Fiction

By Blair Arsenault

DRIVING deep into December, he drifts by fields yet fecund. A farmer astride a tractor seems to levitate beside a stand of fir and birch while lifting a late hay crop in the early-afternoon light.

In the back seat, the driver’s daughters speak miraculously, creating starry words for the firmament. Their faces, visible in the rear-view window, glow with sun. He reflects that someday they’ll hold his cooling hand, pull eternity over his eyes and then preside at the ceremony of loss.

Unexpectedly, a painting appears from memory: a cruel tide, heaving and defiant; dwarfed coastal trees, gnarled, fruitless and bitter; the sky angry with dark, gathering clouds. On a far hill in the background, a farmer urges his oxen against their harness, the plough blade ripping roots, unfurling the soil. Was it December when he toiled? Did he pause his gentle beasts to witness the sky convulse to a woman’s scream at the moment of birth, the sound carried on the tempest.

The driver is bound for a farm, towards the apple-tree bole bent and splintered by plenty, the flanks of patient cattle warming small hands and the ancient comfort of straw. Soon the cruelty of snow may descend, but he has seeded suns, and they will burn.

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