�

Separation

(as in, separated from that which you knew, being a different person on the same soil�the separation will make it seem as if there is no return to who you were)

That was herself, she thought, staring at the fog rolling over the hills. Thick and moving, moving, moving, without any real direction. Stretching between one thing and another, an exhale, a quietness. The valley was soaked, swollen, dripping�puddles danced with more rain, the leaves of the oaks circled and fell. She liked to walk in this weather, with the sky lowered as it was. The world felt smaller, closer, less dangerous. A branch cracked on the old tree in front of her, and she thought of when they had buried her grandmothers dog under that tree. It was a full funeral, for just as her dogs had not eaten dog food but regular food, they would be buried properly. He had died while all the grandchildren played at the tire swing, and they had not heard his initial yelp because of the branch cracking. They all looked up, then heard him again, and he was dying. Little hands wringing, little voices yelling, little feet running, yes it had been the moment of the summer. The moment they all realized, if unconsciously, that nothing lasts forever.

He heard the branch snap as he pulled himself onto the tractor. He was just going to move it out of the rain, the unexpected rain, he thought. He never watched the news. When he looked towards the branch he saw her walking, then stop and hang her head. He had always lived next door to them, and before that his father and her father, and before that their fathers. Generations of us, he thought, in this valley that we swear at each winter, huddled over the wood stove, sheets hanging over doorways to hold in the heat. Last winter he had spent three days by himself, reading when he could, boiling water for coffee, then soup, then tea. He realized why the early settlers rose so early�they had to go to bed early. Once it was dark there wasn�t much to do, and he only had candles. He saw light coming from their house, they too trapped in the main room, but with each other. His mother always told him he should marry. He thought of her when he jumped on the tractor, looked over at Kim under the tree, and then started the tractor.

The sound of the tractor was familiar to Wayne, but painful now as well. He was too old to get up on there, to farm his small land like he used to. He knew it was Terry, the girls had let the land go, given some to Terry and turned the small piece left into a vegetable and flower garden. They had sold the equipment years ago, wanting nothing to do with farming, sweating, caloused hands and little sleep. As much as he didn�t understand that, he loved those girls, and was glad to see that they appreciated the land enough to stay on it. At least they knew their history, didn�t throw that away, put it up for sale. He thought of their grandmother, of how much he had loved her, how hard he had tried to make her feel the same about him. She wouldn�t budge, told him that she only saved enough love after her husband died for her children and grandchildren, no one else. They had dinner though, two lonely people, hungry as well, and though he would want to stay the night he would say, thank you, thank you, thank you, and then he would leave.

She heard Terry start the tractor, and smiled. He was forever leaving it out, trying as hard as he could to be the farmer his father was, without the possibility of succeeding. She remembered her grandmother telling them that nobody could work the land like Howard could, the son of a real farmer and a man born with calloused hands. She looked down at her own hands, clean and soft, and remembered how her grandmothers hard, cracked palms, the smell of Bag Balm in the evening, of chicken being fried. Her grandmother had a drawer that was full of sugar. There were four drawers in the cabinet: silverware, Tupperware, sugar and then towels. They had loved that drawer, opening it, grainy on its tracks, and dipping their licked fingers into the top. Nothing had seemed more right than the feel and look of pounds of sugar, making perfect peaks and valleys�a sugar version of their own little valley. Her friends still joked about it�the sugar drawer and the valley. The commune, they called it, as they had their own street, with rickety little rental trailers that were always rented out. Her grandmother would take in the strays, the wet hitchhikers, the drunk men needing change, and put them up in the houses. When they too lived on the land, Kim�s mother would worry�are they rapists? Drunks? Murderers? Drug users? All of the above? Her grandmother would smile, open the back door and cry loudly to those who were hungry, and sure enough, within a months time they all ate together, all the family and the poor and the weak and the tired that became part of the land because of her. Things were more lonely now, she thought, walking away from the tree, from the dog, from that memory. Sometimes it was more than she could take, the sudden absence of so many people and things. Like the very heat their friction caused was gone too, and their absence left not just an empty space, but a moving empty space, where the air traveled in circles, looking for someone to cling to. The house had become eerie sometimes because of it, and as silly as it sounds, as much as she wouldn�t tell anyone else, sometimes she swore that when they died, they all chose to live there again, in the house with the sugar drawer.