Choices

An acquaintance at Los Alamos Labs who engineers weapons black x’d a mark where I live on his office map. Star-wars humor…. He exchanged muddy boots and patched jeans for a white intern’s coat and black polished shoes. A month ago, after butchering a gouged bull, we stood on a pasture hill, and he wondered with pained features where money would come from to finish his shed, plan alfalfa, and fix his tractor. Now his fingers yank horsetail grass he crimps herringbone tail-seed between teeth, and grits out words, “Om gonna buy another tractor next week. More land too.” Silence between us is gray water let down in a tin pail in a deep, deep well, a silence milled in continental grindings millions of years ago. I throw my heart into the well, and it falls a shimmering pebble to the bottom. Words are hard to come by, “Would have lost everything I’ve worked for, not takin’ the job.” His words try to retrieve my heart from the deep well. We walk on in silence, our friendship rippling away.