Summer at Dusk

It was the summer at Pearl’s ranch in the Oregon highlands—riding her bike under the blooming dogwood trees, parting mud-puddles like the red sea as dusk gathered in the background. It was Aunt Ginny’s home cooked dinners, her good natured scoldings each time she came in from the day covered in mud, hay, dust, and sometimes all combined. It was church clothes, garden rakes, the hardware store, and Uncle Tom’s truck. And it was the last time she remembered everything being alright. On that ranch, the worst that could happen was a skinned knee, the most unpleasant part was Uncle Tom’s knock on her door for pre-dawn chores. She didn’t know there were hurts you could get without breaking the skin. She didn’t know about the ones they gave you deep inside. The kind that a band-aid can never reach. The kind that just sit there and twist. She thought pills were for a headache, and didn’t know about therapists. Nobody told her life was a maze. A complicated prison. That summer, watching the neighbor boys bale hay on the upper pasture, she decided it was just like a fresh cut field. A thing she could run into with arms stretched wide open. And perched at it’s end, looking out the back window of Uncle Tom’s truck, Aunt Ginny waved from the porch, and she felt that if she merely lifted her hands, she would soar forward into the sky.

Distraction

Somebody told him the city was in flames. Matthew’s stark shadow stained the sidewalk behind him. The giant robots hurried by in ranks. They looked like walking orange towers, a parade of destruction winding from street to street. He stood at the mouth of an alley and gawked upward at each passing bulk. With monstrous steps each machine strained forward casting about a look of purpose he had only seen on television. Just then he broke away from the scene. He had to. Things needed to get done. He couldn’t just sit around all day and watch these monsters take the city apart. It was already 11:30 and he’d only had his coffee and paper. The laundry would have to go down to Wash Land. His bike tire needed that patch. Then he’d visit Kellso’s Roastary to pick out some beans--maybe a new grinder. He pushed nine on the lift, sighed, and let the doors close around him. The robots waited.