Valley Sun

Doesn't it look like rain? He tossed out commentary as the rest of us sat in silence, immersed in our own worlds and forgetting the outside. The winds picked up, the clouds moved in, soon branches were beating against the windows as they fell and claps of thunder smacked across the valley floor. By the time the storm passed an hour later, the little ranch house sat without power, without water, a small island floating around aimlessly and unsure where to connect. We drank wine and pretended it would sort itself out, until it didn't and we threw all the food we had into the firepit, drinking whiskey in the moonlight and eating dinner after midnight, conjuring ghosts and monsters out of the dark. I woke hours before dawn, the lights suddenly on in the little house, everything pretending it was regular and we were the ones out of sorts.

We drove to the little resort in the late morning, looked at streets washed over with money, looked at history erased by a new wave of settlers; the West puts up a battle but loses every time, eventually everything is tamed. I consider my own migration across its deserts, wonder at my footprint. He shot himself in the foyer of his house, you know, the young librarian says. I can't tell you where it is, but I'm going to point a little on this map and you never saw me do it.

I wander so much in the muck of my history, painting myself with the mud and letting it squelch between my toes; it's a sick pastime, I know, but it unnerves me to see my skin clean, to feel my breath light. What is it about writers that they always turn into alcoholics and kill themselves? he says, and I don't know how to tell him.

The mud is an answer, when you know it as home.