Winter ~
All is sheathed in clear ice, parked cars encased, trees burdened and crackling, steps and walkways rink-slick. The road is rutted and ridged where slush, piled into keen-edged mountain ranges by passing tires, has frozen in place. The heavy plows now come and raze the frozen tracks with a fearsome chattering, and the roads are tumbled with shards of sandy gray. Toward sunset, patches of blue show through the clouds. Shadows dart like hounds in front of the cars and trucks on the slopes of the road.
Spring ~
Three men stand around the open hood of a big new sedan in a driveway; old men in their light blue windbreakers, their golf caps, their thin pants flapping in the breeze. All lean on the car, looking in, talking. No rush at all. From the other way an El Camino, relic of kick-your-ass bad, rolls past, rusted bed sprouting tools and two-by-fours and bobbing plastic pipe; penetrated, as it were, by these things and looking as pained and patient as Saint Sebastian, shot full of arrows. There’s redemption, parked by the flower stand.
Summer ~
Gretchen comes around the curve in a battered blue MG, eastbound. The top is down and she’s low in the seat, leaning. There’s a sound of high revs, compressing higher. She straightens out of the curve and the car vacuums new leaves on the low trees lining the bend inside out from dark green to light. In one instant a wide maroon headband sunglasses pursed lips. She shoots her left arm straight up, cocks it in a half-salute, and is gone, redlined, as the sound decompresses in her wake.
Fall ~
Maples overhang the yard of the widow whose husband drove the water truck. Now she tends the grass that slopes down under their trees to the road. Always in the yard, she’s on the riding mower at a perilous tilt, or in her robe picking up twigs, pulling a big orange trash can behind her, or dragging branches after sunset. She rakes the leaves every day, rain or shine, even if only a few leaves have fallen. She rakes the whole yard every day, unhurried, meticulous, thoughtful, smiling, as if brushing someone’s hair.
~~~~~~~~~~
Douglas Logan
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