The hub cap rolled off on Hollywood Blvd, just before Los Feliz. There’s a strip of rather unimpressive sprawl where cheap buildings shaped like cheap stucco motels pollinate the mini-malls tucked into each new block. All of this expansive nothingness is flecked with Thai restaurants, Armenian barbers, and a hill where Frank Lloyd Wright built a leaky house.
I pulled to the side of the road, but, the truth of it was, Los Angeles had already started swallowing me.
Some afternoons, lost to employment or monetary advancement, the dog and I hiked deep into the hills, themselves an accolade to affluence’s fight against the grain of nature. The dog was happy to move freely about, and me, accepting the journey’s temporary occupation of the crossed wires inside my head.
As his light faded, the dog took up temporary residence on a chair my father’s mother had lugged from New Orleans to Atlanta and, finally, to Baltimore. Now it supported his weakened state, and watching him in it reminded me of my grandmother’s jowls. Had she lived long enough to see the resting spot of the dog and the chair, she’d probably have managed some sort of subtle encouragement to urge me back to the south.
Light/Words- Hank Cherry
