“What do you reckon happens to them people that don’t come back?”
“I don’t rightly know.”
The wood of a rocking chair creaked wearily in the dust on the porch, a voice of dry wood and old earth. A tired voice. They looked out across the wide, flat land that was yellow in the daylight and brown as the sun set behind the old house and beyond the far side of the town there. Out across that thirsty expanse on the bow of the horizon lightening jabbed dryly here and there, illuminating the hot clouds that rubbed together out that way without rain.
“Why you reckon they try to leave in the first place?”
“I don’t rightly know. It has always been good enough for me to stay. Was before, is now. So I’ stayin’. Been a long time, though, since anyone come back from out that way. From out any way, way I see it.”
“At least the post still come.”
“Yes sir.”
Between the cry of a locust out in the lonely field, the thunder rolled gently over the plain to settle on the porch between them with the dust and the tired creak of the wood.
