The Sand Hill Review http://www.sandhillreview.org 2004

Deborah Marshall

Shades of Utah

A tinkle of bells warned him of the approaching intrusion.

“Nathan? Nathan Raster? Is that you?”

Jeremy sighed and looked up from his highlighter-strewn text, Intermediate Geographic Information Systems. He marked a sentence about contiguity, adjusted his reading glasses, and tried to smile as he placed the book away under the counter of Uke’s Deli.

“No, it’s Jeremy, Mrs. Hock.”

From across the bright floor tiles, Moab’s most infamous widow hobbled toward Jeremy, clutching her cane. She hummed some song from the 60s, probably the Beatles, off-tune as always. He remembered, without laughing, the time she had come into the store muttering “I Fought the Law.” Although her tunes were difficult to distinguish from one another to the untrained listener, Jeremy knew from past experience that whatever song was playing on the town’s golden oldies station would inevitably be the one coming from her lips. Mrs. Hock claimed that listening to “young folk’s” music kept her young. Nathan couldn’t imagine her being any younger than ancient, which she had seemed since he was a toddler hanging on his mother’s legs at the grocery store.

Jeremy fidgeted as she scrutinized him, her milky eyes assessing him from head to foot. He brushed a strand of hair away from his too high forehead, conscious of his long hair, which many people in his hometown might not approve of. Girls have long hair in Moab. Boys get crew cuts.

Apparently satisfied with her examination, Mrs. Hock grinned, showing off her crooked false teeth, the canines off-center. “So, what Ima said is true. Tom Raster’s youngest is back at Uke’s deli.”

“Only for the weekend. Nathan’s coming into town today for Grandma’s 80th.” Jeremy shifted and stared at the clock behind her head. Still two hours until his dad took over for him. Not soon enough.

“How nice of him to visit your parents,” Mrs. Hock nodded. “A pound of bacon.” She pointed at the cheapest brand, and Jeremy set to work. Greasy meat slipped and spilled onto his already pink apron, staining his hands.

“So how you likin’ college, boy?” Mrs. Hock rubbed her own hands on her bright red polyester pants, as if they too were stained with gristle. “Studying hard?”

“Business is a tough major, but I’m getting by,” Jeremy said.

Mrs. Hock leaned forward, her eyes hovering above the rim of her glasses. “Heard it’s a dangerous place, Tucson.”

“It’s okay,” Jeremy frowned as he accidentally let a piece of white grime fall to the floor. “You just have to stay away from the bad part of town.”

“Oh, I don’t mean the crime rate. Graces, everywhere’s got crime. Just look at Columbine. My grandniece graduated from there just before those awful hooligans . . . Kids shooting each other in class, Lord have mercy.”

Jeremy wondered if Mrs. Hock so much as blinked behind those Mason jar glasses. “So what kind of dangerous do you mean, Mrs. Hock?” He swaddled the bacon in white paper.

“Don’t wrap it so tight,” Mrs. Hock said. “Oh, dangers abound, young man. People from these parts are good and God-fearing, but sometimes they go off to big cities and get some mighty strange ideas.”

As Mrs. Hock fumbled for change in her purse, Jeremy stared at her threadbare blouse, wishing it were thicker and didn’t show the moles around her bra. Her thin clothes were so unlike that Muslim girl’s, the one who had sat next to him in Macroeconomics the previous semester. His mind jumped back to Arizona, back to the campus, back to the classroom, where the Muslim girl had taken an economics final with him, bundled up tightly in black robes that cascaded in concentric ripples down to the spotless McClelland Hall floor. He remembered wondering a lot about her at the time, in between glances at note cards and his vague recollection of past Keynesian lectures. Perform a cost-benefit analysis. How could she breathe in that? An example: Do not wear dark clothes in the hot Arizona summertime because your suffering will outweigh an outdated religion. Or maybe you should choose machine A over machine B due to productivity rates. What is a sunk cost? How could she stand being kept from sight like something obscene, something horrible? Use an example to illustrate a case where supply is greater than demand. God’s vast love, but not enough people to love Him back. Or the amount of obsolete 32 MHz computers still stored in the backrooms of IBM. Define a cognitive bias.

How would she be treated in Moab?

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Hock,” Jeremy said. “Still go to church every Sunday. Go to the Thursday socials of the Campus Christian Living Community, too, when I can.”

“Good for you, boy, stay in the good graces of the Lord.” Mrs. Hock nodded as she snatched her meat from the counter. “Remember Emil Davis’s granddaughter? Heard she had a child out of wedlock. Can’t have none of that.”

“I guess not.” Jeremy punched in the price.

After Mrs. Hock received her bacon, she stumbled off, the chimes of the door ringing furiously as she tried to push when the sign clearly said, “Pull.” Jeremy snickered until she finally figured it out, but Mrs. Hock didn’t hear him. She was back to humming again.

Jeremy swayed to the ticking of the clock as he pulled his textbook out from its hiding place under the countertop. The book cracked open with a dull thud between his hands. “A viewshed,” he read, “refers to areas of the land surface that are visible from an observation point. The output of viewshed analysis is a binary map: visible and invisible areas. Visible areas are generally black with invisible areas displayed in white.”

Jeremy stretched and laid his head on his book, too bored even to read further. With his head tilted slightly upward, he could see out the window and into the sky, rows and rows of bench-shaped clouds leading off into the distance. He wondered briefly if God could see everything up there from His observation point, if His binary map was all black visibility and no white spaces.

At noon, when all the shops on Center Street closed for lunch, Jeremy drove back home in his dust spattered Toyota along Highway 191, letting the familiarity of home sink back into him. The post office, the rock museum, all still standing, nothing out of place. After being away for most of a year, he was happy to note that the town had not changed. Home was still home. Moab felt like God himself had plotted it out carefully on one of His six days of Creation. Every reddish rock of the Utah arches had been dreamed into existence, constructed and laid out according to some divine plan. The birds sang on cue every morning, spring to fall, chirping out like choirs of angels among the mostly barren desert. In unexpected places, water sprang from the earth, not enough for a major city, but enough for 5,000 citizens to continue living the way their forefathers had lived before them. Salt Lake City, so far away, was nothing but flashing images on the evening news. This was God’s country, a mystery, a mystery of the desert and of the heavens that eventually resulted in Jeremy’s geology minor at the University of Arizona despite his father’s misgivings.

Jeremy took a sharp left onto his county road. In the distance, perhaps still a mile away, his family’s house stood at the edge of the landscape, a white block against variations of red and orange. Jeremy was reminded of a Georgia O’Keefe painting he had seen on an Art Appreciation field trip his first semester. A blended, strangely surreal mix of the desert with his house used as scale at the lower right hand corner. When he turned into the driveway, though, details of features came into view: A few scraggly trees presiding over a half dozen strands of grass, dutifully labeled “The Lawn.” A rusty swing set, creaking in an early spring breeze. The garage door, open and dark like the entrance of a cave, because his father was repainting the shelves inside. A dash of Christmas lights in the eaves of the roof of which his parents refused to take down for fear they would not be able to get them back up there again. And of course his brother’s black ’64 – or was it ’63? – fully restored T-Bird dominating the driveway. All this, set against the dusty desert sky.

As Jeremy’s car came up the lane toward the house, he saw Nathan wave from the porch, newspaper in hand and dressed in business attire. Only suit and tie for electrical engineers at Safe Co. Jeremy saw an older version of himself – slightly pudgy, but with the same square, long body, the same particleboard-colored hair that always seemed frizzed, the same crooked nose, and the same roadrunner stride – come to the driver’s side as Jeremy pulled behind his mother’s sedan.

“Hey, Jeremy.” Nathan practically yanked his younger brother from the car in an effort to give him his trademark hug. “Been a while. Great to see you.”

Jeremy patted Nathan on the back. “Glad you could make it. Everyone’s been looking forward to see you again, especially since you missed Christmas. Mom said you had designs due next month that you couldn’t get away from.”

“’Mom said this . . . Mom said that . . . ,” Nathan said in a high-pitched voice. “C’mon, Jere, you know Mom’s always complaining that we never come home. She keeps telling me that you’re going to get a part time job in Tucson and live with your buds this summer. She thinks everyone’s abandoning her.”

Hobbes, their family tabby, hesitantly crept up beside Nathan and rubbed against his legs. She circled him for a while with intermittent meows and purrs, her way of asking for affection. When that didn’t work, she moved on to Jeremy. Jeremy reached down and gave her a tap on the head.

“You can’t blame her.” Jeremy said. “House must be pretty quiet now.”

“Yeah, no more fire alarms at three in the morning,” Nathan said.

Jeremy reddened. “It was an accident.”

“Don’t get so defensive.”

“I forgot to pull out the plug.”

“Hey, I’m not here to argue with you anyway.” Nathan waved Moab’s Times-Independent like a flag in Jeremy’s face. “Do you have any plans tonight?”

Jeremy grinned. “No. Arches, right? You want to go hiking . . . ”

“Nah, we can do that tomorrow. Look.” Nathan tore the paper open and pointed towards a square little plot of newsprint, silhouetted by thick black lines. “The annual car show. What luck! I came home just in time.”

Jeremy purposely ignored the advertisement and instead focused on an article entitled “Local Graduate gets Senator Internship” on the opposite page. “Hey, isn’t that Emil Davis’s granddaughter?” he asked.

“Oh yeah.” Nathan stiffened, scrutinizing the blurred, ash-colored face next to the article. “Who cares?”

“Mrs. Hock was talking about her today,” Jeremy said. “She’s a single mom.”

“What?”

Jeremy flinched at the surprise in Nathan’s voice. “That’s what Mrs. Hock said today at the deli. But I guess, how would I know? I don’t know the girl personally or anything.”

“Sure you do, Jere.” Nathan stared very hard at that picture. “Melissa Davis. I dated her during my senior year.”

“You mean that Melissa?” Jeremy asked. An image formed in his brain, bits and flashes of a short, stocky girl, sitting on the couch next to Nathan with popcorn-greased hands. Melissa and Nathan making out, their hands and legs intertwined on the back seat of his mother’s sedan after the prom. Melissa smiling as she rang the doorbell, a Nintendo cartridge in her hands. Even before Nathan and she went out, he remembered her volleyball days, executing a perfect spike during one of the many nights he ran the church’s corn-on-the-cob stand.

“Man, she gained some weight.” Nathan snorted. “Probably the pregnancy.”

“Are you sure she’s the right Davis?” Jeremy asked.

“Emil only has one granddaughter.”

“It’s kind of cool, don’t you think,” Jeremy said, thinking of how many tests he had to study for. “She’s going to college, raising a child, and getting an internship this summer. It must be hard.”

“Being an unwed mother is never a cool thing,” Nathan said. “But I guess that’s just the kind of girl she was. Too smart for her own good.”

Jeremy frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“She was an odd one.” Nathan folded the paper and tapped it in his right palm. “She won her state debate trophy by arguing for a woman’s right to get an abortion. Not quite right.”

“Obviously she didn’t believe in it, or she wouldn’t have a kid right now.”

“Whatever.” Nathan tossed the newspaper onto the deck lawn table.

“Hey, I thought you liked her because she was smart. You guys used to play Jeopardy all the time. It was a mental contest or something, and you two seemed to love it.”

“I was younger then, and didn’t know what I wanted,” Nathan said, straightening. “But now I do. Maybe you don’t understand because you haven’t dated enough, but one day you’ll find out that girls like Melissa just aren’t the kind you marry.”

“But she was so nice,” Jeremy tried to keep his face from turning red. “She used to have these cool classic car pins stuck to her backpack. She gave me a ’72 Corvette one once when we were both waiting to talk to the guidance counselor.”

“Which reminds me, the car show . . . ”

Jeremy sighed, thinking to let the argument end on a neutral statement. “Bad things just happen to nice people, I guess.”

Without warning, Nathan stomped his foot onto the ground, and Hobbes flew like a spring-loaded toy toward the crab apple tree. “As I was saying, the car show’s in town today. We,” he nudged Jeremy, “should get going if we want to see everything before it closes. I just need a change of clothes.”

Jeremy watched his brother walk inside the dark front hallway, the kitchen a beacon of light at the end of the tunnel, where the whirl of a mixer told him his mother was baking. Turning toward the crab apple tree, he tried to coax Hobbes out from the hole near its base, but she simply spat and swiped her claws at him.

Outside, the world flew by like it only does inside of a T-Bird going well above the speed limit. Scraggly trees came closer, closer, only to whiz past the window when Jeremy tried to focus in on them. As a child, Jeremy used to try to capture mental snapshots of a solitary weed or blade of grass on the side of the road, but he could never quite hold it stationary. They were always moving on him, changing. He eventually grew out of that habit, although every once in a while, when he was a passenger such as now going to the Moab’s April Action Car Show, he still tried to catch that single blade stark against the Utah desert.

“She was a slut.”

“What?” Jeremy jerked his hands from under his chin, the current song on the radio dying on his lips. When Nathan did not repeat himself, Jeremy slapped him on the shoulder. “What did you say?”

“That girl. Melissa.” Nathan checked the speedometer between his thumbs. “She was a slut.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Jeremy asked, turning the dial on the dashboard. The music stopped.

“I was just thinking about our conversation earlier.” Nathan’s right arm jerked to the left. Jeremy flinched as they passed a bicycler with inches to spare. “And I know I was acting a little strange, so I wanted you to know why. She’s a slut.”

Jeremy scrutinized the stiff lines across his brother’s brows. He had seen that face on him before, when his mother had found dirty magazines under his bed in the eighth grade. “Did she cheat on you or something?” Jeremy asked.

“Not in the classic sense, but she wasn’t a virgin, that’s for sure.”

That previous flash of Melissa and Nathan making out once again crossed Jeremy’s mind. He had seen them, outlined by the porch light below his bedroom window, Nathan without his shirt and Melissa’s breasts peeking from beneath her crumpled bra. “Not everyone waits for just one person nowadays,” Jeremy said.

“I’m telling you, she was a whore, through and through.” Nathan turned his head away from the road to frown at his younger brother. Jeremy panicked and pointed back to the road, where a rabbit, gray and dust spattered, had leapt onto the shoulder. Nathan jerked the car once more, causing Jeremy’s head to smack into the window.

“Hey.” Jeremy turned around in the car seat, looking for the frozen form among the dust billowing towards the sky. “You almost hit it.”

“You need to accept something, Jeremy,” Nathan said. “A woman is supposed to wait for her husband. That’s what we were always taught by Minister Claybourne. And when I found out that she, that bitch, had slept with someone else before . . . ” He trailed off.

The car fell into silence until Nathan reached forward and flipped the radio back on. Before long, the local drive-home radio program came on, broadcasting through the station that had once played contemporary pop, but now only played “soft rock.” Jeremy pressed his face against the cool glass of the window and stared at the whirling blades of grass, shades of white sunlight and black shadows underneath a cloudless sky.

Nearly dusk, and Jeremy had seen everything Moab’s car show could offer. From cars that were featured in silent movies to cars that his dad drove when he was in high school, Nathan drooled over every chrome body and limited edition model. Jeremy silently followed his brother, having long since grown bored of naming all the different rock types he could identify in the road that separated the two lots of endlessly parked cars. The more his brother bounced from antique car to buffed motorcycle, the more Jeremy thought about his fifth grade Sunday School social, and the family three-legged race competition in which he and Nathan had scored dead last. Instead of going arm-in-arm, like the Darbys, who ended up winning, Nathan had simply broke out into a run, leaving Jeremy half-galloping, half-skipping to keep up.

“The only other American car worth buying, Jere, look at her,” Nathan said, dragging Jeremy to what he was sure cliché car men called a perfect “cherry red” low rider.

As Nathan bent over the convertible to get a closer look, Jeremy found himself, as usual, watching other things, the clouds in the sky, the west lot on the other side of the road, and the people milling around the cars. There were very few gawkers left now, mostly die-hard enthusiasts. Of the people left in the large lots, Jeremy could only identify a distinct few. He recognized Jason Stile’s baggy jeans and gold chain that stretched from his pocket to his belt buckle. Jason, who had graduated with him and always used to brag about the number of cars he could repair, leaned over a Cadillac with large fins, shaking his head. In another corner of the lot, Jeremy identified a group of six men – preparing to drive away a half dozen classic vehicles – as Mr. Lucas, his two brothers, and three sons. Mr. Lucas, who owned the Red Mountain Sport Shack next to the library, always brought out his classic cars to display every year. The rest of the crowd, although unidentifiable, seemed familiar; Jeremy had encountered them around town countless times before.

Jeremy’s eyes eventually rested on a little girl about fifty yards away, a Weeble at this distance, with a cone-shaped upper dress that forced her fat training diapers out the bottom. She tugged furiously on her mother’s hand, jumping up and down on her heels. Her mother occasionally spoke to her as she inspected a Ford Mustang.

“Even the hubs on this one are nice,” Nathan said, still transfixed on the red convertible. “This guy must have spent a fortune remodeling it.”

Jeremy barely listened, still watching the little girl. Having grown bored of trying to get her mother’s attention, the little girl moved away, more toward the road. She found a patch of flowery weeds and meticulously began picking off the petals, blowing them into the air, and crying in delight when one happened to take flight.

“Don’t like the ’69 model much though. The ‘74s are better looking. The rear window is totally vertical.”

An engine roared in the distance, catching the girl’s attention. She watched in fascination as a slightly rusty Model T sputtered past, an ancient tractor following close behind. Leaning forward, she waved at the drivers as they lurched toward the highway. The drivers waved back and she clapped in delight.

“No, but not quite as nice as the ’77 in the other lot. Looks like Mr. Lucas’s taking it home.”

The girl giggled as dust curled behind the cars and speckled her arms with iron oxide. She collected the rocks that were thrown near her tiny shoes and awkwardly threw them into the road, playing a game that existed only in her mind. Drivers honked as they past her, probably amused by her child-like play. Encouraged by the smiles of passing drivers, she stretched her arms out toward those cars, toward the dirt, threw her head back and laughed. Jeremy noticed she was running too close to the cars as they swept by her. One pick-up even swerved to avoid her. Jeremy glanced nervously back at the mother, but she was now talking to Jason Stile, laughing about something Jeremy could not hear.

“Hey, Nathan,” Jeremy poked his brother’s side. “Don’t you think that . . . ”

“It has nice handling, really revs up into 60 miles per hour like nothing. Here it comes. It’s about to fly.”

The girl fell forward onto her hands and knees, halfway into the road, as a 1950 Studebaker rumbled by. She screamed – part in terror, part in glee – as the wind from the car roared past her, inches away from her face.

“Watch that Corvette go!” Nathan yelled.

Jeremy took a step forward. “Get out of the way!” he yelled at the girl, but she was too busy trying to stand on her wobbly feet to listen.

Jeremy screamed again and this time both the little girl’s mother and Jason jerked their heads to see what was going on. Jason gave him the victory sign in greeting, but the mother glanced past him at Nathan, the smile fading from her face.

Melissa Davis.

Jeremy froze momentarily, until the sound of the accelerating car broke his surprise. “Car!” he screamed at the two of them, pointing toward the road.

Melissa jerked her head and saw her little girl only yards away from both her and the speeding Corvette. She dove.

The car had only just started to brake. The sunlight hit the metal of the vehicle, blinding Jeremy. He blinked, closed his eyes for only a second. There was a loud thumping noise, the sound meat makes when it hits the counter. When his eyes reopened Melissa was on the ground, unmoving, her arms clenched together in front her as if in prayer. The child, who lay safely on the grass some distance away, slowly raised her head from the ground. She saw her mother and opened her mouth, but no words, no sound issued forth.

Jeremy ran, arms and feet flailing. He almost tripped over himself several times. In seconds, he stood directly in front of the crying toddler. She howled, a screech so piercing that Jeremy covered one ear with his hand even as he tried to scoop her up with the other. She flinched when Jeremy accidentally brushed her scraped knees, and her wailing became even more deafening. After a few moments of struggling, Jeremy straightened with her in his arms, glancing toward the Corvette as the driver’s side slowly opened. He heard Nathan come up behind him, whisper in his ears, “What the hell happened?”

Jeremy shook his head. Melissa’s arm was just visible from his perspective, from the little girl’s perspective. Jeremy’s entire body shook in resonation with her wailing. He shoved the girl’s face into his T-shirt. Snot got on his arms.

Mr. Lucas got out of his Corvette slowly, his eyes as large as the flying saucers he made at the annual fair. He yelled for paramedics. People all over the lot converged toward the car and the still body beside it, their voices rising as they crowded around in a perfect circle. The little girl, whose view of her mother’s body became obstructed, tried to break Jeremy’s hold. Jeremy put a tighter grip on her and decided to move her from the scene. He took a few steps away from the accident.

Nathan followed. “Jeremy.” Nathan grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him a little. “What’s going on?”

“Melissa Davis,” Jeremy whispered.

“Don’t. You’ve got to be. Don’t kid me, Jeremy.” Nathan was trembling now, his fingers cold on Jeremy’s neck.

“Melissa. Davis.”

Nathan dropped his hands and glanced at the little girl. For a moment, the girl glanced up at his brother, her eyes glimmering, and Jeremy saw his brother reflected in her tear-rimmed eyes. Nathan flinched and when he took a step back, Jeremy brushed past him and moved her toward the tractor display, where the crowd’s panicked tone would soften into a dull murmur. Nathan stared at the sobbing toddler as they passed, but did not pursue them further.

Emergency services came twenty minutes later, their lights flashing red and blue, red and blue into the dusk light, casting gyrating shadows over the classic cars. The crowd widened to let the EMTs through to the body. Jeremy heard the sound of heavy thudding and numbers being called out like a marching band. George Wendell, EMT and owner of Ace Hardware, approached a dazed Mr. Lucas.

“Mommy,” the girl sniveled, grabbing Jeremy’s attention. A splash of drool slipped down Jeremy’s pants.

“They’re taking care of her,” Jeremy whispered, his hands awkward as he patted her on the back. He looked up and found George heading for them, his flashlight shining in their eyes.

George motioned Jeremy forward, and he complied. “Is this the little girl?” he asked.

Jeremy focused on the wart on George’s left cheek. “Yeah.”

George extended his arms and Jeremy placed the hiccupping little girl there.

“You’ll need to stick around for a statement,” George said, and then went back toward the accident scene.

Within minutes, Jeremy saw Melissa whisked into the interior of the ambulance, her heavily bandaged body outlined in bright light. George placed the little girl in the cab next to him, and the ambulance rumbled to life. When the ambulance’s back doors shut, the crowd stepped back, and the vehicle sped off toward Moab, back into the desert, a white box growing smaller and smaller as it faded into the distance.

Once Jeremy could no longer hear the sirens, Nathan approached him. His brother kept fidgeting, throwing his car keys in the air and catching them mid-fall. He dropped them once on the ground before he asked, “Ready to go home?”

Jeremy shook his head. “George said I needed to give a statement.”

“Well, I need to go home.” Nathan fished into his khaki pants’ pockets and threw his cell phone at Jeremy. “Give Mom a call when you’re finished. I’m sure she’ll give you a ride back.”

Jeremy watched Nathan’s T-Bird speed off into the desert in the same direction as the ambulance, kicking up dust. The T-Bird passed the cops coming late on the scene. Jeremy wondered if the cops would catch him breaking the speed limit, or if he would get away with it like he usually did.

“Thanks for keeping open for me.”

Jeremy slid the key into Uke’s Deli with a final click. “No problem, Mrs. Hock.”

Mrs. Hock held up the plastic sack containing turkey lunchmeat like a trophy. “I really needed this for tomorrow’s summer’s end picnic. I bought lots of ham last year, but do the little ones like ham?”

“I guess not,” Jeremy said.

Mrs. Hock adjusted the bra-strap beneath her blouse. “You’re going on back to college, right? You remember what I said earlier, Nathan. You stay out of trouble and don’t worry your mom any.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jeremy called to Mrs. Hock’s retreating form as she started the long hobble toward her Buick Regal, parked crookedly in its tiny spot. Jeremy waited until she bumped into a cracked fire hydrant and opened the car door safely before he turned to his own vehicle.

His mind wandered as he got into the Toyota, hands gripped securely on the fuzzy steering wheel cover. The key turned in the ignition, and he drove over familiar roads, past houses of friends tucked in-between small shops that also used to be houses. He thought about the summer days spent at the deli counter as he took a left at the tourist bureau. His friends would be glad to see him, come fall. A small calendar advertising oil changes sat on his dashboard, the days crossed out by tight little Xs. Outside, city gave way to country. He glanced over at the mountains in the distance as he headed toward the edge of town, marked by winding residential streets, near Highway 191. He didn’t fight the urge to pull off the highway and drive toward Old City Park, which had been his habit all summer.

He had to drive past the Spanish Valley Road intersection. Jeremy held his breath as he viewed the sign indicating the cemetery down the street. He released it once he could no longer feel the presence of small headstones peeking up at him from a distance.

Trees blocked the setting sun at Old City Park, minimizing the glare on the windshield, and Jeremy did not have to shade his eyes as he got out of the car. He wandered past the toddlers and mothers at the jungle gym. He smiled awkwardly as a young girl ran up to him, knees grass-stained, and handed him a bunch of dandelions. He clenched them in his fist as her mother, hair-askew, apologized for her daughter.

Jeremy retreated to a quiet corner near a grove of trees on the opposite side of the baseball diamond. There, he sat and draped his arm on top of a large stone memorializing the park. After baking under the sun all day it was warm to the touch. He squeezed the bright yellow weeds in his fist and felt the sticky stain on his fingers. Everything around him was bathed in the muted orange of twilight. Soon it would be dark, and when he drove back, he would need to put on his headlights in order to see the road home. Across the park, he could see the highway road signs in the fading dusk light, one pointing towards 19 – towards the desert and beyond to Arizona – and the other towards Moab. Both signposts leaned crookedly in their posts like the stalks of autumn sunflowers.

Moab. Without a doubt there would still be a few parishioners singing late Saturday night hymns, readying themselves for Bible Study. He could be there, sampling the slightly tart Kool-aid and crumb cake made last night by Mrs. Hock, sitting beside Minister Claybourne, who always said “Amen” in a nasally voice, even when eating donuts. He could sit in the pew that his family always sat in, his brother at the end, ignoring the sermon and peering through the cracks of the stain glass windows to the outside. Jeremy could be there, between the hard wood of the pews, kneeling, hands folded, waiting, as he stared up.

Staring up at the sky, Jeremy searched and found a handful of stars, twinkling on and off, white dots on a blackening sky. It formed a soft blanket over the Arches in the distance, a mother tucking her child in to sleep. Maybe, he thought, there was still time for one last hike.