THE WAILING IN HIS EARS WHEN HE CAME AWAKE WAS LIKE A forest of cicadas. The grass in the field he was lying in was tall and brown and wet. Fielding opened his eyes. The sky was gray. Night had turned to day. Fog had settled to the ground as if rooted there and it was thick and cold. Fielding tried to sit up but he couldn’t. It took him several attempts. His blood was a brilliant red against the grass. He touched his face and winced at the pain. His ribs felt broken. He could hardly lift an arm. When he finally stood up and looked around he didn’t recognize anything. Nothing but tall grass and fog. Not a tree, not a single distinguishing trait with which to get his bearings.
A small wind was blowing and the grass bent softly and the fog tumbled in the wind over the grass. He staggered forward as if drunk. And as if drunk held out a hand to brace himself but finding nothing he fell to the ground. The wailing in his ears did not relent. He blinked against the grass. His breath rolled over the ground like steam from a train. And when he could no longer keep them open he closed his eyes and the world closed out.
He began to dream and in this dream:
He was holding Sara’s hand and they were walking on a path near the river back in Iowa. It was early summer and the flowers were out and the birds were calling in the trees and it was warm and the air was redolent. He looked down at their hands laced together and they weren’t the hands of the old but the young. Her face too was young and her dark hair was piled atop her head and her neck was long and bare and the little hairs at the nape curled in ringlets from the humidity. He turned her hand up to better see it and looking at the wedding band, he said,
How long we been married now?
Forever, she said.
Yes, but when? When did we actually get married?
I don’t know, she said. We’ve always been this way.
But there must’ve been a date? A day the weddin took place?
If there was I don’t remember it. I think we were just born this way.
Yeh afraid of anythin?
No.
Nothin?
Nothing.
Are yeh afraid of dyin?
Are you asking if when I died I was afraid?
Yes. I guess that’s what I’m askin.
No, she said. But that hasn’t even happened.
What hasn’t happened?
Me dying.
Yes it has. I was there. I was there with yeh.
I know you were.
So if yeh knew I was there and yeh didn’t die and yeh aren’t dead, where have yeh been? Why have yeh left me alone for so long?
Here, she said. I’ve been here. Waiting for you.
Why ain’t yeh come to see me?
I see you all the time.
I wish yeh’d let me see yeh.
That’s not up to me.
Who’s it up to then?
She shrugged her shoulders. She kicked a pebble down the path.
I miss yeh, he said. I don’t think I can do it anymore.
Then don’t, she said.
Is it that easy?
Yes, she said. It’s that easy.
What do I do?
You just stop.
Stop?
You just cease everything. You stop moving. Stop thinking. You just stop.
That seems easy enough.
It is.
I don’t know if I could stop thinkin. Maybe not yet.
I know.
So why yeh tellin me this?
Because it seemed like something you needed an answer to.
That doesn’t answer anythin though.
It will.
When?
In time it will, she said. You just have to be patient.