«Night Songs»

For Kathy-who knows the words to the songs, sees the dark in the full moon, and listens to midnight no matter the tune

Dawn. Silent.

The narrow country road had a wet, ebony sheen, giving it depth, like water under ice, unmoving and cold. It was worn, in small patches, to the graveled bed beneath, and was shouldered by a faintly orange mixture of earth, sand, and smooth round pebbles. Shallow drainage ditches flanked it, seeming higher than the road because of brittle brown weeds that rose above the surface like clusters of huddled old men waiting to be toppled.

On both sides was a state-preserved woodland-stunted cedars and homely scrub pines, bare-limbed oaks with thick rough boles gone gray as the weather, an occasional red maple, ghostly white birches solitary and in cages. The ground was littered in tan and sable, dead leaves and dead needles thoroughly sodden from two days' rain, more mud than mulch and unruffled by the wind. Red-thorn thickets wound darkly through the gloom. Nests in high branches sat deserted and bedraggled.

The rising wind passed from a hissing to a keening, a transformation more a warning than a pause as the rain stopped and the puddles shivered and the temperature accelerated to a sharp, downward plunge.

By noon, icicle buds glinted from power lines and twigs. The road was sheathed. The cloud cover grew sharp edges that turned black and shifted.

A car, its copper-colored hood and white vinyl roof streaked with weeks of dust-turned-mud, the white-walls scraped nearly to black, made its way down the road. The left taillight was shattered, exposing a tiny bulb.

The driver wore a tan overcoat a half size too large, giving added breadth to his shoulders, added weight to his chest. The buttons were undone, and beneath was a heavy rust sweater and a faded pair of jeans. His feet were snug in blunt-toed boots into which the jeans had been tucked, boots that rose blackly to the middle of his calves. His face was in shadow, but the green of his eyes paid no heed to the darkness.