He walked up the hill behind the house toward the tree, his feet pulsing with a pain he hadn't experienced before, a pain that began there and carried up his entire body to his mind, where it met the pain that was already in his mind, the feeling that he was hurrying pulled apart by the expression on his daughter's face, which told him that he was not. He adjusted his own expression to appear deliberate and purposeful. "No use wasting the afternoon when there's so much good in it, he said. This same trip, the day before, had been easy. Now it was nearly impossible. Is this what life was like toward the end? He was taking all the time available to him, or maybe he was out of time entirely. Maybe whatever he was approaching was receding. He thought about the previous day's trip, and the night before that, when he had lain awake in bed, looking at the ceiling, casting forward to the sense of achievement he knew would fill him when he reached the tree. It had not filled him. He had been empty. Now he was filled with achievement, the achievement of a lifetime, and the certain knowledge that he would not make it to the tree, but would instead drop flat against the ground of the hill, call his wife's name, not the name his daughter knew her by, but the name that he had used in their youth, and pass into the soil in search of her.
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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