cashin is a writer from Southwest Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. His work has appeared in HAD, Farewell Transmission, BRUISER, ExPat Press, Maudlin House, and The Panacea Review. Fans of love and loathing can find his chaos missives at ihatethesepeople.substack.com.