But all the wonders I have seen I will see a second time

From inside of the ages through your eyes.

[brandi carlile]

-

The music was just so grand.

[nicholas cricket]

-

Heat and ink. Khaki pants. The imprint of Texas sun on your back, sweat like a half moon, forearms like a bear. Always the sweet song of your speech, short and punchy and perfect, the smile a just-so pun brought to your eyes. 

You didn't dance, exactly. What is the word? You shimmied. Shimmied and sang and conducted the cadence with one sun-browned hand, calloused from yard work and farm work and from gripping my fingers a little too tight when I tried to make a run for it. You never did decide if you were okay with me trying to make a run for it. 

Coke-bottle glasses, scratchy father face, the kind of beard that most men dream of- thick and brown and bristly, five o'clock shadow by noon. Your calves like boulders, your shoulders blocking out the sun. T-shirts that always smelled lightly of sweat, bandannas in every pocket, old tennis shoes stained with the stuff of walks down every street. You had the stink of life on you, always. Grass and iron and oil and ink. It was a fog ever rising from your skin. 

I am seven and elbow-deep in your desk, the sacred roll-top desk that locks with a key, a key I covet with all my heart for no reason I can discern. I just want it, the same way I want everything that's yours- your time, your attention, the heart-shaped rock you keep out of reach, the horny toad paperweight, the tiny cassettes for your voice recorder, the pipe that no one smokes, and the maps, always the maps. 

I open and study them long before I understand what a map is, long before I have any idea of the shape of these long lonely highway stretches, these ghost towns, these mountain ranges in the desert. I see your notes in the margins and study these too, even though your handwriting is barely legible. The maps of Big Bend are the oldest, your ink faded almost completely away. I try to fold them back exactly the way they were and never do it right, the rectangle out of square in my small hands. 

I always shoved them back in the drawer and hoped you didn't notice, but a few years later you say, It's time I showed you how to fold a map, and then you did.

Reporter's notebooks, flipped shut with a snap. Typewriters on the top shelf in the garage I'm not allowed to touch. I do anyway, and the keys buck and freeze under my hands like something that's either living or dying, I can't decide. Your hair is short, then long, then short again, then in a blink it's gray. Hands still hard like saddle leather. You tap your toe against the kitchen tile and belt out bars of nonsense, snippets from beloved children's books, lines from songs you now barely remember. 

How does it go? you ask, cocking your head, flinging out your arm, passing the song off to me with a flourish, but I never know how the song goes. 

Dusty paperbacks, our house is crawling with them, bookshelves from floor to ceiling. I'm not allowed to read The Last Picture Show or Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, so of course I do, and walk into the living room and ask you in passing what the word cunnilingus means. The next day, all the Hunter S. Thompson books are gone.

Closets stacked floor to ceiling with things I love, cracked, yellowing, papery things, portals to your earlier world. Old columns, boxes and boxes of slides, photos of friends, family, people you interviewed long ago. Typewritten letters and cigar boxes that rattle deliciously when you shake them. 

You love the same whirlwind phrases. They shimmer when you speak. You quote Hondo Crouch-

This kind of moonshine makes you crazy if you sleep in it, and how Annie Dillard said

the galaxy is a flung thing, loose in the night, and how Greasy Ben & Co. were

sinister and seedy, good for nothing, grim and greedy and how Nicholas Cricket sang

Moonlight glows and summer wind blows, rabbits come dancing on tip-tippy toes

Tap, tap, tap, your toe on the ground. Sometimes you wave the bandana with a flourish. The music was just so grand.

And then, you forgot.

You forgot the songs, you forgot the books, you forgot who was in the photos. You forgot to brush your hair or how to pay for a sandwich, then you forgot how to make a sandwich.

You forgot how to write. Then, you forgot how to read. You forgot us. You forgot how to walk. You forgot how to swallow. You shrank into nothing.

And then, you died.

I can't believe you died.

I can't believe we let you die. 

I can't believe I was an hour away when you died, my husband driving as we flew around curves in the mountains, hearing you cough over the phone as Mom held the receiver close to you, said If there's anything you want to say, you should say it now. 

But I couldn't think of anything to say. 

I couldn't remember the songs. 

I couldn't remember the words. 

How does it go?

In the blue blue night

When the moon is bright

Underneath the leaves of summer-

He's gone, Mom said. And when I walked into your room an hour later, you were. 

For years, I've been looking for you. I thought you were gone then, but you weren't. Not like this. Your body was a heap on the bed. When we rolled you over to dress you one last time, in your khakis, in your flannel, your bandana in your pocket, your back was still warm. I held my hand there. I tried to remember the last time you hugged me. When I tucked my hand into yours, I still felt the callouses.

I can't believe you're gone. I can't believe you left the world of sift light, of bright moons over barn dances, of the washboard strummers and the slap-a-spoon drummers, of long lonely highways that branch into dusty caliche roads. I'll never again smell the ink on your shirts or the heat on your back or your sunscreen or your sweat. Yesterday was the first day of my life that you didn't exist.

This morning, they will burn your body to ash. It will all turn into something else- the bump on your foot that never went away after you dropped the fridge on it, the divot in your skin to the right of your mouth, the scars on your thighs from that incident with the barbed wire. Even your callouses will be gone. 

Where will you go?

Lady bugs strut and toads sashay

Moths and mantises wing their way

snap-turtles swing and grasshoppers sway

while Nick and the crickets just

play

            and

                        play-

It's the question I haven't been able to stop thinking about for years now. Where did you go?

Where is the map that can lead me to you now?

Go back with the moonlight under the hill

Back to the trees the peepers pop

Back to the hollow the rabbits hop.

Back to the willows the weary ducks waddle

And back to our beds our tired legs toddle

You have one other bewildered child. One other who sat at your feet while you sang the songs. One other place I can go. She's the oldest. She always knows. 

I don't need some stupid platitude, like He's in a better place. I need specifics, and she is the only one who would understand this. I asked my sister yesterday. It took me all day to work up the question. Where do you think he is?

She looked me straight in the eye and said, 

I think he's on a farm.

And that's when I saw you, for the first time in a long time. 

Strong and tan and larger than life, that smile tugging at the corner of your mouth, the sun on your back as you walk up the hill trail. Khaki shorts, hiking boots, your walking stick. The red flash of the bandana in your back pocket.

There you are. 

To dream as Little Stream winds 

    its way

        into tomorrow

Of course. 

Where else would you be?

The music was just so grand.