Love
my last and greatest companion
this heaviness will pass…
just a salt wind from the ocean
stale air before the storm
that seems can never break
will break

 

I thought once that the source of our creativity was the height of our joy — but then I found it difficult to write about joys without writing also of sorrows. I found it difficult to kiss without also feeling the tears, or dance without feeling the pull gravity somewhere in my heart. It slows, you know, the heart slows in its beating, as though it were in less and less of a hurry, has less somewhere to be, or less desire to be there. I found it difficult to smile without remembering…

 

"So you've met the neighbor girl, have you?"

"Well… yeah. I mean… she came over a couple of times."

"Nice girl, Sandy."

"Sandy? Oh yeah, that's her name"

 

Olaf lights a Lucky Strike and smiles. He is a member of the Sons of Norway, manages the grain co-op in town, with its elevator and bins, owns the laundromat. We spend most weekends this summer at their cabin in the Turtle Mountains, aptly-named wrinkles in the North Dakota prairie, their rust-brown cabin on Lake Metigoshe, half of whose waters belong to America, the other half to Canada. The cabin next door belongs to the McKutcheons of Minot, and this particular summer they have been spending a good deal of time at the lake. Last summer we scarcely came here.

 

I didn't just meet Sandy. She was an only child. There was a form of gravity, not downward but horizontal, trans-property, and while I perhaps would have passed an entire summer without meeting her – my own thoughts and excursions enough, the company of my Great Aunt and Uncle enough – she would not have passed the summer alone, not willingly, and simply appeared one day standing on the stump by our stair, like some delicate music-box fairy, looking at me as though a creature of the same cloth.

 

"Hi! I'm Sandy, we live next door. Do you like my new bathing suit?"

 

Sandy was eight years old, and I was eight years old. Can you kiss without remembering how delicate your senses then, how sweet the flowers of youth? I looked at her suit, the girl in her suit, then shy of giving too much attention looked away. I looked again, longer.

 

"That's pretty. My name's Mark."

 

From then on there were games in the McKutcheons' front room, tag on the lawn with at least some tickling, walks along the dirt road two blocks to the border, over the border to buy someone's Canadian taffy in the red plaid box. There were hours on the dock with our feet dangling into the water, tiny pan-fish dashing at our toes. There was falling in the water fully clothed to impress her. Her laughter was beautiful, so I accidentally fell in again.

 

There was a winning season for the Twins, the games heard over the radio. There was the fishing competition and a winning fish. There was Olaf's breathy laughter.

 

"So… looks like someone's got a girlfriend."

 

"Who? ME?"

 

A smile which showed no teeth, the mirrored flecks of his glasses as he turned toward, turned away, the soft laughter through his nostrils, piping out a gentle puff of Lucky Strike.

 

~

 

The next year – or was it two years later? – we left the Lake cabin at the end of the season, and made an important detour to Minot on the way home. I hadn't seen Sandy since that one summer; the McKutcheons had been busy, and could not make it out on weekends. Olaf and Hazel stopped at one store, buying nothing, another store. Then they mentioned we'd make a quick stop at the McKutcheon's place for a cup of coffee.

 

Sandy was there, of course, a few inches taller. She was there with a friend, and we sat at opposite ends of the screened porch. She talked to her friend; she asked a question; I gave an awkward answer. The girls giggled. I became quiet.

 

In the turn of a season, the sweet attention given and received, the opened flower, had folded its petals so that only its fragrance remained, or the memory of its fragrance, if I looked for it. The memory of a fragrance in tomorrow's kiss.

 

We returned the hour to Souris with little talk. I sat in the back, watching invisible currents of air make waves in the endless sea of grain, until the night overtook the colors, and the gentle rocking of the car and white hum of the tires washed me to sleep.