Rey liked that Anna May would pick him up from the bus station. But he didn’t like that her father would drive her there. She had told him she could drive, but her father wasn’t comfortable with her facing the wider world on her own. And the hours-long drive, from their small town in northern Vermont to the bus station in Burlington, was too much for him to even consider granting her a special exemption.  

Rey had family in Vermont, an uncle, his wife and children, that he was trying to avoid. The last time he had visited, taking a break from his warehouse job in New Jersey to recover from what he could only refer to as his breakdown, he had learned that his aunt was suffering from early onset dementia. He had been embarrassed at how his uncle and the rest of the family had talked in front of the sufferer. And he had been frustrated too, because none of them could spare time for him. Now, he was determined to steer clear of them, watching their town recede outside the bus window as he continued toward Anna May.  

She had said she would be wearing a leather jacket and cowboy boots. “So everyone can tell I’m country.” She liked fairs, videos of goats giving birth, apple tarts, grew her own onions, canned her own tomatoes, and adored Jesus. 

But he was struggling with the mangled wheels of his traveling bag as he came out of the bus station. It was only after he had walked past her and was almost at the exit that he recognized Anna May. Blond hair held together in a single braid, freckled face, a way of chewing her lips to show impatience. There had been four other black people on the bus and she didn’t recognize him. 

* 

They had met at a farmer’s market over in Strout Falls, where his uncle lived. “My town’s even smaller than this one,” she had said in a self-deprecating way he soon understood was put on. She was wearing a sun hat and rust colored dungarees. Her blue eyes flashed when he asked if her tomatoes were any good. “Well, you’d have to find out yourself.” 

He was still learning the intricacies of American decorum, and so it took him a while to realize he had offended her. He bought three cans in apology.  

She asked where he was from, then said, “Nigeria? Never heard of it.”  

A refreshing change. No joke about African princes or cloned politicians.  

Her brother, Joshua, drove her from their town to the Farmer’s Market in Strout Falls thrice a week. Her tomatoes were locally famous, and she was even thinking about expanding to other towns. “Jesus willing, of course.” 

From this last statement he had realized she was a Christian like him, and he had felt more at ease in her presence.  

He returned to her stand the next day asking if she didn’t get tired, standing all day to sell tomatoes. “Well, we’ve got squashes and carrots too,” she smirked. 

She had a sense of humor, he liked that. On the third day, they traded phone numbers, and over the next nine weeks of texting and talking on the phone, he learned that she was three years younger than him, twenty-three years old, that she hated sports, had skipped college because of dyslexia, would have sung opera in another life. He liked how earnest she was, how optimistic. Any other person would have been dour about not fulfilling a childhood dream of singing in the opera, but Anna May had found an explanation. The will of God. This was how she explained away every bad thing that happened to her. “If we accept that God sends us nice things, miracles, then we must also accept that he allows bad things to happen to us,” she said on the phone. 

“And why would God, who is capable of such acts of compassion, allow bad things to happen? Well, because he believes those bad things will actually work out for our good. You just have to face them with an open mind,” she concluded. 

Although he liked her optimism, he hated when she spoke like this, when she brought God into the situation. He’d always had a space inside him that filled with dark, viscous matter every now and then. But a year ago, after his father had died, the dark matter had overflowed its boundaries, almost drowning him. When Anna May had asked him about his family back in Nigeria, he hadn’t felt like telling her about his father, and now he thought the time had passed to do so. “I nearly stuck my head in an oven a few weeks ago,” he said. “Where was God and his kindness?” 

 “Do you still want to stick your head in the oven now?” she asked. 

When he said he did, for a while she didn’t say anything. All he could hear was her measured breathing over the line. “How would you like to come to the farm for a weekend?” 

He knew she was thinking she could save him with her God and her doctrine. He accepted the invitation, if only to prove her wrong. 

* 

Now he stood behind her wondering if he should tap her on the shoulder. People walked past; the chilly evening air cut his exposed knuckles. Finally, he was reaching toward her. She turned. “Oh,” she said. “I remember you being taller.” 

“I remember you being nicer.” 

She shrugged. “Hug?” 

They hugged. She patted his back which almost made him start to cry. His emotions had been all over the place for weeks now. 

This was Thursday, he would leave on Sunday morning. 

She got into the backseat of an old truck, pointing him toward the front where her father sat, waiting. Hour after hour on the bus ride here, he had worried about this very moment. She had told her father about him, that he was a lapsed Christian she was trying to win back to the fold. That was why her father had encouraged their interaction. He was the sort of man who would rather drive without car insurance than let the government dictate how he run his vehicle. The sort of man who changed his own vehicle oil, whose greatest pride was that his children could see visions, could see the very face of Jesus. Would this man take him, Rey, for a fraud? A boy who had lost his way, who had contemplated that most unchristian of acts: suicide.  

“I’m John,” her father said from the driver’s seat. He wore a curved brim hat, the same blue eyes as Anna May. A little mellower though. Even his way of speaking was soft, diplomatic, like someone who wouldn’t hesitate to turn the other cheek.  

*

“My name means graced by God.” Her father gripped the wheel with a light touch, hovering around 65mph. “The names of all my children have special meanings. Anna here was supposed to be a prophetess.” 

“Dad.” Anna May mock buried her face in her hands. 

Her father went on undeterred. “Took her until she turned eighteen to see any sort of vision though. For a while I feared she might be like me, unable to see.” 

The inside of the truck smelled like china that hadn’t dried properly. Like fish guts, but not as strong. Rey felt compelled to offer something of himself in return. “We do the same thing in my culture. All our names have meanings.” 

“And what does yours mean?” 

He had seen this coming from the moment they began talking about names. Yet his stomach still felt empty. “Taste of God. It means to have a taste of God.” 

“What a wonderful name,” Anna May said from the backseat. Her father nodded, a placid smile on his lips. 

*

Dusk came down from the New England sky like a pallbearer, unwanted, yet duty bound to appear. In the distance he saw red and blue flashes of light. 

A sedan, coming out of a parking lot, had T-boned a truck, causing both ends of the truck to fold inwards like a sickle. The front of the sedan was being cut open with a power saw to free the injured passengers. The red and blue light came from the Police SUVs and ambulances that surrounded the stricken vehicles. 

Rey didn’t see how the accident could have occurred. “What happened?” he asked. 

Anna May’s father looked at the scene with a look that might have been either grief or disapproval. “Some people get to an intersection and just don’t wait.” 

“That’s why he never lets me drive.” Anna May sounded reproachful, like she was blaming the world for her father’s strictness.  

Rey turned away from the scene. He didn’t want external concerns, his aunt’s dementia, this accident, to crash into the pity party he had been throwing for himself since the age of thirteen when he first noticed the dark matter. 

They turned onto a road that wound between fields and trees for miles. The clouds sat low like a storm was coming, but there was no wind. They drove through a town with Halloween decorations on every storefront. A dancing skeleton in front of a coffee shop, an armchair with bulbous eyes and fangs by the door of an antique shop, a cluster of pumpkin heads beside a shoe shop whose calligraphy was too intricate to decipher even at 25mph. In another town a mother shepherded children across the street. They were all wearing skeleton-themed sweaters, black and white contrasting with their pink cheeks. 

An hour into the trip, mist appeared, picked up by the headlights on full beam. Deer hovered on the shoulder of the road, their eyeballs glistering in the dark.  

*

His father, everyone called him the Doctor, had spoken to Rey about deer and antelope and elk. He had come across all three animals in a picture book but was having a hard time telling them apart.  

The Doctor, who at that time was already bald, already growing a beard to make up for the baldness, had rubbed him on his five-year-old head and said, “One day I’ll take you to the zoo and you’ll see the difference for yourself.” There was no zoo in their town, and Rey was aware this excursion might never happen. But none of that really mattered. What did matter was that the Doctor had filled his head with wonder and awe.  

On hot afternoons they used to kick a football back and forth. “This will build your heat stamina,” the Doctor would say. 

Rey would giggle and kick as hard as he could, working his lungs until he couldn’t push them anymore. Then he would stagger over to the Doctor and collapse into his arms. “Perfect lungs, perfect stamina,” the Doctor would say. And Rey would believe him, believe that in that moment he was the most perfect boy on earth. 

*

There was a large swing on the front porch of Anna May’s house. They went in through a side door that opened into a small room with a washer and dryer, muddy shoes and boots in twos. Inside the living room, a rocking chair next to the fireplace, and then a couch which was loaded with quilts and throw pillows. The house had an air of coziness which Rey envied immediately. 

On the coffee table, a catalogue of farm equipment.  

Anna May’s older brother Joshua was cooking rice in the kitchen. Anna May had already told Rey that her family were tall, but seeing this giant in the flesh made him want to sit down.  

Joshua came over and gripped his hand. “She’s finally done it.” He talked quickly, flitting from word to word. “Only took her twenty-three years, but Anna’s finally brought home a man.” 

It was an innocent joke, especially since Anna May had told Rey that she had invited several guys to the house before. Yet she didn’t laugh now. Just kept patting their dog, whom Rey recognized from photos as Mr. Anderson. He was a golden retriever, big and jolly and curious. Rey stood back and hoped the dog wouldn’t come to him.  

“Tired?” Anna May asked, giving Mr. Anderson a final pat. “Yes.” He tried to smile. 

“I’ll show you to your room.” She didn’t smile back, made it clear that she didn’t believe him. 

*

Later that night, he woke needing to use the bathroom. He had used one down the hallway on his way to bed. He headed there now, but a sliver of light from under the door told him that someone was in there already. He went back to his room to wait. 

After a while, he heard footsteps, a departure, and so he came out of his room again. But the hallway wasn’t clear, Joshua was there, eyeballing a crack in the wall. “Oh,” Rey said in apology. 

Joshua turned to look at him, smiling, his eyes a little swollen. He was so tall, so broad, taking up the entire hallway with his bulk. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. 

Rey made to go around him, but then Joshua breathed out and said, “So you work in New Jersey, right?” 

“Happy Shades, New Jersey,” Rey replied, hoping the line of questioning wouldn’t go on. 

“Is that close to Bucks County, Pennsylvania?” 

“In a way,” Rey said. 

A wide grin appeared on Joshua’s face. “I had friends in Bucks County. I had friends all over Philly, and some of them had homes in Bucks County.” 

Anna May had hinted at this, that her brother had lived in Philadelphia for a while, strange news to Rey who had presumed from the way she talked about her family that they all shunned urban life. “How long were you in the city?” he asked. 

Joshua’s eyes dimmed, and because his eyelids were swollen, it gave him the appearance of falling asleep on his feet. “For a while,” he said. “There are so many emotions out there, so many painful and terrifying things.” The way he looked now, leaning forward on his toes, Rey felt like he was asking him to concur. And Rey wanted to concur. This note Joshua was singing, inflected with fear and uncertainty, was completely different from the one Anna May always sang, and much more familiar to Rey.  

But before he could respond, Joshua settled back on the balls of his feet and hurried away. The air smelled different to Rey, a smell he hadn’t expected to perceive here, the smell of weed. 

*

His first thought when he woke Friday morning was whether he could spend the whole day in his room. The Doctor was dead, and so he was sad. But really, the Doctor’s death was just an excuse to indulge in that darkness that had been consuming him for years. To be sad on his own, without being able to pinpoint why, was unforgivable, indulgent, un-Christian. Anna May would, he knew, be repulsed by that sort of thing. 

There was a portrait of her family on the bedroom wall. The eldest child was no older than seven, and Anna May was missing from the brood. “I’m an afterthought child,” she had joked when he told her he was the oldest of three siblings. Born years after her parents had agreed they were done with childbearing, some of her older siblings were like aunts and uncles. Rey felt he detected a hint of resentment when she talked about them, but it could be in his head. A lot of things were in his head these days. 

When at last he came out of his room, the kitchen was empty except for Anna May and Mr. Anderson.  

“Morning, city mouse.” She was at the stove, aromas of cinnamon and cayenne. 

“It’s so quiet here. If I lived here, I’d sleep in all day.” 

“Apparently.” She always had this cheerfulness about her, even when she was grumbling. She didn’t claim to be untouched by the frustrations of the world, in fact she often told him things were tough. Then she would quote scripture, and if doing so only confused her further, she would shrug and say, “Better to be addled than depressed.”  

“Dad’s helping a neighbor with his tractor.” She looked up at him. “The neighbor is also one of the church elders. He wouldn’t mind meeting you in church, you know.” 

They had spoken about this on the phone. She wanted him to stay until Sunday afternoon, so he could attend church. But he had claimed his shift began on Sunday evening. He swung his head away from her. “What about Joshua?” 

“Out hunting.” 

“Why didn’t he take Mr. Anderson?” 

Anna May burst out laughing, like he had asked something silly, like if eggs grew on trees.  

“You told me he takes Mr. Anderson everywhere.”  

“Yeah, but never to hunt. Poor thing wouldn’t know his way around a snare.” 

“What sort of dog can’t sniff out danger?” 

“The sort that’s house raised.” she snapped. “You told me about your dog growing up. Ransom was his name, if I remember. But now you don’t even say hello to Mr. Anderson.” 

He could have said something about being tired, about her expecting too much from him. But seeing the hurt on her face, he lost heart. “Breakfast would work wonders don’t you think?” He smiled. 

Her optimism rubbed him the wrong way. She insisted that the world was blue skies and sweet smelling flowers. All you had to do was adjust your perspective. “See through God’s eyes.” Utter rubbish. The world was what it was. Prayers went unanswered, scripture did not heal a wounded heart, grief was sacrosanct. He had come here to tell her these things in person. To test if she could offer a counter argument.  

*

The mist from the previous night had morphed into a drizzle. He was cold, sniffing. Out back he saw a shed, hedges of hydrangea, a hammock hanging from two very thin trees. There was a halfhearted attempt at a wire fence, just high enough to keep away the cows. The fields blurred into woods and beyond that, ridges belonging to another farm.  

“We should take a walk,” she said. “Unless you are Lot’s wife of course.” 

For a moment he didn’t understand, then he did. The woman turned into a pillar of salt by God, dissolved in the rain.  

To show that he wasn’t Lot’s wife, he decided to go out in flip flops. “Are you sure about that?” Anna May asked. He ignored her and braved the weather. The drizzle collected on his hair, streaked down his face like tears.  

Where he came from, if you were born Christian, you stayed Christian, no matter how many questions you had. “Why does God let us suffer?” he asked her now as they crossed the field.  

“He doesn’t.” Anna May guided him around the places where the soil was soggiest. 

Rey repeated his point, “God has all this power, and yet he lets us suffer.” 

“No,” she said. “It’s the devil that causes suffering, not God.” 

Rey stepped on a spot that had looked fine, and found his foot sinking. Now his flip flops were muddy and he could feel grit in between his toes that were already hurting in the cold. “God is more powerful than the devil, right?” 

Anna May nodded. 

“And he has the final say on everything?” 

“What’s your point?” 

They were walking along the wire fence now. In the distance he could see the cows gathered in one spot, trying and failing to escape the rain. To the right of them, more empty furrows belonging to their neighbor. Ahead, the old farm house that had once housed Anna May’s grandparents, and now housed her mother. “That means every bad thing that happens has his approval.” 

Anna May stopped walking. He could feel her mind knitting together a counter argument. “God offers us peace and prosperity through faith. When we doubt, we let the devil in, and he brings pain and suffering.” 

She wasn’t even listening to him. This was what he hated about people like her.  

She said, “Are you saying the devil is more powerful than God?” 

“No,” he replied. 

“Good,” she said, “because he isn’t.”  

Rey had hoped that because he was a fellow believer she would loosen up and listen. They were close to the old farm house now, and when he looked up he saw an older woman crossing the front porch, headed to the door. He glimpsed the color of Anna May’s hair left free over her shoulders, the redness of her bare arms that reached for the door handle. He felt sure she had been watching them, watching him. 

He turned to Anna May. She too was looking at the old house. “That’s my mom.” Her expression did not change as she spoke. “I thought she would be excited to meet you, but when I told her you were coming, she just shrugged.” 

Rey was interested. “Why did you think that?”  

Anna May shook her head, leading the way forward. “I don’t want to talk about my mother right now.” 

Her mom had separated from her dad three years ago, and now lived in the old farm house at the front of the property. She worked in Burlington, sometimes spent the night there. “She doesn’t need to,” Anna May would say. “God provides for us.” She hated how her mother was always worrying about money, talking about taxes and insurance. In the summer they had baked pies together for a church fete. An afternoon spent wrist deep in flour, gossiping about the cousin who was married to a Nicaraguan, the newly widowed aunt who was taking a road trip in the Pacific Northwest. She had sent him a photo of them smiling beside a tray of pies, their resemblance, fleeting. 

He turned the conversation back to God. “Whatever calamity befalls us,” he said, “whether instigated by the devil or not, can only affect us with the approval of God.” 

“Are you saying God wishes us evil? Jeremiah chapter twenty-nine, verse eleven would beg to differ.” 

Rey rolled his eyes even as she began quoting. He thought that maybe he would have been kinder if his toes weren’t hurting so much. 

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” 

“So if you are a good Christian, you pray every day, ‘God please help me, let no bad thing happen to me. Protect me from the wickedness of the world. If you do this, then you drive out of your garage, and a sedan t-bones your truck. What are you then to assume? That God was taken unaware? That the devil stole up on both of you?” 

She didn’t respond, just stared at him, her hair wisping around her face. He thought that he had her. 

“You have to understand what it’s like when something wretched happens to you,” he continued. “When you lose your home, a person you love, or you just wake up one day and realize your happiness vanished in the night, and people tell you that it’s all part of God’s plan. Yeah, maybe this traumatic experience leads you to a better place, and someday you are able to look back and say, ‘Boy am I happy God let that terrible thing happen.’ That doesn’t change the fact that the terrible thing hurt like crazy when it was happening.” Toward the end, his voice had risen, and he was too embarrassed to look Anna May in the eye.  

But he had to finish what he was saying. “All I’m saying is, God shouldn’t let that bad thing happen. No matter what plans he has for me, he should find a less miserable way to bring them to fruition.” 

They were close to the woods now. No birds in the trees, must have been the drizzle, the crisp chill drifting through the bare branches. His nose was already blocked. He could never survive in a place like this. The leaves on the ground were the color of feathers.  

“You could talk to my dad.” Anna May’s lips were raw. “He knows about these things, and he’d be happy to help.” Her face came alive. “Or you could come to church like I’ve been asking you to, there are a lot of people who can help there.” 

Several harsh words went through his mind, and he selected the one that would sting most. “Jesus,” he said, storming away, toes finally numb. 

*

He might pay good money to replay the look on her face after he swore. She had been stunned, inflamed. Some weeks ago on the phone she had said, “Say your dad’s called James Dean, and you were angry. Could you yell, James Dean at the person making you angry?” Her tone had been pleasant but firm. “I guess not. It shouldn’t be so easy to abuse the name of the Lord. Besides, swearing only makes you angrier.” 

He hadn’t agreed with her but since then he had found that he couldn’t swear without hearing her voice, reprimanding him. Even though he had just met her, she was becoming a strong influence. “Come over, just one weekend, you’ll feel better here,” she had said. And so he had come, to prove that hope once lost can never be found again. Or maybe what he actually wanted was for her to prove him wrong. Or maybe not. Maybe he had come because he had been away from home for so long and he wanted to be reminded what it felt like to be surrounded by people who had time for him. 

*

He walked past Mr. Anderson who’d been sitting beside the backdoor the whole time.  

There was a lot of dog hair in the house, in his room, on the window ledge, under the covers. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure it was dog hair; those gold strands of hair could have come from any member of the family.  

Why were things always so confusing? He had come here looking for a fight, and yet now that he had finally started one, he couldn’t help feeling in the wrong. 

Anna May was the sort of girl who could call herself a redneck one minute, yet ask if he believed in angels the next. The way she spoke about God made him think she imagined a bearded man in the clouds gazing down on the human race. 

To him, God was hope. To believe in an omniscient force flowing through the universe was to believe that the world would always find the right balance between salvation and despair. A heart that no longer hoped had no space for God.  

*

That evening, he played Uno with her at the table, losing round after round. 

“You are ruthless, Anna May,” Joshua said. He was back from hunting. Rey tried to make eye contact with him, to see if anything remained from their nighttime interaction. 

“Not my fault he doesn’t know how to play,” Anna May said in a voice he only heard her use with her brother.  

Joshua shook his head. Now he locked eyes with Rey. A little apology, as if he was saying, you know how she is. As he turned toward the basement, Mr. Anderson at his heels, he said, “He’s our guest, you know.”  

Anna May didn’t say anything for a long time, just stared at the spot where Joshua had been standing. 

“Didn’t he shoot anything?” Rey asked, trying to pull her back to him. 

She didn’t look at him. “Maybe he spent the whole day smoking pot.” 

“Smoking pot?” She might as well have told him her brother used pages of the Bible for toilet paper.   

She shrugged. “Dad thinks he should become a missionary, save himself from idleness.” She began to shuffle the cards again. “I was sixteen when Joshua walked out the back door. He left us a note dad burned after reading, so that the rest of us never got to see it.” Her voice was rising. Rey worried that Joshua might overhear them. 

“Three years passed before I got a letter from him saying he was in Philadelphia. A new life, going to comedy shows, hanging out with city people. Then last year he showed up as suddenly as he’d left, empty handed. Seven years was all it took to break him. Dad didn’t even say anything when he saw him.” She kept shuffling the cards. 

But what right did she have to be angry with her brother for failing to shake off their father’s influence? At least he had tried. She on the other hand had never even attempted to leave the safety of home.  

Of course he envied her. There was dark matter in his chest and in his head and in his throat.  

He looked past Anna May to the framed photograph of the family. Mother and father seated, children standing behind in descending order of birth. There were two girls, then two boys, another girl, and then, in this one, Anna May. They were dressed in pearls and dress shoes, all smiling with their teeth except Anna May, whose face was tight and compressed, like she was enduring a migraine.   

*

Her father went straight to the thermostat when he walked in. “It’s cold in here, Anna May.” 

“No it’s not.” She turned in her seat. “Is it, Rey?” 

“Especially for him,” her father insisted. 

They both stared at him. He was cold, had been cold since the moment he stepped out of the bus station.  

But now Anna May’s father was looking at her, lips curled.  

“It’s fine, I guess.” Rey smiled. 

The smile mustn’t have been very convincing. Anna May almost knocked her chair over, rushing to grab a rice bag which she heated in the oven. 

Her father went into the living room and sat in his favorite armchair. “So, enjoying your stay?”  His head was level with a framed quote Rey had been ignoring since the moment he walked into the house. Worry About Nothing, Pray About Everything. 

“It’s been great.” 

“I am happy to hear that.” There was a perpetual air of peacefulness around the man. He reminded Rey of home, of his mother Nene and his father the Doctor. Evenings under sharp-smelling mango trees, the Doctor telling them about his exploits during the civil war, the time he had hidden the poet Christopher Okigbo in his trunk. Sometimes Nene would roast corn, pears. And if Rey sneezed, Nene would hold him and say, “Bless you”, but with feeling, like a holy ritual.  

Mr. Anderson tried to jump on his legs. Without thinking, Rey pushed him off. Anna May had been waiting for the rice bag to warm, now she stopped and stared at him. 

Her father raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like animals?” 

“I do.” Rey couldn’t look him in the eye. 

“You don’t like dogs then.” 

“I do.” 

The man chuckled. “Mr. Anderson would beg to differ.” 

Rey wanted to bury his head.  

Anna May held out the rice bag to him. “Care for some lemonade with that?” 

All he could do was nod. He hung the rice around his neck, spreading the warmth from his shoulders to his chest.  

*

After that, he needed to leave the house for a bit. Dusk was turning the sky dark blue, and the cows had moved across the pasture land to be closer to the house. Calves nestled close to their mothers. The cows were thick around the haunches, their tails a bit stiff, their white coats beginning to darken with age. They moved as if they didn’t care that the calves were there, quickly. But then they never pulled too far ahead, so that at any given time there were three or four calves, who ambled right alongside them. These adult cows would die someday, and they looked like they were aware of this, like they were preparing the calves for that day. 

He realized he had gotten too close to the old farmhouse when he heard someone clear their throat, and he looked up to find Anna May’s mother on the front porch. She was swaddled in a bright green sweater. Her blond hair was mostly hidden inside a more temperate shaded scarf. There was a steaming mug in her hand, which she had to place on a side table in order to wave him over. 

There were chairs all over the porch. Kid chairs, backless chairs, old chairs that leaned against each other like someone had gotten distracted in the process of disposing them. He placed one of the chairs that had both back and arm rests next to her, but with enough space between that he could flee at the slightest opportunity. 

This close, he could see that her face had a scrubbed quality about it, almost as if an external layer had been removed to expose the more tender interior. Her forehead was broad and furrowed. Her lips thin, almost disappearing into her teeth. “Where are you from?” she wanted to know. After he told her, she said, “Do you have a lot of corn there?” 

He had seen bare fields during the drive from the bus station, and he had assumed that just like in New Jersey, those fields had been sown with corn earlier in the year. “Yes, but a different kind.” 

“How so?” 

“Bigger, not as sweet.” 

She squinted, and he noticed that her eyes were the same shade of grey as the Vermont soil. “I prefer it that way,” he hurried to add. “Not too sweet.” 

She gave a small laugh, took a sip from her mug. “We could go inside, and I could brew you some tea.” 

He shook his head. 

“I thought so,” she said. “You seem like you don’t like to bother people.” 

How wrong she was. He had come here with the sole purpose of putting his existential weight on her daughter’s shoulders. 

“That’s why Anna May likes you,” she went on. “She doesn’t like people who make a nuisance of themselves. It makes her feel like she should do more. She doesn’t like me.” 

He could tell that the statement had been constructed to sound indifferent, just like the cows and their strange movements with the calves. But she had been unable to hide the shrill disaffection that nestled within the last phrase of her statement, she doesn’t like me.  

“One day I hope she sees what I have seen, sees that she doesn’t have to follow her father’s every word, sees that there are other ways.” 

The feet of his chair scraped the porch. “Are there other ways?” 

She looked right at him. “You should tell me, you’re here after all.” And the look was genuine. This woman who had separated from her husband, spat in the face of beliefs she had held since infancy, whose daughter had semi-ostracized her, who lived alone in the same house her in-laws had died in, this lost soul, looked at him, another lost soul, seeking conviction or at least fellowship. 

*

On Saturday, Anna May had her personal choir practice session. Rey went to listen to her sing a couple of hymns behind the house. She kept her eyes open, staring at a space behind him until right at the end of each hymn when she shut them, and placed one hand on her chest, letting the music swell until the chords were the only sound around both of them. He had never seen her look so passionate and peaceful at the same time. 

That night, they decided to build a bonfire as a sort of send-off for him. 

She had gathered the wood earlier, and now she led him through a moonless night, not even a sprinkling of stars in the sky. The air was damp, the ground soggy. They squelched past her garden, the shed, those irregular hydrangea hedges.  

He helped her pull off the tarp she had placed over the wood, and then stood back to watch her stack the branches one across the other, cradling the kindling in the middle. Every now and then, she would turn away and spit. A real hacking spit, that came from the back of her throat. “I hope you don’t mind that I spit.” But she didn’t really care. 

The fire started small, which was disappointing, but still warm enough, drawing him closer. “Boy, you do like the heat, don’t you?” The flames danced in her eyes. 

The thing about fire heat was that it made your skin feel dry and stiff.  “I see why you can’t leave home,” he said. 

“Why?” she asked. 

“The world is not like this place.” 

She sighed. “Also because my dad doesn’t think I’m ready, but my mom thinks I am.” She thought a while. “I guess I agree with my dad.” 

Rey thought of what Anna May’s mother had said, wishing she would find a different path, but he felt no obligation to say so now. “Yeah, the world is overrated.” He didn’t feel like talking. He wanted to be in the moment, heat crawling up his fingers. 

“Psalm twenty-seven, verse fourteen.” 

He rolled his eyes, but she wasn’t looking at him. 

“Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.” 

A load of crap, and he was about to say so when they heard the sound of paws on wet ground, and Mr. Anderson came bounding round the shed. Anna May was on her feet before he reached them. “Anna,” Rey called. But she already had Mr. Anderson around the collar and was taking him toward the house. One of the twigs inside the fire burst. Rey let out a long breath. 

“He’s a spirited boy, Mr. Anderson,” Anna May said, returning and wiping her palms on her pants.  

Rey stared into the fire. “I told you about Ransom.”  

“Yeah, he died five years ago, right? He’d been with the family a decade.” 

“But he wasn’t really that old.” 

“Ten years is a lot, but you’re right, I’ve seen older.” She wasn’t listening to what he was trying to tell her. 

In her mother’s house, a light came on, then another. 

“He had fleas, you see,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the two lit windows in the dark house. “The vet gave us some powder to dust him with. Very strong stuff. We were supposed to muzzle him until we washed it off.” The fire popped and hissed. He thought of his mother’s mangos, the Doctor’s heat conditioning. “I forgot to put the muzzle on him. My responsibility and I forgot.” His voice broke. 

“Oh, my word.” Anna May covered her mouth.  

He spoke through his tears. “There is not a single time I see a dog that I do not think about him.” His head sank and his shoulders began to tremble. His mother had made a shroud for Ransom, his father had dug the grave. “Things that make me happy,” he said, “don’t last.”  

He was still wrestling with the pain, a million needles piercing his heart, when he felt himself being engulfed. Anna May’s arms around him. He felt warmer, she smelled of lavender, but also colder because she was screening him from the fire. He sobbed into her neck.  

He could hear her next words even before she spoke them. Something stupid like, to be alive is to hope. To endure pain and suffering is to believe that things will get better someday. But how could he tell her she was wrong, that every sinew in his body refuted her triteness? He was still here, after all, still grieving, still living.