120 The Meadow through, a guy driving weary off late shift. Cops chewing time on the highway ridge wait for kids hauling grudges to dragstrip. Where streets decompose into wounded earth, a young couple can find some scratchy ground, their knees and spines not yet fearing a hard bed. Who knows how they talk? The stars, the night, what they’ll do when school is done? Get a ride and keep driving. He’ll tell her it’s cold, hang his jacket around her shoulders, so when he eases her down on the earth her sweater won’t smudge with tell-tale dust. They’ll never feel this way again. Something happens. He’s involved in border raids, testing resistance—doesn’t hear her say she saw something above in the sky. He gets more pacy, she says it again, clonks his arm for attention. A breeze comes, quickly fierce. She sees more than she should: hard, solid light—a sharp, gleaming completeness. He says it’s headlights. It’s not headlights. She gasps, distorts her face. He glances over his shoulder, eyes flushed white. Machinery whirs and gathers. I’m talking with the sheriff now, known him the whole of my life. Pulled me straight a few times as a kid, scared me with tales of guys crated off down the highway. He made me understand there’s nothing desirable to that. Now I’m a dad and he’s nearly retired—we’re both old hands in town. I’m scared and I’ve been crying. The sun’s only just up. This man and his awkward deputies in over-big coats, their one-size boots wadded with paper, will do what it takes. He’s a dad of grown children, he’s soothing: kids do stuff, in the hot push of moments. He sees it damn-on every year. You remember, he tells me, Burt Hibbert’s girl and that boy of Ted West’s, you remember. They didn’t go far. You remember, he says, Jane Martens, all that circus. He huddles his troops for instructions, glad at once to be talking man-talk away from my washy eyes. Next scene I step back in the house and see her piano, her music. A hairgrip on the discard shelf, a blonde twirl still in its
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