112 The Meadow All Water is Cold Water Mark Wagstaff My beard crackles in cold. You need a steady hand on the razor. Fortunately, beards are worn round here. They don’t excite comment. I go outside. A little clank of machinery, some agitation. Pick up the noise where the street’s quiet, the buzz in my head—some illness, long past, infected my concentration. I can’t read long-form anymore. Can’t focus on plot and involvement. I have to be shown. Blossom time—the street like a wedding aftermath, with the cars gone and grudges resealed for later. Neighbor kids on bikes ride the blossom to mulch, to clog the water catchments, pooling slick and milky. Walk into town—less conscious now of the shape I make, how I faded from stranger to tolerated guest. A spring chill—windows icy from recent polish. Beneath the blossom, roads are clean, sidewalks kindly to old folk, to women who push strollers with a modest flick to their hips. Reach the crown of the rise with main street all laid ahead— lining the valley, pushing up the far hill to its innate limit. Recognize stores from this distance, their signs understood without words. Fire trucks, stacked with sandbags, cruise around. The white temple at the heart of town: flat-looking now, but at night its neon arrests me—the movie house. In a small town—with a sprinkling of skill and good manners—most people have mostly enough to do. There’s favors, pick-up jobs, an old-fashioned looseness to how people earn and pay. The first settlers survived an unfortunate journey. I did no more than ride a slow bus. There’s families been here since the start, whose forefathers died of the blight and wouldn’t live anyplace different. It’s not a landscape for people unnerved by practical action. Most everyone’s working. Not old boys in the diner, not kids
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