When David Lee Roth drops his voice low to growl about the road and the heat and reaching between his legs to ease the seat back, I listen hard, so hard I’m there, speeding on a two-lane desert highway at dusk when the air goes silky and I see myself, steering with my knees, one…
…I was eleven years old, and six of those eleven years had been spent hopelessly in love with Audrey Kerr, the “little red-haired girl” of Clark County R-1
When I drive back into the Missouri humidity after a few weeks away from home, I roll down my window and inhale. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten what we mean here when we say “hot.”
He smiles at the small white bag in my hand. I place it on his lap, and he clutches the top while I wheel him down the hallway to the empty nursing home cafeteria.
We sit in the harbor and I stare out, regretting my departure before I’ve even left. Haifa spreads out in front of me, teasing me. I think of him, the boy I left behind…
When I walk into the Hitch’n Post for a gallon of milk, the cashier behind the counter calls out, “You must be a Fugman… you Roger’s daughter?”
This Thursday when Leah comes to my farm to pick up her weekly produce box, all her hair is gone. Just like that.
Here is a town that has learned from its history; a town that does not fight the mountain, does not fight the river. The mine shaft opens its mouth. Holds two bodies in its teeth until they are wet and blue and soft. Come back.
The ball of string fits reassuringly in my hand, smaller than a softball but just bigger than a baseball. Its perfect sphericity seems impossible against my palm, testament to the care and diligence with which it was wound.
I’m alone in my parent’s house, painting the first floor bedrooms where my grandmother and parents usually sleep.
