The sky, a passionate blue that only revealed itself on the most meaningful of August days, was partially overhung with hungry, spinning clouds of cornfield-golden dust. Mouse observed the lifeless marching of row on row of empty corn stalks, each diligently erect and immobile behind the others, held in place by a shallow grave of dry earth. The black Ford Tacoma was being steadily buried by a thin film of grime that had risen in clouds from under its wheels; Mouse absently wiped clean the darkening lip of the bottle and reclined farther on the hood of the truck, letting the fresh heat of the engine penetrate her thin shirt. It stung with late summer vengeance.
Mark spoke.
\"There\'re four things in this life. Four things.\"
His voice resonated inside the barrel cavity of his chest, which had earlier collapsed next to Mouse\'s on the truck, over the furnace of the engine. She watched as his back straightened almost imperceptibly, his shoulders falling back and face chiseling its marble mask of gravity from the smooth placidity present only a moment earlier. His left hand firmly grasped a Virgil\'s root beer.
\"You\'re going to have to find all of them for yourself.\"
The Ss became SHs under the slurring weight of his Western Massachusetts gravel drawl. His right hand, swollen with sinew, rested dangerously close to Mouse\'s, who absently withdrew but remained listening intently. From the way his voice and posture had flexed in the course of a few seconds, she could sense the onset of a sermonic exhortation, and lay flat out, eyes shut to receive it.
\"Happiness is not peace.\"
She wondered at his choice of words and sipped her lukewarm birch beer. He had obviously thought a great deal about them—she could picture him in dirt-encrusted jeans and sweat-encrusted shirt, maneuvering the tractor or seated next to the warm, dense cows, thinking of something presumptuously philosophical and prophetic.
\"Peace is not contentment.\"
An even longer silence followed. She observed the motes of dust, still swimming, and began to feel a slow shriveled pain along her arm as it rested on the oven of the hood. She lifted it gingerly, massaging the quarter-sized bruises of last night, and wondering if his type of peace was more global, or more internal, and why had he stopped talking, and maybe she should go now. She didn\'t like the feeling of his arm so close to hers, and of the connotations that proximity held.
\"Contentment is not love.\"
Shifting slightly to face him, though her eyes were still shut, Mouse took more weight off her shoulder. The throbbing had dulled, but it hurt to lie in any one position too long. Like him, she was now restless, constantly moving off one shoulder or another, this leg or the other, never settling on one. She thought of him migrating from one hay bale to the next, as they\'d done that afternoon, hefting its dry bulk and lobbing it effortlessly to the truck bed before targeting another. Bale to bale, day to day, he wandered within the boundaries of the barbed wire fences and watched clouds.
\"Love is not happiness.\"
He laid his hand unexpectedly on her arm, the fingers fitting the bruises like grooves in a handle, and her eyes sparked open with the sudden pain. She saw a rare but genuine smile on his face as he watched her features, affection emanating from his muddy brown gaze. The clouds of dust spun with maddening celerity, his four fingers anchoring her down. Looking at him, she felt habitually alive, as if she breathed and existed solely underneath a set of steadied and repetitive rhythms; together they allowed the truck, the drinks, and themselves to be lined inside and out in a dust that would not longer stay rooted. She felt a sudden impulse to pull free from his arm and to run unrestrained into the storm of dirt; she wanted to hide singularly within its warm buffers, letting her limbs be pushed in all directions at once, allowing each particle of sand to make its presence known softly along her skin. The spontaneity of it lured her effortlessly, fervently.
Relenting, she slid off the hood, leaving a long tear in the skin of sand and gently prying her arm from his grasp. She leaned against the fender and took a long drink of dust and birch beer. Time was passing without record—she longed to plant herself among the comfort of clocks and logic, but the daunting prospect of a decision challenged her still.
Mark turned and gazed out into the military stalks of corn and shallow, whirling grime. She could tell his thoughts ran deep, and debated whether or not to draw his focus from the inner psychological conflict. He took a hit off the Virgil’s, wiped his mouth with his fist, and spoke:
“You gotta find all them on your own. No one can do it for you.”
Mouse considered a number of witty comments that would tie his last one to her need to leave, but ultimately rejected all of them as being out of tune with the conversation. Minutes trudged slowly along, Mark staring with vacant intent down the corridors of corn.
Disregarding convention, she pushed herself from the front of the truck and began to walk. He would understand—she could see him tonight and explain the sudden departure, but the slowing particles that now merely meandered across the August sunlight had drawn her aimless focus. A few more steps forward—the wind seemed to cushion her as it grew, turning battered limbs into fantastic wing-like appendages. She could feel them fluttering against the gusts when clouds of rebellious dirt entered her throat, causing her to double over coughing, wings folding momentarily to her sides. Red burning crept from the throat to the lungs, but she flew into the hungry cornfield-golden clouds with no intention of stopping. The burning became an inferno, threatening at any second to consume her entirely in the coughing red pain—a small sacrifice for the wonder of the dust-flight.
A bestially large hand grasped her waist with primitive force, pressing even harder on the largest of the contusions. A momentary thrill of memory made her want to tear from his grasp. She was still.
“I—I’m always here,” Mark said stumblingly, searching for words that would make her stay as a few stray coughs tumbled from her mouth.
“I know that. So am I,” she replied, studying the mist of filth that now lay lifeless at their feet. Rapidly she turned. Momentary wind buffeted a final pathetic wisp of dust toward the rows of cornstalk headstones blocking her view of the sky; it died sprawling across the first of the endless grave-like mounds that marched as sentinels across the field. She marched back to the truck, her thumb blindly operating the mechanics of the door handle, and stepped into the cabin. The film of grime on the windows completely obscured the sunlight except in small bruised patches on her lap, which she stroked lightly and absently as the truck pulled away.