My Little Eye

The minivan consumed interstate highway miles like a swarm of locust defoliating a forest.

Little Eliza’s eyes darted to every surface she could see from her raised safety seat. “I spy with my little eye,” she said with all the anticipation a six-year-old could muster, “somethiiiinnnngggg … black!”

“The cows?” Eliza’s twin brother Elliot shouted from his matching safety seat, pointing out the window.

“No!” Eliza said.

“Daddy’s glasses?” asked Eliza’s mother Donna, not taking her tiring, forty-something eyes from the road or her hands from the proper ten-and-two position on the steering wheel.

“No!” Eliza said.

“Is it inside the car or outside?” Eliza’s father Bud asked, cocking his head from the passenger seat.

“Inside!” Eliza called out gleefully.

“The back of the seat?” Elliot asked.

“No!” Eliza answered.

“Mommy’s underpants?” Bud called out.

“Gross!” Elliot spurted.

“No, silly Daddy!” Eliza shouted.

The minivan flitted with guesses from person to person, some serious attempts to read Eliza’s developing mind, some just words tossed out to fill the empty time and vacant space. Every guess was wrong. Eventually, a silence grew, not quite awkward. By then, awkward had become the background ambiance after the dozen hours since the drive began.

The highway ticked by beneath the rushing tires for a long moment, but then a voice rose from the third row of seats behind the twins. It was barely audible above the sudden staccato insect-buzz emanating from the earbuds that fifteen-year-old Zack had just removed with a jerk of his clenched fist as if he were pulling the ripcord on a parachute that failed to open miles above enemy territory on a moonless night.

“Is it the vast, echoing, well of emptiness in my soul?” Zack asked, his eyes staring through a shapeless smudge obscuring the pastoral landscape outside the window.

“No!” Eliza responded with a giggle.

“I give up,” Donna said, not for the first time on the trip from New Jersey to their new life in rural Ohio.

“It’s the steering wheel!” Eliza shouted.

“Ahhh!” said the whole family—even Zack.

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Bio: John Sheirer (pronounced “shy-er”) lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wonderful wife Betsy and happy dog Libby. He has taught writing and communications for 27 years at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he also serves as editor and faculty advisor for Freshwater Literary Journal (submissions welcome). He writes a monthly column on current events for his hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and his books include memoir, fiction, poetry, essays, political satire, and photography. His most recent book is a flash fiction collection, Too Wild. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.