The Future is All Used Up
She plays with the kids in their old-timey clothes, joins hands with them and jumps in a circle and falls down. Her own sundress is thin, just a cloth. I watch her from the bench and she looks over at me. Once to see if I’m okay by myself. Once to see if I want to come over. Once to see if I can see she’s having a good time. Once to see if I can see what a good time the children are having.
The air is chilly but the sun is straight on me. When the breeze comes I sniffle but my head is back and my sunglasses on. My boot-heel is dug into the gravel on the path. I can smell rose wax from the candle maker’s place. The cat from the soap store gaits out to next the bench and lies down; it feels closer than if it was next to me. Cat looks up at the kids and Jane.
The kids run off to the holes where they blasted for gold; the sides of them are still pocked 150 years later but there’s some grass growing. Pitted, though, gutted. After the town burnt and they rebuilt and it burnt again, then they strip-mined it.
Jane runs with them and they chase around the gnarled stones, climbing up and down them, hiding and seeking, tumbling down the slopes. When the wind comes up it whips her blonde hair across her freckles. The crystal blue light jumps through her eyes.
I hear footsteps but it’s some parents come to get the kids. They’re dressed the same. Not Amish or nothing, heading home to get changed and go to Applebee’s.
Jane comes over to me and picks my sunglasses up, looks in my eyes. She turns and lies on the bench, her head in my lap, looks up at the sky. I stroke her hair. Cat takes off.
Sun is going and we walk down Main Street. The sky is lighter than the ground and the gaslights come on, some bugs come out. The town has cleared except for some restaurants. She’s sucking on some horehound I got her at their sweet shoppe. We hold hands but we don’t look at each other. We look in the windows of the old tonsorial parlor/dentist’s office. We read the labels on the cans in the old apothecary.
We turn down a side road and there’s a meeting hall. Inside the lights are on and it must be forty people are dancing, all of them in the old-time clothes. The skirts brush the bare floor, the men bow, no shoes or bags on the side, fiddle and bass. Just looking in at the people dancing together, back in 1850. Same night, same dry air. I wrap my arms around Jane and we watch them, my chin on her shoulder. My lips brush her neck. The skirts brush the floor. The sky darkens.
There was so much to live for. There was so much to keep going for.