THE STORY

1 2 7 R T H E S T O R Y B . H . F A I R C H I L D It has no name and arrives from nowhere, eager for new adventures: the murmur and cries of the crowded streets of Istanbul or Rome or Brooklyn, the blazing eyes of the last gray wolf deep in a cave in New Mexico, the sob of the wind between the disks of an abandoned tractor on the high plains, the homeless man chasing his runaway grocery cart down Sunset Boulevard, a young woman looking out from the front porch of a duplex in Enid, Oklahoma, waiting for the mail. It has, as they say, a mind of its own, bearing secret knowledge, truths from another world, transparent and untranslatable, luminous and cryptic. It arrives almost silently, only the slight crush of lawn grass beneath its sandals, a surprise even though you have somehow expected it. Your hands, rough and calloused from the toils of the imagination, reach out to gently shake its narrow shoulders, to tousle its well-combed hair silvered by moonlight. Where have you been? It says nothing, of course, walks to the far corner of the room, and begins to pray. After waiting for hours, you o√er it co√ee and a slice of pecan pie, then more co√ee. When it leaves, you follow close behind in fear and a traveler’s anxiety. Where can a story end? If it arrives from nowhere, where can it end? 1 2 8 F A I R C H I L D Y But then, as you pass through familiar streets, past the clapboard houses, the pomegranate tree just coming into bloom, the blue Buick parked by the curb, you understand, for there is your mother among the bird cries of the porch swing, reading a letter from a small island somewhere in the Pacific. There is the front door with its torn screen, the voices of a soap opera from the radio, the creak and whisper of cottonwood branches overhead. This is where the story ends. And now you know, this is also where it begins, and you lean into the light, put the pen to paper, and write. ...