Dad insisted on two things when we were growing up: fireworks at the lake for Fourth of July and the slog to Punxsutawney to see good ol’ Phil every February second. Maybe Brendan and I shouldn’t have rolled our eyes when Dad asked so little of us, but four hours in the car in order to see a man in a tux hold up a woodchuck always resulted in maximum eye-rollage.
“Liz, Brendan, it’s important to me. Just get in the car.”
His familiar words — in their precise cadence — directed my thoughts as my thumb indented Brendan’s doorbell at 1:03 AM. I bounced on the balls of my feet and puffed a breath into my cupped hands, perceiving the barest whisper of warmth before it vanished into a cloud of cold steam.
Finally, the clunk of the bolt, the twist of the knob, and Brendan emerged in a red flannel coat.
“Why are you still driving Dad’s car?” He shadowed me down the porch steps to the rust-eaten Volkswagen.
“It was free, goof-face.”
“It has no heat.”
“Just like old times.”
I socked in my electric blanket’s car adapter and tossed it to him. “Only better.”
We hadn’t been sure we were going to Punxsy until the night before on the phone. Brendan claimed that the current glacial temperatures in Ohio were proof enough of another month and a half of winter and he didn’t need a dumb groundhog speaking groundhogese to the president of the Inner Circle to confirm it.
“Yeah, it’s stupid, but it mattered to Dad.” My voice softened, then raised, “Maybe one last time?”
He answered with a silence so long I didn’t know if we’d been disconnected before his sigh came. “Let’s go.”
***
“Here’s to one last Punxsutawney pilgrimage!” I lifted my stainless-steel thermos for a swig of coffee before shifting the Jetta into Reverse.
Columbus, Ohio, to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, at one in the morning, in February, in the dark, in the dead of night, in the dead of winter. Everybody’s idea of a good time. During the return trip in the daylight, we’d see chilled fields inhabited by murders of crows foraging around broken stalks. But tonight, the headlights illuminated the lonely highway while barns hulked gloomy in the distance. An icy breeze blew up out of the dashboard to defrost the windshield, making the bones in my fingers ache while Brendan’s snores squealed from beneath the fleece blanket pulled up around his face.
Bang! Whump, whump, whump, whump. Dad’s car jerked left, the steering wheel — suddenly as stiff as a corpse — demanding all of my might to keep us in our lane.
After coming to a slow, safe stop, my arms quivered with exhaustion as the surge of adrenaline rode out its wave through my body.
“What happened?” Brendan groaned.
“You know how to put on a spare, Bren?
“What spare? Dad’s car never had a spare. You got one?”
“Um, no.”
I removed my cell from my pocket and started tapping — my fingers still shaking, heart still pumping, but my head surprisingly clear.
“Did you see the last mile marker to tell the tow truck?” He asked.
“Uber.” I waved the phone. “Mike will be here to pick us up in fifteen.”
“We’re still going to Punxsy?”
“You bet.”
He turned away, but I caught his eyeroll in the reflection of the window.
***
Soon, Brendan and I were seated side by side in the backseat of Mike’s four-door on the way to Punxsutawney, just like old times when we punished Dad by riding in the back with our hoodies snugged up around our faces.
“Happy Groundhog Day.” Mike grinned in the rearview mirror and pulled us back onto the highway. “I’ve never done the Punxsutawney Phil thing. Your first time too?”
I shook my head.
Mike responded with the radio. Classic rock in the middle of the obsidian-black night.
Brendan assumed Dad’s dorky chicken-strut head thrust, mouthing “Sweet home, Pennsylvania!” and all of the alternate lyrics our strait-laced, factory-worker father dreamed up in the eerie hours of a winter’s night long ago. Those hours we knew Dad, but didn’t really know him.
Mike left us at a night-abandoned Punxsutawney parking lot to board one of the buses ferrying spectators the two miles uphill to Gobbler’s Knob.
The frigid vigil had begun hours ago in front of the stage backdropped by the barren branches of winter trees. Brendan and I attached ourselves to the back of the crowd. On the stage below, a couple dressed like woodchucks were dancing a polka beside the “hibernating” Phil’s larger-than-life stump.
My gaze paused on a stooped gentleman near the stage, the one who perpetually displayed his homemade “Spring forth, Phil!” sign. The wooden sign handle was now jammed into his armpit as he clapped mittened hands for the polka dancers. One year, Dad made a mortifying poster with a picture of a sleeping groundhog he printed from the internet and the words, “Phil wants to go back to bed. Free Phil!” and the stooped gentleman chuckled and shook his hand.
The next item of business was to stir up the crowd with some predawn fireworks and scare poor Phil from his winter slumber. As the fizzling bang of colored lights began, Brendan stretched on Dad’s hand-knitted Punxsutawney Phil beanie. And in that moment, I felt more at home here than I had anywhere since Dad died.
With every pop of the fireworks, my heart burst like so many kernels of kettle corn exploding from hard shells into something broken, yet tender and sweet. Pop. Pop-pop! Warmth slid down my cheeks.
When the president of the Inner Circle in his black top hat and tuxedo lifted the eternal woodchuck like a god and announced that spring was coming soon, the crowd clapped and whooped.
“Good news, huh?” Brendan slung his arm awkwardly around my shoulders.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for spring.”
My brother’s sleeve brushed away tears of his own. “I’ll drive next year.”
Lynn M. Rice enjoys processing life with the help of her Creator through the gift of creative writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine and 101 Words.
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