In the morning the sky smoldered inky plum, the darkest bruise, and we thought it was over, this world of ours gone up in plumes of missile smoke. This was before the internet or iPhones, when the war we fought was called Cold, and so not knowing what to do we got into the Chevy Nova and headed back to college, our good friend married off the day before, him looking so old and sullen on such a happy day.

In the car we drank the beer we had. We told old stories we’d all heard a hundred times. We tried to be funny and witty as we picked apart the intentions of our newly married friend, us no different than buzzards.

The ash began as a kind of gray snow, falling like tiny rodent mittens, just a smattering at first, then thick and heavy and blinding. Soon the windshield wipers strained to clear the bulk of it and we had to reach out the window and scoop away the flakey charcoal residue.

On the radio they spoke of the volcanic eruption, how winds were carrying the mountain’s cinders as far as Richland, two hundred miles east.

I sat in the backseat. “Why you so quiet?” they asked.

After the grizzly way he’d killed himself, Mother had little choice but to have my Dad cremated. She kept him in what looked like a sleek flower vase and I used to feel guilty whenever I walked into that room. I imagined him stuffed and stuck inside, trapped without air, not ash at all but flesh and bone.

Now I tried to find the road ahead—anything to dislodge my thoughts–but the windshield was coated.

“You think we should pull over until this stops?” somebody said.

But we didn’t. We drove on.

At our married friend’s wedding reception, I had watched the new couple feed each other cake and smear their noses with globs of frosting. When he took the floor to dance with his mother, the bride bit her lip as she watched, soulful, expecting nothing yet.