The End of the Road

The Interstate abruptly ends just beyond Newport. Grass begins to grow from the joints between the concrete sections, all of which are dog-eared with D-cracking, and the shoulders give way to cornrows of the hardy genera of weeds, and seasonal wadis of flood waters.
We stood there yesterday in the bright, bright sun, I in my linen suit and boater, she in her white dress. We could see the lake like blue punctuation underline the swell and swale where the sun set. Fields of prairie grasses rolled like a hurricane-shaken sea, and ran from where we stood to be subdued within the oceanic amplitude and soothing caress of the lake.

"Why didn't we build here?", she said.
I had no answer. At the time, we thought it best to be near to the population centers, a funny thought, looking at it now. It was as if we needed the blandishments of society to move our sluggish lives along. But now that wheedling and ingratiating cajolery of politics of urban life has left us very last-of-the-Mohicans... like Chingachgook anticipating the end of the line of sagamores after his son, Uncas.
Old Sitting Bull with no fight left, our eyes ceaselessly scan the horizon like Maya waiting for Spanish ships. Shall we accept the broken promises, strewn like treaties ignored in the 19th century? Shall we be the dispossessed, moved across the wide Mississippi to reservations, leaving our birthright to a newer generation?

We always came here after stopping by Rosehill Cemetery on the Puttygut Road to leave flowers for the aunts and uncles, Aunt Sophronia being followed by Aunt Nell, who in turn gave the birch of the head of the matriarchy to Aunt Ilene, their husbands nowhere to be found, buried in some other plot or some other cemetery. Perhaps they are in some foreign land.
The women were there, and they formed a magic enclave around the children's graves with tiny limestone lambs, sons and daughters of epidemic and stillbirth. After all life's ills, the matriarchy came back to create hope in limestone engraved prayers and circles of marble.

Then continue out past the abandoned gas company to where the road ends...

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please continue this story in the comment area.
make it a happy ending, too.
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pix: Down The Road