Dan Overgaard
Curtains
Before the days of wheels, I lugged an old
suitcase away with me to boarding school,
climbing into a rumbling, reddish-orange bus—
heaving it up and squashing it into the rack
above a lumpy, sticky bench seat, where
we’d bump against each other, sweating
and enduring, leaning toward open windows
for that hot, erratic, spanking, bruising wind.
Seems like it never rained, the days we lurched
and swayed along those narrow, blacktop highways,
splitting the endless, flooded paddies—but
it must have, even recently—the way
their sheen of dirty water, slapped so flat
with sunshine, gleamed like sweat and threw
those arrows of steely sunshine off,
doubling the glare that burned my eyes.
I didn’t know about Saturday cartoons
just yet—or the many other treasures
of America—but all those tedious hours,
from Tak to Bangkok or Chiang Mai again—
are still somehow unspooling in me
and I can’t explain it, but in memory,
all the leaving and returning felt the same.
I could see groups of broken hills pretending
to repeat themselves, but closer I was
mesmerized by the syncopated beat
of the power lines that leaped along beside us—
chasing, teasing, disappearing, springing back.
I’d seen some hypnotizing wires like these
above me in America, when I was stretched out
on the top of the over-packed back seat
of that yellow, chrome-toothed Rambler sedan,
practically in the window, like a puppy,
watching the wires skipping and the road
uncurling backwards as we crested waves
of hills across the West, toward relatives they said
I’d met before, but I just didn’t remember.
Out the open bus window, I saw distant
towering clouds that never seemed to move
and gave no rain or shade. Suspended in that
thrumming diesel time that bore me on and bored me,
did I recall the vivid Bible stories
of the pillars of clouds by day and fire by night
that led God’s children out of Egypt, through
wilderness and trials to the promised land?
I don’t remember, but it’s possible.
Sometimes for hours I would be crowded by
a guy up next to me—sleeping or just
pretending to—almost lolling on me,
flopping a hand or arm against my leg,
bumping my shoulder or my strange blond hair.
Dad might be on my other side, across the aisle,
or maybe in another row, but he was
always the open, genial missionary,
happy to meet and chat with anyone—
or falling asleep himself in the stifling heat—
so I would hold myself as still as possible,
too timid or polite to push someone away,
and not wanting to be a rude American.
Years later in America, I was the last
one traveling around with Mom and Dad,
so I stretched fully out in the sofa-like
back seat of our two-toned ’56 Buick
Special—white over red with portholes
and a gigantic steering wheel, where Dad
unfolded his creased and worn gas station maps,
turning them, flapping in the breeze, to read
his scribbles about our next destination.
It seemed God’s leading was encoded there
as well—although I heard them murmuring
to reinterpret or perhaps remember it,
and to prepare for who was on ahead.
At the top of the hour, if he remembered,
Dad would flip the radio on to catch
the latest news, often spinning through squeals
and static to find the strongest signal,
like he did with our scratchy shortwave radio
for the Voice of America in Thailand,
but here there’d be a thundering preacher,
some country music or a baseball game—
not crackling news in Russian or Chinese.
I’d watch the jumping power lines overhead
and eventually surrender to a rocking sleep.
Next to the last of all those bus trips, I was
heading home after graduation—anxious
about returning to America
and all the other strangeness on ahead.
The Bangkok bus station was more chaotic
than ever, and our bus already jammed
when we arrived, but with some shouting
and many outstretched arms, our bags were thrown up
to the roof and strapped with crates and boxes
while we turned sideways and pushed gently in
to find some seats. The trip unrolled as usual,
but eight or nine hours later, in Chiang Mai,
as we stretched and waited for the baggage,
all of it came down except my bag,
and I was shocked—they’d stolen all my poems.
I couldn’t remember any of them then,
or now either. They’d probably embarrass me.
Dad, in his well-intentioned, teasing way,
said, “Oh no, you’ve lost your life’s work!”—which
somehow made it seem more tragic than it was,
and—in the moment—felt like mockery.
I was distraught, and couldn’t find the words
to fend that off, or say what I had lost—
but was it that, or leaving everything?
Fast-forward: after a couple years
of Intro This and Survey That, along
with revelations I had never heard
about the Bible, mixed with Ginsburg’s howls,
the wicked quips of Beckett, Wilde and Coward;
Faulkner and O’Connor—otherworldly
or too worldly, it was hard for me to tell,
but I could laugh at Prufrock’s dithering—
so many words, a rush, I was awash—
I dragged another suitcase, utterly
forgettable, but heavy (still no wheels)
with six or so pounds of Shakespeare, all
thirty-eight plays in Riverside’s hardback
edition, and a portable typewriter—
from Los Angeles to Edinburgh, then
to London, later on to Rome, Jerusalem
and via Amsterdam, back to California.
It almost felt like home, that coming back,
but I found I couldn’t afford to finish up
and still had no idea where I was going.
Odd jobs around southern California
didn’t find me that engaging—nor I them—
and though I did learn how to drive a bus,
this poem isn’t about the many ways
I later took to buses, and their endless
formal rhythms of arriving and departing,
loaded up with random, rolling, urgent needs.
Could the drivers call for help, and who would answer?—
when they’d emptied out while coasting down a hillside
to a shelter by the ocean, or a lake.
They might wait there in the dark—and try, and try.
All that came so much later. Did my friend
Bill and I remember Huck and how he
lit out for the territories when we
loaded up that black and red ’64
Ford F-100 pickup, and cast off
from Pasadena? I’m not sure what Bill
had read, but he knew how to navigate
the mighty, twisting rapids of I-5,
and read the currents of that surging river north
for coves where we could tie up for a rest.
I think I did recall Huck’s river, all his
mishaps and his dreams, and I suppose
my plans were just about as well defined.
Over forty five years later, I still see
Mom’s indelible teacher’s cursive on the side
of an old suitcase she gave me for that trip,
in big round letters: Overgaard / Curtains.
I didn’t understand it then and can’t
remember if I even asked if she still
planned to use it, but I needed a suitcase
and we were in some kind of hurry to leave—
so into the truck it went, and we were off.
It followed me for years, through several moves,
the way an old suitcase does, flopping down
between some boxes in a storage room
or sighing flatly, in a crooked basement stack.
I never took it out again, because
I was embarrassed by her writing
on the side—and, saying that, I am ashamed
of my embarrassment, and what I must
have missed: they didn’t have a home themselves,
and were debating or deciding they would not
go back to Thailand for another term,
though what they would do next was still unclear.
But they didn’t discuss such things with us
while they were being hammered out in prayer,
so it was normal that we didn’t ask.
And were there any curtains? There’s no way
now to ask or know, but I don’t think so.
They wouldn’t have been carried on a plane
halfway around the world—and anyway I don’t
recall that suitcase there. Dad always traveled light,
discarding things he didn’t think they’d need
or didn’t value, such as books she liked to take
along to share when someone needed them.
He didn’t want extra weight—although for her,
carrying some books was not a burden
but a gift she would offer someone soon.
All the old Thai country houses I recall
were dark inside, their walls unfinished wood
and overlapping siding, board by board—
no insulation, studs all facing in,
no paint, and always water-stained
from many seasons of persistent rain.
The windows had folding shutters, but no glass
or screens. If they were reachable from the ground
they’d probably be secured with iron bars.
So, naturally, Mom would make some curtains
for a room or two or three, light cotton
that could share a little breeze, if any came—
and give some privacy, along with some relief
from that surrounding, sweating, wooden gloom.
Mornings or afternoons, Dad might be gone
to visit villages or meet with someone,
and she would try to find some time to write
some letters, maybe to one or more of us
or some dear friends “back home”—although, in truth,
they could be anywhere, and so could we.
But she would lean to pages of onionskin
for airmail, and embroider them with care
and stories, to create or find a sense of home.
After I left they moved, and moved again,
and we can’t fully recreate their path—
what carried them from one place to another.
While I believe she hoped to draw us all
back in somewhere, somehow, together,
she was running out of time and memory,
and eventually she couldn’t even enjoy
our yearly holiday weekend gatherings.
And the thing is, we were trained for distance,
trained to be away. No matter now, though—
whether I’m gazing out or peering in,
memories like curtains flutter til they’re drawn.
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Dan Overgaard was born and raised in Thailand. He attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and programs. He’s now retired, and probably gardening or catching up on reading. His poems have appeared in Mobius, Santa Clara Review, Across The Margin, The Galway Review, pioneertown, As It Ought To Be, The High Window and other journals. Read more at: danovergaard.com.