“I want you to be safe,” he said.
And she, “I want you to be happy.”
She was sitting in the front seat with her hand on his and he was there looking at her. Jonathan was sitting there with…
He remembered this much: Ritko, tall and lean, Dexter’s on his feet, standing in the room’s center with his arms at his sides; Ritko, blond buzz cut and black rimmed glasses, standing in the silent room with its two desks and two beds, beer…
Helen answered the phone and listened. She nodded some and Jonathan watched her, knowing what it was. Or knowing something of it in the shape of her silent mouth.
“I am an old man afraid of dying,” he said finally. The two were driving—a onetime favorite thing—down corn-lined highways. A fall harvest was on and low light cut through the first rows of stalk before being swallowed within.
Streator. The row housing. The tracks. The glass plant rising out of the mud intersection, rising out of the massive earth plot with its steel and aluminum siding. The glass plant over the four routes of iron rails that were there, beyond…
“What will we be reading this time ‘round?” one asked.
“Are you happy to be back?” asked another.
“We’re glad your back safe,” a woman said.
The past is always with us. Time and distance, geography or changing landscapes cannot mute its influence. Or the past is with us so long as we do not keep moving, making each moment a world itself so that the collection is simply an album…
Streator, Illinois
It was late when he walked in. He put his bags on the stone tiles in the foyer and turned on a lamp. A stale, heavy air met him. Silence. The bulb cast a soft yellow glow over painted walls, hung…
“I want to go with you,” she said one morning.
Jonathan looked at her. Her eyes were closed where she lay and he saw her dark hair and her eyelashes and her dark brows and the line her lips made. He loved her…
