Fall in Jenkins

Fall in Jenkins In July this side of the mountain will be on fire with berries, but nobody comes here anymore. It is only a property tax now, a far-away family house sunken and abandoned to time. Debris lines all the roads in Jenkins. Toilets and car fenders lie half-submerged in creeks. I find myself cursing the people who live here, who gash their ATV wheels through the mountain. But who am I to think such things? I am only a visitor here. A few years before he died, my uncle came here, homeless, getting clean for the last time. Some of his clothes still hang in the damp closet—a musty flannel, a belt, some tired jeans. I've come here to find something I never lost here, something my mother has told me about, an idea of home, but it escapes me. I'm a tourist, on holiday, I pitch a tent where the garden once was. Somehow, though, my blood was steeped in this soil, wasn't it? But the soil doesn't speak to me. It doesn't say to my steps, 7 know yourfootfall, child. I know those soles. No, the land is quiet. When my uncle slept on this cold floor in his sleeping bag, shivering from withdrawal, did the wide planks whisper, Steve, I've always known how to keep you warm, haven't I? I've always known you would come back to me. An animal has crawled into the house to die. Its skeleton is there in the basement with my great-grandmother's peaches still canned on the shelf, the tomatoes shattered, from what? the cold? the animal? Did it all happen before or after Steve? Did he sleep hearing an animal's grief downstairs? —J. D. Schraffenberger 97 ...