Return

16 THEMISSOURIREVIEW RETURN / Richard Tillinghast Grey light: sunburst cabbage lemon-bright squash red tomatoes splitting their skins chillis burning in cool darkness, lion's-head sunflowers in the blue Chevy pickup. Hands shaking from the cold flick on the headlights; he starts down the drive a dust you can't see settles over the garden and empty cabin silent, unnoticed like snow after midnight Power shut off in the pumphouse tools suspended over light-blue silhouettes he has painted for each of them Dark trees stand and watch his old truck bump down the hill. Behind him: star-fall he's not sure he saw, bone-chill flute certainty of dawn. He feels the pecans, the wild hazel-nuts the small but hard and juicy apples in the oversized pockets of his coat, the cloth worn soft as rabbit-fur. White dairy-fences border his way, AM radio farm news placidness of black-nosed sheep in ground-fog mist rising over bluegrass. Richard Tillinghast 17 Along Tómales Bay the old oysterman scowls at the low sky and waves, squinting to keep out the wreathing, first-cigarette smoke. Squirrels flash down tree-trunks when they see him coming Farmers turn on their lights. Seeds sprout in the upholstery. Tendrils and runners leap out from under the dashboard— He sails past the whitewashed stumps from the 1906 earthquake, past the old hotel at Olema, stops to pee at Tocaloma because of the name. Sycamore leaves are falling; I feel them rustling around his shoulders and wreathing his hair. The shepherd with eyes like his wakes up in a field. The farmer goes out to milk, his cold hands pink on the pink freckled udders. The oysterman he could almost be lets down his nets into dark water. 2. For a few miles on the freeway we float in the same skin, he and I. But the sun rises in my rearview mirror— I'm not him anymore. I cross the bridge and pay my toll. 18 THEMISSOURIREVIEW The city draws me like a magnet— first the oil refineries, the mudflats and racetrack by the Bay, the one-story houses, then a vision of you waking up: cheeks reddening, your black hair long, your eyes that remind me of Russia, as you look out at silvery rain on the fuchsias. I find your house by feel. How many years are gone? Your name is gone from the mailbox. The tropical birds and palm trees and Hawaiian sunset you painted with a small brush are peeling off the beveled glass door. Forever must be over. I get back into the truck with all these good things somebody must have put here, and drive off— my left hand asking my right a question I could never answer. ...