The sweet smell of musty hay and tall grass blew up through the blessings of the sun as the truck backed up slow into it’s place in the field. The sun added that faded grainy white hue to all it engulfed and the man behind the wheel felt it’s familiarity like that of a faded photograph. Something about this place always made him sparkle inside, but you would never know it by looking at him.

His jeans were torn and worn-in deep and the grease stains on each fattened thigh reminded him of who he was and where it was that he came from. There was no escaping who he was, but there was always the respite from who he had to deal with. The people surrounding him made him feel like chewed gum stuck hard to the ground, growing gooey in the heat of the summer’s fury.

A short jerky stop and a further slight forward motion led him to stillness, serenity. The quick flashing on and off of the tail lights made them glow with an erratic strobing that was comfortable to the trees that he had pulled between. The trees knew him too well on these evening hiatus’ from reality. No one was there, no one for miles, yet it was as if every friend he had ever known was standing tall to welcome him home.

The malformed and misaligned limbs of the trees hung over his well-worn tire tracks. The endless field of seeding grass and scattered dandelions. The humming birds that would zip and zoom by in search of better things red. The green flies and bumble bees that would know him by name if he had ever given it. They would, however, be able to convey his face to a sketch artist if the need should ever arise. The canals, left by all of his tires’ rotations into that spot, felt privileged to squish deep into themselves in order to receive him. The burnt out circle for his light and heat, never allowing the green to grow back as that would just be a sacrilege of sorts against this man who was raised by these elements and the subtle noises and motions that they pushed out into the atmosphere in order to create some sort of aura that he could call a womb rather than a home.

The ignition turned off with a small resuscitative gurgle and chug. An eerie whine could be heard across the open area between the tree lines as the old green door to the cab was forcefully pushed open. It always stuck, it never opened or closed right or with any ease to speak of. A slam echoed back after he closed it and it covered over any lingering sustain of the door’s cry. He brushed off his jeans in a motion intended to get the dirt off, not the grease. The grease held strong and would never be removed. Years of wearing these dungarees to work made it impossible to be clean again. It may have been the grease, itself, that was holding together the tattered threads.

The old wooden stake bed on the Ford was splintered and rotting through in a few spots where wet mulch had sat too long in the damp spring air before the projects of planting had begun. He liked planting things when he was not here in his solitary place. Work devoured most of his time but a dirty handed morning in the yard offered up quite the minute sabbatical for him. A tiny little Russian woman lived next store and would shout over the fence in the tilling months. She hated the sound of the tiller. “Why on God’s green Earth would you try to cultivate a five by five space that is smaller than your God damned patio?!?!?!?” He would grimace his way into ignoring her. He would not even look up. The pansies and posies, laying in black plastic flats, wished they had tongues so they could stick them out at this rotten old soul who should have been lit on fire by Stalin himself. He sensed their purple pain.

He pulled out the long galvanized bolts that held the tailgate into place and leaned each side up against the passenger door. He was never quite sure why he walked all the way around the truck to place them there, but he knew that is where they belonged. He hoisted himself up onto the bed and pulled down a crumpled pack of Chesterfields that had been cradled in a shirt sleeve and pressed up against the outside of his bicep. The coffin of wooden matches he kept tucked in his sock was retrieved. Slide out the bed, taking the time to select the proper striking stick, he gently picked one up that seemed to have a little more red sulfur on the tip than the rest. He mused that the word ‘bulbous’ was appropriate in describing it; to him, ‘bulbous’ was a simply fine word. He said it out loud for all of the flora and fauna to hear, “Bulbous.” His trailing breath eased from between his lips and he thought of the lip description in the song ‘Mr. Sandman’. This led him to wonder why they could not have fit the word bulbous into that song. As he molested the match shaft between his fingers, he realized that there really was no place for that word in that particular song, especially if the writers would not be willing to change any of the others. “Give her two lips, bulbous like Grover”

The match struck hard against the rust colored box side and a plume of stink wafted up and tickled his nose hairs. The sulfur stink always stuck in his moustache whiskers and repulsed most lady friends that he would take down the ‘Broken Lasso’ for an ice cold bar bottle and a dance or two. Cigarette lit, he dabbed the match against his tongue to extinguish it (this was a trick he had learned in high school and it became a ritual of pain and taste that he had grown accustomed to). Draw in deep, fill ‘em up. Exhale hard and watch the smoke run away like little cloud men escaping the onslaught of ambushing injuns. Simple smoke, simple day. He tossed the spit doused match onto the ground where he normally started a fire on his dusk to dawn sit-and-ponders. This night would be fire free. He wanted the darkness. He wanted to feel so cold that his bones would run away in search of a sweater; leaving him there, a puddle of ice.

His feet dangled from the bed and his toes never even thought about touching the ground. Back and forth as if he were on a swing trying to impress a girl with the highest burst of pumping in the park. There was no one to impress, it just felt right. Each drag from the cigarette was deep and thick and tart like pennies. Nothing really at all was in his thoughts. This, of course, is why he came and always came and would continue to always come. He did not have to behave a certain way. He did not need to talk or be clean shaven or smile at just the right moments. He was never made a fool in the field with his Ford.

The purple and yellow met in the sky just above the trees and a cool wind came across and made the fabric between the buttons on his shirt waiver a bit from side to side; if the buttons were not there, his belly would have been blown bare. The breeze felt good when it tickled the downy soft hairs atop his ears. He smiled as he took the last puff from the Chesterfield. A pretty damn good day away from all the hubbub, the bustle, the interlopers of his peace.

He thought of all that it was in life. His job, his house, his loneliness, his exclusion from all that went on around him. He was a tangential man, a man who is part of nothing but always there in the perimeter’s shadows; a character actor in existence. He often wondered why he never was more than that. This led him to question why he continued to participate in it. He looked around. He listened to hear the night noises in the field. The bugs, the chirps, the branches tugging on each other like unknown lovers engaged in rough sex; the silence of the sun faded away made it’s own very special noise. This was why he dealt with it all, why he participated in something for which he really did not participate. He thought of a religious book he was given by a lady friend who insisted he get some 'good ol’ religion' before she would drink any more long necks with him. She made him memorize a passage that she said would explain it all.

“But when we receive all that enters our lives as from His hands then no matter what may be our circumstances or surroundings, whether in a hovel or a prison dungeon or a martyr’s stake, we shall be able to say, ‘The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, (psalm 16:6)'. But that is the language of faith, not of sight or sense. - A.W. Pink”

He smiled at how well he had done memorizing it. The lady friend who had shared it with him had renounced her faith and was sleeping with a sax player somewhere outside of Poughkeepsie. She couldn’t take the little town, with it’s little men, and it’s little ideas of what it was to be. She left in the middle of the night taking only a silver necklace, a box of tampons, and a package of Fig Newtons with her on the bus. She never even called him to say she had made it there ok. He often recited the quote to himself while shaving his face in the morning. With each tip-greasing of his handlebar moustache, he would recite a line. Each morning a new line added to the one before until he had the whole quote down. It never made much sense to him. He smiled at his most recent recital. He repeated it out loud, raising his voice enough that a gang-bang of crickets underneath his left front tire all stopped chirping at once.

He finally knew what it was and what it was to be. He may not have had the faith of divinity, but he had faith that it was all going to be ok.