The young boy stood on the dirt shoulder of a rutted country road as an automobile sputtered past leaving behind a cloud of dust. The sun was white and hot, bleaching everything beneath and creating a raw vacancy in the already desolate terrain. The grain of the land stood up to him as he knelt down to it and when he reached his hand down to the dirt, he thought of home and of mama and of the small dog they found one day and kept forever.
The dehydrated crops stretched to the horizon and turned back his eyes and thoughts from any plan he’d ever had to get away from the abandoned details. ‘Look around,’ mama would say, ‘And you’ll see how lucky you are.’ He squinted through the dust sifting down at a another car coming along the right fork in the road. His hand, stuffed in the pocket of his ripped jean shorts, clenched around the natural wood and polished brass caps of his carving knife. He withdrew the knife, pinched open its large blade, and ran the dry skin of his thumb perpendicular to the sharp edge. It scraped his dry skin audibly. Maybe like the tear of paper. Or a mason jar full of mama’s homemade blackberry jam being dragged across their counter top.
Written from 10:00 pm to 10:25pm on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 in my childhood bedroom in Traverse City, Michigan.