Sea Room

The Continental Divide

The Continental Divide I couldn't explain it to my husband, who was squaring his papers as we drove through the Carolina orchards. So many ladders, left out in the rain long after the picking season, caught his attention, but the other was a task to imagine. I pointed to the sign that read Eastern Continental Divide and lifted my foot off the accelerator as we crossed over. The fields stretched easily in both directions and there was no difference, no natural landmark. He looked at the road ahead as if he expected its surface to alter. I told him we were talking about water— this is where rivers change course, where one source can divide, become two and move off following opposite routes. His eyes narrowed as he twisted an apple stem until it broke away cleanly from the fruit. It must be like the moon and tides, he said. But I told him even the trickle from the tap made its decision here, left or right. Where does the rain turn as it falls in half, parting like hair, and what happens to someone who weeps in this zone? We passed fields of winter cabbages, a thousand rows twirling out in straight lines no matter how you eyed them. And how would these cabbages roll, he smiled. Uneasy with new facts of science, he feigned abrupt fatigue and laziness when it was a matter of sadness. His eyes no longer followed the zinc edge of the horizon against that early winter sky. In a far pasture, I saw two buzzards 8 circling a darkness on the turf. A dead calf, I thought. Whatever it was, it rose and shook itself. I watched until the heavy birds unwound from their spiral and flew apart. 9 ...