Prairie Land

         The land had not changed since I had arrived, and even then it was not much to look at.  The dusty road still stretched away to my left and the seemingly identical scene greeted me on the right.  Other than the waving grass around me nothing had changed.  Even I had not changed from my position in the tall grass, about two meters from the road, which I knew had not been graveled in a long time, let alone paved.  I took my eyes off the pebbles at my feet and gazed down the road, past the yellowing grass.  Two lines of dark trees outlined the road which seemed to stretch on forever, but they did not reach down the road far enough to shield me from the blazing sun.  The grass spread away from the road and mingled and mixed with the sky until a fuzzy haze of heat and oppression obscured the horizon.

         My eyes flitted over the bleak scene and I could have missed the old log house if it had not stood out on the flat plain.  It stood on an angle to me, giving me a full view of its left side and the front.  A pile of rotted and overgrown wood stood beside it and I could not imagine where it had come from.  Other than the trees along the road I could see nothing else that was more substantial than an occasional but rare shrub.  The structure itself was no more than a pile of wood that was stacked in some fashion that might have once resembled a house.  The whole of the building was gray and rotted and the roof had almost collapsed entirely.  Only the frame of the roof stood, supported by some other planks that had fallen in a way that had added some stability to the skeleton.  The window on the side of the building had been blown out a long time ago and I doubted that I could have even found the glass that had once filled the expanse.  The door was on the side that faced me the most and its tiny porch and the roof that lay on the ground a little ways away, told me that it was the front.  The door hung precariously on its one remaining hinge but still managed to swing and creek a little in the wind that never seemed to cease.  The glass of one of the windows on the front of the building was still partially intact but a gaping hole indicated the spot where a misguided baseball might once have punctured it.  It was boarded up now along with the window on the right side of the door, which did not even boast a shard of the glass it once held.

         For some reason I became intrigued with the building and looked about for other signs of the people that had once lived in what was now just a stack of junk wood.  Through the wavering blades of grass, I saw a small picket fence that had probably shielded a garden from a small puppy perhaps.  I imagined a new coat of white paint on the rain soaked wood and wondered how the garden might have looked.  Trim and neat, I guessed.  An old tractor tire lay on the ground beside the old house and in it I could see the hard sand that filled it.  A child's sand box.  Looking for other signs of things that might tell me more about the family, I spotted an overgrown tree stump.  The child must have cried when his favorite climbing tree had been cut down, I mused.  Another smaller tire lay beside the stump and I knew that the tree had been for a tire swing.  Another tear to shed, I brooded.

         A horn honked behind me and I jumped.  I had not realized how focused I had been on the sound of the wind, the door and the whistling grass.  I rose slowly and got in the cab of the truck that I had been waiting for.  I watched out of the back window as the house faded in the distance.  I thought I heard a baby cry, but maybe I was mistaken.