Cherrylog Road

Although the young adolescent amuses himself by jumping in and out of the cars in the junkyard and imagining their histories, he is in the yard for one purpose only: to have sex with Doris Holbrook, the girl from the farm. Given the joy and wonder of his newfound power and sexual awareness, this is really all he thinks about. His anticipation of Doris begins in stanza 3, when he hopes that she will “escape from her father” (Line 18) at noon and come to the junkyard. When he thinks he hears her arriving, he breaks out into a sweat (stanza 9). He wants her so badly that he is “Praying” (Line 65) that she will come. There is an urgency and intensity about his desire for Doris. Not that he thinks especially highly of her, or even regards her at all as a person in her own right. In fact, he compares her to a mouse, which conveys the single-mindedness and ferocity both of his lust and his perception of her: she is prey to be hunted down. He has already likened himself to a “kingsnake” (Line 31), and a kingsnake’s diet includes rodents. He does not, to put it mildly, underestimate his sexual abilities, and he imagines that his kisses will excite Doris so much that her lips will be “trembling” with the thrill of it (Line 61), although there is no evidence that satisfying Doris is high on his list of priorities or even on it at all. His sole desire seems to be to slate his own lust, and he does not hold back. The couple’s energetic encounter is described with comic exaggeration. The hooks from the seat springs press into them and the stuffing of the seat backs spills out. After this wild coupling, they go their separate ways, quite literally; they depart by “separate doors” (Line 98), without, it seems, even a farewell. Neither love nor tender or sad feelings play a part in this encounter, but the young man does not care. As the final stanza shows, there is no doubt that he got what he wanted; he is invigorated, even intoxicated with primal masculine power as he tears off down the highway, “Drunk on the wind in my mouth, / Wringing the handlebar for speed” (Lines 106-07).

While some may read the poem as a kind of swashbuckling, comic adventure of an adolescent male, others may see it rather differently, from the female viewpoint. Doris may be a willing participant in this sexual encounter in the junkyard—after all, no one forces her to walk down from the farm—but she is not presented as an equal one. She is the prey who must be caught and used according to the demands of male desire.

Doris is also presented as subordinate to her father. The boy hopes that she will be able to “escape” (Line 18) from her father and come to the yard, which suggests that the father exerts a kind of tyranny on the girl. The boy thinks that Doris will likely suffer severe punishment (a beating with a razor strop) if it comes out that she has been seeing him at the junkyard. Perhaps she has told him of past occurrences of this form of discipline. It seems that when Doris goes to the junkyard she is deliberately committing an act of rebellion; she is trying to assert her own independence to do what she wants to do rather than what she is told to do. However, in spite of this attempt to assert herself, it might be said that—her own enjoyment notwithstanding—she is merely trading one form of male aggression and selfishness for another. After her sexual encounter with the motorcycle rider, in which she serves her appointed purpose as a willing female body, she is, in a sense, abandoned. As she walks back to the farm, she likely carries some auto parts with her, extracted by means of the wrench she brought with her. This will enable her to explain herself if her father should interrogate her about her whereabouts and purpose in going to the junkyard. Thus, Doris must somehow keep both the males in her life happy, even at the cost of her own pride and sense of integrity. In both cases, in spite of her cunning in regard to her father, she is a subordinate, disempowered figure, perhaps a lonely one too, although her adolescent lover, as he roars off on his motorcycle, will not spare a moment’s thought in that direction.