Night Walk
As my father and I walked to the old town, I kept my head up and back, so much that the stars were dizzying and I couldn’t at times keep straight to the road. Next week in Cincinnati, the sky would be pink with light only a few stars could burn through, and the moon could make it through, and that would be all of the sky.
My father’s cat followed us, and he threatened it and stomped, but the cat kept in the ditches and called to let us know it was there or maybe to make sure we were still there as we slipped from the dirt road to old town, my father telling the history of the houses we passed.
He told me who lived in them now, who lived in them before and what happened to the families – almost always a death or scandal. But some of them had simply disappeared. He didn’t know where they had gone. Some of them were in their living rooms, exhausted, the blue TV light in the window. These people chose to never come outside and speak for themselves, but my father knew of them and what they had become.
It was a warm night and the wind slipped around our ankles, the crickets calling one another in waves. We returned to the dirt road and the few lights of old town gave way to the black, again, the wide stretch of stars. I wanted to stare at them until I had them all in my view. How many? I wondered. Impossible to count. Would they be here when I came back next summer?
My father’s cat was still calling, but further down, nearer our farm. And my father stopped and looked up. No more histories to talk of, just the sky, all we could see and know.